Character E’s Monolog/Soliloquy

1. The female speaks 1,3-6. The male speaks 2. Throughout, both male and female continually fuss with the female’s jewelry: thus there are 4 hands fiddling with pearl earrings, pearl necklace, several large sparkling bracelets, 3 or 4 big rings.

(1) Processes of awareness involve accessing and using cognitive resources.
(2) Some of these resources lie beyond the head of the individual.
(3) Accessing and using these resources [Here female pauses, male interjects 2, female begins again at beginning when male completes interjection] requires acting on the world in specific ways (through eye and head movement, bodily orientation and motion, manipulation).
(4) Even accessing and using internal cognitive resources [Here female pauses, male interjects 2, female begins again at beginning when male completes interjection] (for example, memories, perceptions) often requires such bodily action and worldly engagement through mnemonics, intention-fixing, rehearsal and repetition, talking to oneself, doodling. Male repeats 2.
(5) The actions required in 3 and 4 typically occupy a temporal extension of many seconds, minutes, or even hours.
(6) So processes of awareness are temporally extended, scaffolded, and embodied and embedded [male completes sentence with “beyond the head of the individual”].

2. Both speak together, tho the male finishes the first sentence before the female begins (this is a round, like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”). As he speaks he undoes his tie and attempts to tie it around the female’s neck. There is nothing threatening in this; he is not trying to choke her.

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3. The female speaks. Then the male. Then the female. Etc. This is not a dialog. It’s a monolog for 2 voices. And … though it’s in the man’s and woman’s voices, the words will obviously have had electronic effects added, and will be projected from far distant speakers, fading from one to another somewhat randomly.

F. Whatever he said dead imagine. Who speaks through me?

M. The curtains raise showing off the actor and hir puppet.

F. While they tell each other jokes, the puppet seems alive, possessing its own voice and personality.

M. The Latin “venter” and “loquere” means “to speak from the belly.”

F. There is a close ventriloquy, when the voice comes from nearby, as when the puppet stays on hir knees.

Both drop to their knees. F. continues:

In the distant ventriloquy, the voice seems to come from a great distance.

They struggle to rise.

M. A ventriloquist can also repress hir voice as if it came from the inside of a closed space or a tight box. Some ventriloquists can imitate sounds like an animal call or a baby cry without moving their lips at all.

F. A good ventriloquist can be very convincing. It is said that once a ventriloquist shouted a repressed yell for help while a cart loaded with hay was passing. The people really stopped the cart and unloaded the hay, expecting to find the poor victim covered by hay! Of course, they found nobody.

M. People believed they were speaking with the spirits of their dead who they had returned to pass on information retrieved from beyond the grave.

F. In time, ventriloquy surrendered

M. (speaking over “surrendered”) revealed

F. (continues) its mystical trappings.

M. In time, ventriloquy tragedy and comedy …

F. In time …

Both. Who speaks through me?

As the last few lines are spoken, the woman takes the man’s hands, they lift her (are they still called blouses?) to reveal a (laptop?) monitor: there will be a full screen image of a mouth … one whose lips are moving …)

[Note: Sources: (1) – (6) and Groups … minds: Robert A Wilson, Boundaries of the Mind: The Individual in the Fragile Sciences: Cognition; individual organisms … minds: Wilson’s Groups … minds sentence put through the Vispo Cutup Engine; The curtains … comedy: “What's Ventriloquy? The deceptive sounds”, By Stefan Anitei, Science Editor, at Softpedia, 12th of April 2007]