Faux Fu

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Del Close -- Closer Than You Think

So one idea of the universe: God is (for instance) Del Close, an obsessive, drug-dabbling, comic genius, who spends part of his existence wandering around in a fog, not quite knowing how to occupy himself, until, late in life, he hits upon the idea of Long-Form Improvisation, which he dubs, "The Harold." No one quite knows why it's called the Harold, it just is. So, Del (God) comes up with a loose set of rules (keep the game moving forward, listen to your co-collaborators, say yes, be open to where the action goes) and puts it into motion. Generations of creatures (microbes, ameobas, humans, planets, stars, galaxies, etc.) 'play the game,' and it evolves and morphs into strange, funny and creepy manifestations. Long-Form Improvisation (games and recurring scenes) evolves over years, decades, centuries -- billions and billions of centuries. Del (God) is long gone, but his skull resides in a rarefied realm (the Goodman Theater) and his hollow-eyed, teeth-baring, skeletal grin, kind of hovers over all creation. Humanity looks to Del for an explanation, but none is forthcoming. (He has created the form, we are responsible for the content). Acolytes come and look at the skull, they talk to it, they ask it questions, they curse, they cry, they pray, they laugh. The skull is silent. It says everything and nothing. "The Harold," (evolution) continues, no one knows where it's going, but it seems to be indomitable, insatiable, resiliant, (intelligble?). Plus, it's funny. Not in just a purely human sense, but in a much bigger, universal sense. There are those who begin to speculate that the Big Bang, was not some great explosion, no, it was one Big Belly Laugh (was it Del's belly laugh or was it a laugh without a belly or a laugher?)! Oh, the mystery of the Harold!

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