Over the course of those much-vaunted days in the summer of 1342, the three sketches from The Bardo of the Medusa were also not performed simultaneously. By taking on exhausting feats of acrobatics, Schlumm could play multiple characters at the same time, but he had neither the strength nor the technical prowess to perform all three plays at once. So he put them on in succession.
Tuesday was dedicated to No Objective, whose theme is impossible scientific exploration of the Bardo. Despite the heavy precipitation, the text was spoken without any sort of interruption, and entirely through a long, improvised, very striking pantomime, revealing Borschem, neither dead nor living, nor even living-dead, suffering from asphyxia and despair inside the Bardo instead of returning to the room where the monks who organized the fatal dive are waiting for him.
On Wednesday, Bogdan Schlumm performed The Coal Company, a short, sober play, whose dramatic intensity he rendered with a delicate touch. The forest’s natural decor didn’t help his efforts to replicate the darkness of the mine, the terrifying darkness of imprisonment under rock after a firedamp explosion. At the moment when Schlumm emitted the two survivors’ first breath, the sun was playing hide-and-seek between the birches and the clouds, coloring the stage with fantastic rays and making Bogdan Schlumm squint, undermining the credibility of his performance. Above him, the starlings spoke up. I’ve already talked about this plague. A flight of five-hundred individuals, at least, settled over Schlumm to discuss all their problems, passionately. They chirped, they whined, their racket didn’t mesh at all with the enclosed, shadowy, tomb-like space where two unfortunate men were trapped, reciting the Bardo Thödol before the cadaver of one of their comrades, not really believing in Buddhist doctrine and slowly becoming jealous of the dead man. The birds made Schlumm’s theatrical task excruciatingly difficult. Furthermore, as we’ve already bemoaned, they targeted Schlumm with their fecal matter. Schlumm clenched his teeth, but quickly lost his verve. He shortened replies or awkwardly dragged them out, all the while whistling and gesticulating to chase away the offending fowl. His head and shoulders were covered in guano. That Wednesday would not leave any major marks in the annals of bardic theatre.
On Thursday morning, new rainstorms arose, brief, gray. They dispersed the hordes of starlings. Afterward, a damp calm reigned in the forest, troubled, yes, by a company of magpies who for a few minutes threatened to reproduce above Schlumm the previous day’s hell. Their cries were annoying, but the episode was short-lived. The magpies flew away and never returned. Bogdan Schlumm performed Mishmash at the Morgue, a humorous, somewhat-facetious bardic skit. His work as an actor was excellent that day, he may have even gotten his message across.
I have always regretted that only a handful of minor invertebrates, slugs or others, in general devoid of literary savvy, were witness to this brilliant performance.
Even though no one asked me to, I will put here, as an appendix, a summary of Bogdan Schlumm’s three pieces. They can very easily be skipped over. No one listened to them, so no one has to go through the trouble of reading them; you can just skip over the pages and move on.
NO OBJECTIVE
The setting’s cast is comprised of four voices:
Djonn Gavianiouk, monastery Superior
Wilson, monk
Meyerberh, monk, instructor
Borschembschôôschlumm, also known as Borschem, monk emeritus
Over these four voices are grafted, toward the end, a chorus of whispers.
The scene opens in a large underground gymnasium, its sole opening an armored entryway and, at the end, a hermetically-sealed oven door. The instructor’s voice can be heard setting the pace for exercises. Springed machines are grating, a body is skipping rope, exerting itself, shadowboxing, or punching sandbags. The instructor is shouting things like: “That’s enough, Borschem!” or “Stop breathing!” or “You don’t need to breathe!”
The Superior has invited Wilson, an ordinary monk, to witness the last of Borschem’s training before his departure. He explains to Wilson that he, Wilson, an individual of mediocre spiritual capacities, very bad at yoga, normally shouldn’t be present in this secret room, situated well below the monastery’s cellars. We’re here, says Gavianiouk, in one of the Bardo’s antechambers. The Superior was keen on getting Wilson to come so he could fill the role of naïve witness. Wilson’s guileless remarks will be useful for the designers of the experiment. What is the experiment? Borschem is going to be sent into the Bardo beyond death, thanks to the particular training he’s been subjected to for the past fifteen years, he’s going to stay down there for three weeks, and then return to base.
Wilson is not at ease. He finds being so close to death distressing. He’s frightened by the idea of Borschem’s passing through what appears to be a boiler door. The Superior responds: it’s just a simple corridor. Gavianiouk reminds him as well that he cannot break Borschem’s concentration by calling out to him. Borschem was once a very close comrade, a sworn brother to Wilson, but he is excluded from addressing him, asking him anything or bidding him farewell.
In fact, Borschem’s state is already different from that of the living. “His body is alive,” says the Superior, “he moves and expresses himself, but, at the same time, he’s right on the point of being elsewhere, so much so that he already looks like one of the deceased wandering through the Bardo, in the world after death.”
Wilson has trouble recognizing the man sculpted “in dusty plastic,” but he still feels a brotherly love for him. He worries around Gavianiouk. What will happen to Borschem when he returns to the land of the living? Won’t he be forever traumatized by his journey? The Superior avoids the questions. The only thing that matters is for Borschem to report on objects and details, and that his dive furthers understanding of the Bardo, meager as it is at the time being.
Wilson approaches Borschem. He is undergoing one final transformation before his departure. He’s stringing together extreme physical exercises while holding his breath, since he won’t be breathing during his stay in the Bardo, scheduled to last a little over three weeks. He speaks breathlessly. He truly is a skilled monk, ready to endure the worst travel conditions imaginable. However, his conversation with his instructor Meyerberh has left him with a palpable anxiety. The experimenters plan to revive him on day twenty-nine of his journey. Fair enough. But what if time in the Bardo doesn’t line up with the land of the living? What will happen, for example, if one day in the Bardo corresponds to half a second in the monastery? Or, going the other way, if it’s a month to the living, or a year, or even longer?
Meyerberh reassures Borschem. He’ll have a distress beacon on him that he can fire if there’s a problem. A tantric team will be on-call night and day, ready to resuscitate him with special drums, horns, and magic spells.
Neither the trainer’s nor the Superior’s explanations fully reassure Borschem, or Wilson. Meyerberh and Borschem review the basic hypotheses for survival in the Bardo while Wilson, silenced by Gavianiouk, looks on. He hears a suite of convincing-enough instructions, such as: “If the darkness around me becomes unbearable, I’ll close my eyes, I won’t lose my good cheer, I’ll move like blood beneath the skin, I don’t need light to know where I’m going,” or “If a sea of fire envelops me, I’ll close my eyes, I’ll take refuge in the rattling of my bones, I’ll keep a joyous heart, I’ll dance as I move, like a flame among flames, I don’t need to be incombustible to walk through fire.” These phrases are quite lovely. There are about ten of them. The last one is most remarkable: “If my distress beacon doesn’t work, I’ll open my eyes, I’ll open my mouth, I’ll contemplate my situation with joy, I won’t move as I wait for your instructions, I don’t need the distress beacon to signal my distress.”