Act VI - Collapse

Woodland Central Sawmill, Quebec (Canada): beginning of December 2023. The scruffy and bearded 50-year-old man jumps off the truck, ready to unload the last timber’s cargo of the day. Winter is near and frost is now mixed with the sawdust deposited on the hard soil. While unfastening the snap hooks and loosing the belts which hold the giant maple logs in place, the man closes his eyes for a while and breathes in the sweetish smell of freshly cut wood that fills the air. He won’t feel that smell for a while. The season is now over and all the lumberjacks headed by Herman Gray will take a three-month winter break, before the restart of the activities in March. Standing or sitting around the lumberyard, all his colleagues laugh, hug and toast with some winter hot wine, lingering there a little longer before saying goodbye and leaving. Everybody, but not him… neither today, nor any other day. Human bonds are for the weak. Their laughter is pathetic, and those hugs are almost reprehensible. Relationships are only ever fleeting, because nothing can be really built in this dark and filthy world. This is what Mr. Shadow whispers at him, always and persistently. The man knows the other woodcutters have given several nicknames at his back: Mr. Smile, Peti-Social, Ray of Light… but who cares about those pitiful creatures? It really seems they are actually happy of their hollow lives… it almost seems like they love life itself… but for how long? After all, he is in that place only for the money. So, the man approaches Mr. Gray, gets his week’s pay and shakes his hand, thanking him coldly but politely once again for offering the chance to work. Darkness is falling and it is Time to come back to that isolated place which very long ago he proudly used to call “home”. Back there again, where silence is impatiently waiting for him… back there again, where once resounded a beautiful melody, which has been shelved somewhere into oblivion… incomplete, unfinished.

Enters 2nd flashback: THE UNFINISHED MELODY. Maine (US), March 1996. Silence. A deafening silence surrounds him… an uninvited guest… a stranger. Standing lost in the middle of the living room in his chalet with bewildered eyes, Peter stares at the void of his world which is crumbling down in slow motion all around him. The doctor at the hospital spoke to him less than 24 hours before, but the memory of it actually seems like a blurred and distant childhood bad dream. He then sits down at his grand piano, opens the lid and placidly leans fingers on the keys, trying in vain, for the third Time in the last 20 hours, to play something. That melody… that harmonious beguiling melody he just started writing two weeks ago… it needs to be completed. Peter hesitates again. He looks down one more Time at the keys. First the little finger, then the thumb and finally the middle finger of the left hand: a first chord. It’s now the turn of the doubtful, wavering right hand. A conflict. A misplaced, dissonant, strident chord. Peter impetuously gets back on his feet and slams the lid down hard. He grabs the table lamp with anger and throws it with all his strength against the wall. Totally uncontrolled, he starts to tear apart all those music scores that he wrote for years with meticulous care and attention. Hastily, he heads straight to the bathroom, where he then begins vomiting. Lying crouched on the bathroom floor, he once again stares at the emptiness. His everlasting artistic inspiration really seams vanished to give way to but one thing… utter nothingness.

In a far distant but yet parallel timeline, the very last grains of sand of Khronos’ hourglass pour down. The long scythe reaps another tormented soul. Montefioralle, Grand Duchy of Tuscany, 1848. The lifeless body of a 50-year-old poet is slumped over an old moth-eaten desk. Tristano’s dark “vena poetica”, which condemned him for a lifetime making him who he was, has left his soul once and forever. Now the accursed poet is finally free from that tormenting thing, that faceless man, his double self. It will take weeks before a local farmer finds his inert body there. Tristano leaves to the world an important legacy, one of the countless sprouts that will remain for a long Time there on the Great Oak. Some of his manuscripts will be handed down from generation to generation, others will be soon lost in the endless ocean of Time. The last drop of wax slowly reclines on the yellowish sheet, definitively sealing that poetic composition, which will remain forever unfinished. The dim flame grows less and less, until it goes off. Now nothingness is all that remains.

n0thingness

Enters 3rd flashback: THE MIRROR. Sometimes a mirror reveals something of yourself you normally do not see... it shows your other half... it completes your symmetry. This is what Peter Light experiences during a grey afternoon of early April 1996 in his chalet, in Maine (US). An eerie whistle suddenly wakes him up, followed by a muffled whisper that pierces his ears for a few seconds. The white noise on the TV screen seems to follow the rhythm of his throbbing headache. A bottle of aged scotch is there, half empty on the dirtied crystal table, next to a few grinded paracetamol and anxiolytic pills. Sitting on the couch, Peter scrubs his face for a while, then he tries to get on his feet and drags himself to the bathroom, searching for some more pills in the cabinet. Finally, some fresh water on his worn-out face, but suddenly, while rising his gaze to the bathroom mirror, he gets startled by something in there. Peter steps back and a chilling thrill crawls from head to toes... is that thing a distorted materialization of himself?... is it a sinful reflection of his tormented soul? Those resolute blood-red eyes right there in the mirror, reflecting pure evil... they certainly do not belong to him, but now they are staring at Peter with a sense of challenge, accompanied by a sort of sadistic grin on his face. Peter is petrified. Perhaps too much whiskey, or maybe it is just the reaction of the pills mixed up with alcohol. But deep within himself, he knows that man. That creature has always been with him, or better inside of him. He has walked with Peter for his entire life, guiding, inspiring, aiming, craving, always wanting more. A personal demon who, like a perverse puppeteer, pulled the strings of that artistic inspiration and never let him go. His double self is now standing there, right in front of him, on the other side of the mirror. Peter remains impassible. That man introduces himself as "Peter's recondite self", before reaching out to the young musician and dragging him into the mirror. Peter Light is overwhelmed by a sense of powerlessness; his muscles are motionless and his body does not react anymore. Without even realizing it, he now finds himself trapped on the other side of the mirror with no way out, while watching his counterpart leaving the bathroom for a moment. The sinful man slowly approaches the crystal table and grabs the bottle of scotch there. He looks around, focusing for a while on the black grand piano in the middle of the room, then he goes back to the bathroom and stops in front of Peter again. The two men look at each other in the eyes once more, like two brothers who are about to say goodbye. All of a sudden, that corrupt creature lifts his left arm and violently throws the bottle of whiskey, shattering the mirror. Peter Light has gone, giving way to Mr. Shadow. Peter will live on inside of that man, but he is not the one making the rules of the game anymore. Now it is Time to move ahead, to learn how to survive in this vicious, filthy world... and only Mr. Shadow has the strength dictated by resentment and the determination moved by hatred, to do so. The counterpart representing the duality of each human being. Mr. Shadow: the man engendered from a fracture.

Fracture

Ilha do Arvoredo (today's Brazil), Spring 1532. Stranded on a heavenly island which yet seems forgotten by the rest of the world, a man is aimlessly wandering. His name is Riodorado. Braveness has turned into madness, while all his dreams and ambition have sunk into a bottle of bitter brandy. Totally drunk, the Spanish adventurer keeps on singing and screaming out loud to the endless and ever-silent glimmering sea, while he thinks back on that taste of eternity he could savor but for a moment, before it turned into bitterness and then disappeared forever. His journey began 9 weeks ago in the City of Santa Maria (today's Colombia), where Riodorado and his crew set sails towards the unknown, in search of the legendary Fuenteterna, the lost city of gold. They headed south, navigating all along the coast of the New World till, 3 weeks later, they reached the "Sweet Sea" ( Rio de la Plata River). Surrounded only by the most bizarre vegetation and wildlife never seen before, the Iberian conquistadors continued upriver until it became too narrow to carry on. They ventured inland and roamed for more than 10 days, losing a few men along the path. But right when all hopes were about to collapse, a glitter in the jungle attracted Riodorado's attention. A step ahead into the moistened ferns and amaranths and, all of a sudden, the most marvelous sight ever unfolded: Fuenteterna existed for real and it was there, right in front of their still-disbelieving eyes. A whole city made of pure gold. In that very moment, the ruthless conquistador finally reached perpetuity and felt all-mighty... more than his King... even more than his God. The crew lingered there for a couple of days to explore that surreal place and all its marvels, then they decided to head back to Santa Maria, taking all the gold they could get from there with them. Once the caravel was fully loaded, the long journey back began. Almost a week later, Riodorado and his crew reached a stretch of sea where the coast is quite irregular and jagged. A storm was looming over the horizon, but the impulsive warlord took the decision to proceed, rather than mooring ashore and waiting there, too eager to reach the destination and reveal to the whole world his amazing discovery. So, they tried to circumvent the gale, but when rain and wind suddenly changed the way, they were unable to control the sailboat anymore against that immensely violent force. Cast adrift, the caravel was swallowed by a merciless inferno, while all the large sacks full of gold slowly sank into the dark ocean, forever. Riodorado woke up on Ilha do Arvoredo, a nearby island, the following morning. He was the sole survivor of his crew: all alone, a man saved by both luck and utter damnation. Next to him, only wreckages and corpses... no food, just a crate full of liquors... and a large hemp sack containing gold artifacts from Fuenteterna. A wonderful shining gold that can neither feed him, nor give him back his boat. Now Riodorado roams drunk and lost on that paradisiacal shore that has become his prison. His path towards eternity was suddenly hindered by a cruel and mocking fate... the destiny which sooner or later strikes all ambitious men and pushes them into a vortex: the sweet oblivion where now the Spanish conquistador finds himself. Like a compass, whose needle is blocked towards the past, instead of heading north, Riodorado relentlessly wanders on and on, in this contradictory never-ending circle.

Sonnet III

Enters 4th flashback: THE MOURNING. Calvary Cemetery of South Portland (Maine - US), mid of June 2008. The broken man is knelt down before the pearl-white headstone of Sir Henry Theodore Light, his father. He passed away 3 days ago, at the age of 79. After the funeral, the man has spent the last 25 hours right there on his knees, in silence. But still tears do not come out. He never weeps, neither for Diana nor for his father or anybody else. Young Peter used to cry for such things... he was that stupid, sensitive, pathetic boy. But now Peter Light does not exist anymore. The man has lived the past 12 years in grudge and isolation, limiting human contacts to but a few occasions. After the accident in that far spring of 1996, all his family members, friends and colleagues from the New England Piano Academy tried in vain to call him, meet him, to stay by his side... but Mr. Shadow rejected each and everybody. He stepped back from Diana's parents and never saw them anymore. To make a living, buy whiskey and keep what remained of that cold and isolated house in the wood, in summer 1997 he first got a temporary job as truck driver and in 2001 he seasonally began helping Herman Grey and his team, as part-time lumberjack. The broken man continued to see his parents more or less twice a month, driving every other Sunday to Portland and stopping there for lunch. But Mr. Shadow is now his real self, showing up and taking total control each single night, when he comes back from work. Peter Light is but a name, the pale reflection of a man who once used to dream... to love... to live. He is only a face, a cold and apathetic facade carved and shaped by Mr. Shadow's will. The man stands up and slowly lays his hand on the marble plaque: still, he cannot believe this is the place where his father will rest forever, in peace. Later he will pass by his mother Angie, to stay close to her for a while longer, before heading back into oblivion, again. While exiting the cemetery, he turns around to take one more look at that grave... one final goodbye to the man who meant so much for him. When Peter was young, that man used to be his mentor, his source of inspiration, his whole world... simply his dad. The sense of life carved on a gravestone: "Happiness in this world lasts but for a moment, until one day we find ourselves holding on to nothing". Time washes away everything we know, everyone we love, again and again, like a never-ending circle.

Neverending Circle