Let’s start with an old quote (do quotes grow old? Do they suffer and die?) from a wise old owl (do owls grow old? How about grow wise? Or are they born that way?) Already I feel some slippage… Here ’s the quote:
this interpenetration of psyche and world verges on the very definition of madness: the incapacity to distinguish and keep separate inner and outer reality… how could we have any rational discourse if we start to break the [grammatical] rules?
Or ]grammatical[ rules?
Scene 7 gives us a clear answer: we can’t have any rational discourse if we break those rules! So what kind of narrative can Scene 7 be? A clue lies in the quote. Inner and outer reality begin to lose their separateness. It may still be possible to distinguish inner from outer. After all, the narrative names the characters and they talk among themselves in such a way that we can tell who is inner and who is outer, at least to some degree, sort of, well, maybe, and maybe not. Even the distinction begins to blur when we learn of the entanglements taking place. So how is such a breakdown between inner and outer—the very definition of madness—to be navigated? First of all this breakdown is a breakdown of the real, which up till now has utterly depended of the inner/outer separation. How does this breakdown of the real manifest? Well one compelling example lies in the growing tendency to collapse speech with concrete action. Posting “hate speech” is now the same as concretely engaging in a terrorist act, for example.
How to navigate the surging flood as the barrier between inner and outer collapses? Scene 7 shows that it’s no good hanging on to this or that orange crate, as Leonard Cohen warns us, in the hope of certainty or fixity. You have to go with the flow of words. I think maybe we have to regard the flow as somehow the new reality—the point of the breakdown of the old reality. Be a kayak perhaps. Categories are bursting their banks and cannot hold reality-as-flow any more.
I used to surf a lot as a young man. We all surf the net now. Perhaps these activities are a kind of preparation for what is to come!