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A Man About The House

script for a walk performance at A la Ronde (National Trust) 2008

Simon Persighetti & Phil Smith

1/ empty plinth (behind car park)

Shell

(Phil to collect the audience from thereception area and lead them into thecar park. Phil is dressed as a fusty1950s local historian. He carries anold notebook titled “Mein Buch”)

Phil: (mimes putting up umbrella)It was raining very lightly, and I kept opening my umbrella andthen closing it, opening and closing, opening and closing. (Mimethis action, then as if leaving it up, so that the hand is held almostlike a papal blessing.) I was waiting for Trevor and I was justabout here (point to spot) – and I was wondering what it was thatTrevor was so keen to tell me.His car pulled up just there and he got out and walked towards mehere. We shook hands.

(Phil shakes hands with a member of the audience, and thenanother.)

Peace be with you. Peace be with you.

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(Taking the hands of the final audience member Phil does notrelease their hands.

In the third century there were two opposing Popes: Cornelius andNovatus. When Novatus gave communion he would seize thehands of the communicant and refuse to release them until they hadsworn never to turn to Cornelius.

(Phil release the audience member’s hand and mimes takes downhis umbrella.)

Trevor said: “Have you been told anything about what I’ve foundout?” I told him I hadn’t. “Then, you might have to re-think yourwalk.”

He led me to the volunteers’ room inside the house, and began tomake me a cup of coffee, no milk, no sugar. It seemed to takeforever, while I waited to hear what this story was. At last Trevorbegan:

“It was 1885 and a Mr and Mrs Rice booked in to a guest house inBristol… “

I’m going to keep you waiting as well, but rather than a cup ofcoffee I need to prepare you, in the same way that I was preparedto hear what I heard – I’m going to take you to eight places, eachone symbolic of the life and passions of the Reverend OswaldReichel, the only man to live here in two centuries of occupation.The first one is just over here.

(Phil lead the audience to the empty plinth. He places a mussel

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shell on the plinth. Then he stands on the plinth and takes astatuesque position for a moment.)

(Phil reads passage:)

“The (Holy Roman) Emperor Leo the 3rd was a native of Isauria, ofobscure birth, a valorous and able soldier… but rude and unrefinedin mind, unable to appreciate art and loving a plain and unadornedworship… Images... seemed (to him) positively sinful…Christendom was astonished by the appearance of Leo’s edictinterdicting all worship of images … proscribing as idolatrous allstatues and pictures which represented the Saviour, the Virgin, andthe Saints… ordering the whitewashing of the walls of thechurches. Scenes of rebellion and bloodshed were theresult…terrible prodigies were witnessed in heaven, andphenomena no less strange appeared on earth. … ‘Go into a schoolwhere children are learning their letters, and proclaim yourself adestroyer of images. You will receive their tablets thrown at yourhead.’”

(Phil smashes the mussel shell and then replaces it with a newunbroken mussel shell.)

That’s a quotation from ‘The See (S -E - E) of Rome in TheMiddle Ages’ – in other words the government of the churchbetween a thousand and five hundred years ago. It was written by ayoung Anglican vicar called Oswald Reichel, 19 years before hecame live here at A la Ronde. Reichel was just 30 when ‘The Seeof Rome’ was published – it’s a huge book about Europe’s politicsand religion, and it reads well today. Reichel was born in 1840, theson of a Moravian Priest, possibly from a long line of Moravianbishops, his mother was Matilda Hurlock, a cousin of Jane and

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Mary Parminter, the first occupants and possible designers of A laRonde.

(Show audience the official guidebook to A la Ronde with Reicheland his wife Julia in the family tree at the back.)

You’ll see Oswald there and there’s his wife Julia, born 1842. Julialived out the final years of her life over there, in a 1920s builthouse called Three Acres.

In his youth, Oswald switched to the Church of England – veryclose in beliefs to the Moravian Church – and was ordained anAnglican priest in 1865 after studying in Oxford with greatdistinction, and was made vice principal of Cuddesdon College inOxford, training young men for the Anglican priesthood, as well ascurate at North Hinksey and later vicar at Sparsholt, both villagesin Oxfordshire.

Reichel’s publishing was extraordinary – not only is ‘The See ofRome’ a brilliant, book, but around the same time Reichelpublished translations from the German of major works on Socraticphilosophy and on the Stoics and Epicureans. The man was agenius, and yet when he arrives at A la Ronde in 1889, he haspublished nothing of significance for 19 years and is no longerofficiating as a priest.

As perhaps you could guess from the quotation about Leo theThird, Reichel believed strongly in the importance of the materialquality of symbols: "no religious man” he quoted “goes on apilgrimage without an image".

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The shell of a thing was not simply an outer distraction, it was likethe shell of a crab or a shellfish, part of the living organism andbeing of all things.

So, what is the significance of his move here, taking A la Ronde ashis shell, and why, suddenly, after 19 years does he begin topublish on a national stage again, this time not on the churchgovernment of the past, but on the church government of thepresent and the future, at the same time, dedicating much of histime to the minutiae of local history:

(Reads.)

“… and (the) generations of those who have gone to make it up,now mingl(ing) their dust with that of others in the quietchurchyard of St John in the Wilderness, on the neighbouring hill.”

In a footnote to one his essays he writes of being told

“by Mr Joel Crabb that the last case of a corpse being carried…along the old Churchway occurred some sixty years ago… a son ofhis Uncle Henry’s … killed by a prong falling from a hayrick andtransfixing him.”

Here’s the map from the essay…

(Phil shows the map from the essay)

and you can see the churchway or corpse path there and possiblyextended along the route right next us to here – see how Park Lanestops so abruptly suggesting that when the A la Ronde groundswere made up from fields, the path here was blocked, and now is

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open again.

So let’s walk in parallel with what might once have been achurchway – a corpse path - and carry these shells as the shells ofmen and women would once have been carried in their coffins.(Phil hands out mussels and walks on along the perimeter path, atone path beginning to sing.)

“… da fing das Öl zu brennen an,Von Aserbeidschan bis Tibet.Es stecke die Welt in Brand,Petroleum heisst unser Vaterland.Dafür zerlöchern wir uns das Fell:Shell! Shell! Shell!

(reads)

“The oil began to burn from Azerbijan to Tibet, It set the world onfire. The name of our Fatherland is Petroleum, And for the sake ofit we’ll drill, Each others’ hides full of holes: Shell! Shell! Shell!

That’s from Muschellied or ‘The Mussel-Song’ from the play Öl-Konjunktur (Oil-Economy) by Leo Lania and Felix Gasbarra,words by Gasbarra and music by Kurt Weill, though sadly themusic you just heard was me just making it up.Not many people know that the first logo of the Shell Oil Companywas the mussel shell, first used in 1901 and then replaced in 1904by the famous scallop shell or pecten, appropriating the scallopbadge worn by medieval pilgrims.

Let’s continue our pilgrimage to the next station.

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2/ obelisk (frozen sun beam) ~ Ice

(apollonian male intellectualism/female dionysian sun worshipspiritualism) Phil: Can you put your mussel shells around the obelisk for amoment and place your hands on the stone. I’m wondering howwarm or cold it feels to you?

You see, an obelisk is the representation of a sunbeam.

(Sings) “Es stecke die Welt in Brand!”

It sets the world on fire.

This frozen sunbeam is a good place to consider the contradictionsof Oswald Reichel’s life here at A la Ronde, as the only maleoccupant in an otherwise uninterrupted female occupation.

Look down to the Estuary of the River Exe, for a moment. Duringthe Pleistocene ice ages, the glaciers north of here sucked the waterout of the seas, and this area was dry, allowing the River Exe to digdeeper and deeper into the earth. When temperatures rose again,the glaciers melted, the waters flooded back in and drowned thevalley. Ice and fire.

That’s what the Beefeater chain are calling their Father’s Day mealthis year – it’s a fry up washed down with Heineken? – Ice andfire.

If you’ve travelled along the edge of the Exe you’ve probablynoticed the pieces of wood stuck in the mud and occasionally

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people lifting them up and taking something – they’re “crab tiling”- collecting little Pea Crabs, to sell as bait.

These Pea Crabs lives in symbiosis with the Mussel. The femaleslive inside the shells of the Mussels, feeding on the Mussels’mucous membrane, so they are parasitic. The males, greatswimmers, swarm over the Mussel beds and sneak inside theMussels’ shells to mate. The female Pea Crab, while in the Mussel,has no outer shell - her host provides her with all the necessaryprotection.

So perhaps there is a contradiction here – in nature – between theouter appearance and the nature of what is within?

What protection was A la Ronde, this female shell, affordingOswald Reichel?

And how did he feed upon it?

He certainly made some changes here to Jane and Mary’s originalhouse – putting in big pipes for central heating, letting in the lightthrough dormer windows in the tiled roof that he put up in place ofa thatched one.

The passages I’m reading today are all written by Oswald Reichel,if it’s by someone else I’ll usually tell you – and this is someoneelse, this is a passage from ‘A House of Leaves’ by Mark Z.Danielewski, a novel about a house transformed by the spirit of aformer male occupant:

“At first everything seemes to be proceeding smoothly. Slowly butsurely, Navidson draws more and more slack rope down onto the

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floor, steadily lifting Reston up through the bore of th(e) stairs.Then about halfway up, something strange happens: the excessrope at Navidson’s feet starts to vanish, while the rope he holdsbegins to slip across his fingers and palms with enough speed toleave a burnuing gash. Navidson finally has to let go. Reston,however, does not fall. In fact, Reston’s ascent only accelerates,marked by the… green light he…holds…But if Navidson is no longer holding onto the rope, what couldpossibly be pulling Reston to the top?

Then as the stairway starts getting darker and darker as that faintlyilluminated circle above – the proverbial light at the end of thetunnel – starts getting smaller and smaller, the answer becomesclear.

… the stairway is stretching, expanding, dropping,And as it slips, (it is) dragging Reston up with it.”

And this is Mark Danielewski’s sister, Poe, singing about the samechanging house:

On cassette player, play Poe singing “Five and A Half MinuteHallway” from ‘Haunted’.As this plays, Simon appears – coming along the path/’hallway’ -wearing white, he carries a piece of ice that is melting.As he approaches, Phil reads from the book:

Phil: “Finally, in the temple crypts, Tamino… passes through thetrials of Fire and Water, and proves he is worthy to win hisbeloved. The powers of Night are vanquished. Reminiscent of thebiblical reference to baptism by water and by fire, this passing oftrials stands for the full awakening of Mind.

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What does it all mean? What is the main theme of the opera?Surely, it refers to the transmutation of character from raw materialto enlightenment, the process of our maturation into fullhumanhood.”

Does Oswald Reichel pass these trials?

Simon arrives. Phil takes the ice from him and hands it, with a cup,to a member of the audience – to hold the ice and catch the meltingwater.

Simon leads the audience towards the Secret Garden.

3/ the 'secret' garden

Secrets ~ the invisible

Simon enters the garden, either Salli or Phil opening the gate witha key. Simon goes to the apples in a bowl, the symbolic tree behindhim, and begins cutting one into slices.

Phil: Before we enter the secret garden – this is the third station,so we’re moving on from the first part of the solemn mass as it wasin the Ninth Century, to the second part – we began with the“public readings” and now, for the next two stations, we’ll have thePeople’s Prayers… or rather we should be, but by the ninthcentury, the informal, improvised prayers of the people of the earlychurch had been replaced, to Oswald Reichel ‘s distaste, bysilence.Reichel did not like silence, he did not like invisibility, ghosts, orchurches based on opinions rather than physical congregations withall their differences, and he did not like secrets… he liked outward

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material symbols that expressed, explicitly the truth of what waswithin.

The audience are led into the secret garden. Simon is cutting up anapple.

Phil: For more than 20 years Oswald Ray-shell - for that,apparently, was how he preferred people to pronounce his name –Ray-shell was a member of the Board of Guardians for St Thomasin Exeter – often taking fruit for distribution to the poor, picked inhis gardens here.

Simon hands out the pieces of apple for the audience to eat.

Phil: (reads) “Certain persons… in Holy Orders are disqualifiedfrom exercising their office on the ground that the exercise of theministry by them would tend to cause scandal… the disqualifyingcircumstance, which may not be a sin at all, is called anIrregularity. … To constitute an irregularity… a crime must... bepublicly known and not secret … Irregularities may cease… by thelapse of time, or study, or absence…”

Even before I’d heard Trevor’s story I’d written in my notes: “wasOswald hiding a secret world?”

“… never forget that we have this treasure in earthen vessels; andthat although the soul soars upwards to higher things, the body hasnot lost its human instincts… make allowances for the strength ofhuman passions surprising the unwary and carrying them to excessat times, remembering that the simple gratification of the primaryinstincts of human nature such as eating, drinking, sexualintercourse, and the like, is not wrong per se, but only become so

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when indulged in excessively, unlawfully, or unnaturally. Far fromconfounding religion with morality… (the Canon Law) owns thatthe Church itself exists through grace and hence rejoices in everytriumph of grace over human weakness…”

Simon raises the symbolical tree – sharp at the bottom and curledin some way at the top. The tree is handed to a member of theaudience.

Phil: Can we now process the tree, please, left along the narrowpath, until we reach the gate with one stone post standing?

(We all process down the narrow path until we reach stationnumber four.

4/ broken stone gate

Keys ~ St Peter (keys to heaven) - dumb materialism

(Phil hands his book over to Simon,taking the symbolic tree and holdingit like a bishop’s crozier in one hand,standing before the gate, whileproducing keys in his other hand.Simon kneels before Phil, holding upthe book so Phil can read from it.

Phil: We have shared carrying boththe tree and the water as a symbol ofthose egalitarian and communalelements in the early Christian churchthat Oswald Ray-shell admired so

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much, and believed could still (just about) be detected in the sharedresponsibilities and communality of the solemn mass of the Ninthcentury. But here, now at the gate of heaven, we re-enact the realityof what, in the eyes of Oswald Ray-shell, had become of that greatproject of united spiritual organization:

(Reads)

“The Church had become an aristocratic, not a democraticinstitution… The free elections of primitive times had gone intodisuse… the independence of priests was gone. A few great mengoverned the state, a few great prelates governed the church. Onceit had been a note of Christianity that to the poor the Gospel waspreached. Now it was otherwise, the gospel was for Princes… theChurch was leaving her children to go after her lovers…”

(reads) “The crosier is an ecclesiastical ornament which isconferred on bishops at their consecration.

( Phil jabbing at and then gesturing towards the audience with the‘tree’. )

“…the end is sharp and pointed wherewith to prick and goad theslothful, the middle is straight to signify righteous rule, while thehead is bent or crooked in order to draw in and attract souls to theways of God.

In a moment I will ask you to come forward and look through thegate.

(reads) “said Oswy, then king of Northumbria: ‘… the keys toheaven were given to Peter by our Lord. And… I say unto you that

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he is the doorkeeper, whom I will not contradict… lest when Icome to the gate of heaven there should be none to open them…”

If the barbarians of Europe imagined Heaven as a geographicallocation, with a gate, and its keys held by the Pope, what did Ray-shell imagine as heaven?

In all his writings I don’t recall him ever mentioning it. Heavenseems to fall within his antipathy towards the secret, the invisible,the ghostly.

Come forward and look beyond the gate and try to imagine amaterial heaven.

Audience to come to gate and look through.

(reads:)

“Everything that exists consists of body and empty space, and thereis no third thing.”

Phil pockets the keys and returns the symbolical tree to theaudience.

Phil: Can you, please, lead us to the left and stop on the path nearthe large oak tree there?

5/ the mature oak

Body ~ church's body corrupted by secular power, yet early

idea hangs on

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Phil: Now, it would be wonderful to be able to go right up to thislovely oak. But we have to restrain ourselves today – in theinterests of the fabulous flying red beetles and grey, blue andbrown butterflies – and of the pleasure we get in seeing them.

So I will read what I would have said to you if we could have goneto the tree, and maybe you could hold out your hand – and try toimagine how it might feel to touch the bark.

This is what I would have said:

“In a moment, can we all spreadout – like the scientists in ‘TheThing From Outer Space’ whenthey make a circle around theoutline of the flying saucer buriedunder the ice… except that insteadof looking down can you look upand stop when you are beneath the

very farthest edge of the oak’s canopy? Pause there for a moment,then once we’ve all found our place, come and gather togetheraround the trunk.”

Oswald Ray-shell often used trees as metaphors – for the church,for himself, for empires, for ideas. But there were problems indoing this. The tree is a pagan symbol. In Christian symbolism, itis often a negative one: the cross of crucifixion, the tree ofknowledge that tempts Adam and Eve. And it is in the Germanforests that the love of individualistic freedom “as rugged as…native woods” – is learned, that will split the oak into fragments.

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We now begin the third part of the solemn mass. This is the longprayer of the president:

(reads) “The Holy Roman Empire of the fourteenth and fifteenthcenturies… was the grandest attempt ever made to realize a greatand elevating idea… Europe was united politically andecclesiastically; all differences of race and origin were merged inmembership of one common society…. Making no distinctionbetween barbarian, Scythian, bond or free, German and Spanish,Italian and Pole…”

“The gigantic oak of the Holy Roman Empire had spread forth itsbranches and overshadowed all lands… Glorious in its ownluxuriance, it could only await the slow decline of time…”

“… (its) ruins… were… stepping stones in one direction, imperfectattempts to assert the personal responsibility of each individual toGod.”Let’s walk those ruinous stepping stones.

Simon leads the way, taking from his pocket either beach pebblesand begins to drop them along the route up to the ha ha.

6/ ha ha

Sand ~ foundations, people =

'earthen vessels',

On the ha ha is a small table, ateapot with water, a bowl withmixing spoon. Simon takes thecup of melted ice held by anaudience member and puts that

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in the teapot, then pours water from the teapot into the bowl ofsand and mixes into a mud with the spoon.

Phil: After Oswald Ray-shell died in this house in 1923, hiswidow, Julia, attempted to sell the grounds of the house for ahousing development. If she had been successful this whole areawe see here would have been dug up, foundations put in, roadslaid, a small suburban enclave… built on sand.

For under the grass here are the remains of a 250 million year oldPermian desert, mile after mile of sand dunes formed intremendous heat, stained red by ferric oxide, dried under a fierysun, the sandstone below us occasionally peppered with Breccia –layers of small pebbles, the result of flash floods sweeping acrossthe sands – the world tested in trials of Fire and Water.

(Reads) “Never forget(s) that we have this treasure in earthenvessels…”

And now we’d like you to walk – singly and in silence – likepilgrims in the desert - can you walk down this path, to theperimeter path, then turn left along the perimeter path this way, andthen left again up the path that we’ve just come up. Thank you.

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7/ the grass Ghosts

Simon and Phil have hung a black strip of material in one smalloak tree for Julia. Phil and Simon are waiting for the audience –who have processed down to the perimeter path, along and back uptowards the house - between the two small oak trees. Simon isremoving his shoes and socks before entering the hay meadow tohang a white strip for Caroline on the other young oak.

Phil: (reading) “Matrimony is not merely a civil contract… Thebride and bridegroom are ministers of a Sacramental Act. … Whentwo persons mutually consent to live together… even if irregularly,before God only, Marriage is initiated. When that mutual consent isfollowed by sexual union, it is consummated… The religiousceremony is not an essential, and even concubinage, so that it besole and perpetual, is allowed by the Church as valid thoughirregular…”

(During the next passages Simon takes a water sprayer and sprayssmall clouds of water into the air. )

At last, Trevor had finished making the coffee and this is his story:

In 1885, a Mr and Mrs Rice registered at a hotel in Bristol and tooka room. Trevor was telling me this in the room up there, you seethe two windows facing us, the one on the right, put in byOswald… On the second day of Mr and Mrs Rice’s stay…

(Phil caresses the long grass.)

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… the landlady, Miss Niblett, challenged the couple, identifyingMr Rice as an unmarried clergyman and accusing him and ‘MrsRice’ of committing an immoral act under her roof. The couple leftabruptly…

Mr Rice was of course, Oswald Reichel or Ray-shell.

Mrs Rice was Caroline King, a servant for 13 years at the vicarageat Sparsholt, Reichel’s home. Miss Niblet wrote twice to Reichel,and then came personally to the village of Sparsholt, where localsgot to hear of her visit, a scandal ensued and the unsympatheticBishop of Oxford, forced Reichel to take Miss Niblett to court oncharges of blackmail. He lost. He resigned as vicar at Sparsholt.And a string of subsequent unsuccessful court cases left him, by1889, virtually bankrupt. He was saved by his sister, who hadinherited A la Ronde from their mother, and passed the house,against the wishes of its originators who had stipulated only female

occupation, to Oswald.

So, were Mr and Mrs Rice a Sacrament, anirregular, but valid outward sign of the Graceof God in a new church?

(Phil caresses the long grass. Simon takes thewhite material from the oak tree and attachesit to the symbolic tree.)

(reads) “…bodily pleasure is the earlier form,and likewise the ultimate source, of all pleasure... everything goodhas reference to the belly… we have no cause for rejecting grossand carnal pleasures if they can liberate (us) from the fear of thehighest powers, of death, and of suffering.”

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When Caroline said that Oswald had seduced her in Stratford-Upon-Avon, Oswald said that he had only taken her there to showher Shakespeare’s Tomb.

(Simon throws a small cloud of ashes in the air for the ghost ofJulia.)

In 1887, in the middle of all his disastrous court cases, Oswaldmarried Julia Ashenden. On the wedding certificate, Julia’s fatheris described as a “gentleman” and “of Brighton”; he was anitinerant shawl salesman from Willesden. A cover story is beingconstructed. Even Julia’s date of birth in the official handbook Ishowed you earlier is incorrect… Trevor was suspicious of that1842 birth date – he knew she died at Three Acres in 1951. Hadshe really been 109 years old? No, she was born in 1864; someonehad put an inaccurate birth date into the family tree, perhaps tohide the 24 year age gap between Oswald Ray-shell and thedressmaker Julia Ashenden.

(Simon takes the black material from the tree and attaches it to thesymbolical tree, then returns to the path and puts on his socks andshoes.)

Can a sacrament operate in camouflage?

When Oswald died he was buried in St John in the Wildernesschurchyard, without a headstone. Today, long grass – like the grasshere - grows over his unmarked grave.

(Phil caresses the grass.)

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When Julia died she was not buried with Oswald. Her body wastaken to Plymouth where it was cremated.

But is there another ghost here? At the final station, perhaps.

Phil and Simon head off up the path, up the haha steps, and to thegate by the side of the barn. Phil stands with his back to the gate.)

8/ glass passage (now gone) Oil the sacraments

(transubstantiation - material really changes)

(Phil hands out one piece of popcorn to each member of theaudience, supplying women members with a napkin.)

Phil: (reads) “Taste... the dominant sense – can be frequentlyoverpowering so that at times, in the act of eating (or drinking) ourother senses virtually cease to exist… So why on earth would wewant to eat at the movies?”

“Is it not possible that in the obsolete usages of solemn mass maybe found the ritual expression of the true Christian socialism whichit should be the object of us all to promote?”

“ …a higher… form of Catholicity… which can look beyond itsown narrow horizons and sink national particularities, and whichcan cultivate more deeply that one grace without which the tongueof men and angels will profit nothing.”

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(Simon begins to anoint the tree with oil. )

Phil: (reads) “But when they came to Jesus and saw that he wasdead already, they break not his legs; but one of the soldiers with aspear pierced his side, and forthwith came forth there out blood andwater.”

So, what is the story here?

Is it a fruity bit of scandal? Is it the tragedy of a young man with agenerous vision of the future, of grace, of a different kind ofEurope?

(Simon take the symbolic tree and carries it to the side of the barnfacing the entrance to the A la Ronde house.)

O, the reason the women have been given napkins is in line withRay-shell’s prohibitions of women touching the sacrament,entering the priesthood, singing in church, baptizing … and yet, aswith his qualification of irregularities, there often seems to beexceptional circumstances where prohibitions can be ignored.

But we wanted to get you in some sort of movie-watching mood –because you need the kind of sense of time that you get in moviesto understand Ray-shell’s radicalism – because he uses a better pastas a model for a better future…

(Simon begins his walks slowly into the house.)

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OK, we have almost completed the fourth part of the solemn mass,almost completed a figure of eight, and we are approaching theeighth station – after plinth, obelisk, garden, gate, tree, ha ha, field- now we come to glass –For this is where Oswald Ray-shell built a glass passage to join thebarn here, where I’ve read somewhere that, at times of storm andsnow, the sheep and lambs were kept, with the house. And we willend our performance by enacting the passage of an outward symbolof the Reverend Oswald Ray-shell into this House of Europe, fullof objects collected by the Parminter cousins on their EuropeanGrand Tour.

(All watch as Simon slowly moves across the gravel and enters thehouse.)

Phil: Thank you for coming – if there are any questions you havethen I’ll be happy to answer them, but you may be more interestedby the questions that the house will ask…

Thank you.

Actually that isn’t the real end… this is… (Phil fetches a glass andwine bottle (red wine) from the bushes and pours himself a glass ofwine) … you see, when I was trying to write the script for thiswalk, I got to this part and gave up. It was late at night and I camedownstairs and poured myself a glass of red wine and put on a dvd– something I thought was is in tune with the subject… ‘InlandEmpire’ directed by David Lynch – it’s about a wealthy actresswho gets a part in a Hollywood movie about a wealthy woman wholoses everything due to an affair – see the connection - and endsup on Skid Row being stabbed in the side – here. (Phil points tohis side.)

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I was once stabbed, but it was in the other side. (Points to the otherside.)

But as the film develops it begins to seem that the story of themovie within the movie – of the woman who ends up stabbed onSkid Row – is more real than the world of the wealthy actress –though I have to explain that by this time I was fading in and out ofsleep so some of this may be my dreams - anyway, eventually itturns out that the whole thing is the dream of a woman on SkidRow, who as she lies, stabbed, in the gutter, dreams of beingplayed in a movie by a wealthy actress, and then the shot pullsback and Skid Row is, itself, a film set… and that was the momentI woke up and I found I’d poured red wine all down my side.

(Phil pours the red wine down the side of his shirt.)

And that is the end.