without asking anyone

Welcome to the obligatory, epically overlong post of the first-time blogger.

On to its occasion.

I didn't pick up anything by Ayn Rand for years because all I knew of her writing were black-and-white flyers, xeroxed and posted intermittently down the halls of my high school, trumpeting scholarship money ($1000) for the best essay that could be had on the subject of Atlas Shrugged.

That my best friend made it through The Fountainhead our senior year and loved it couldn't quite wash white the scarlet shame of prostituting one's capacity for critical thought toward books I wouldn't have heard of but for the money attached.

Now, safely out of college, I wish I had been a little less discriminating in throwing my hat out for $1000 scholarship offers -- but you can't change the past; you can only get a job and work on paying it off. Two jobs, if you pick an industry where no one can afford to hire anyone full-time. That's the current Florida tourism industry for you. I pick up shifts as a server in one restaurant, and a bartender in another.

In the middle of October I took a snowball full in the face from another bartender's Oasis machine. (An Oasis is basically a blender, but of an intimidatingly efficient variety as far as its ability to render ice cubes to icy pulp.) The conversation that ensued traversed the obvious (he was bored) and meandered among thoughts of things he would rather be doing, to the inclusion of re-reading The Fountainhead.

It was on this recommendation that I finally took it out from the public library, and for the first hundred pages couldn't put it down. Now I've made it all the way through the end of Part Two, and find my attention captive to the great Howard Roark's response to the bewildered sculptor Steve Mallory. Mallory asks, "What do you want me to work on, Howard?" and Roark replies, "I want you to work without asking anyone what he wants you to work on."

I don't think it will be of any use to anyone trying to structure an essay on Atlas Shrugged worth $1000 if I point out one thing glaringly obvious about The Fountainhead: in this world, the heroes don't bow to tradition. They don't worship the forms collectively held to be beautiful over centuries past, and they don't derive self-worth from collective approval in the present. They don't care what others think of them or their art at all. So Roark's comment to Mallory is a critical instance of the invitation some of us need to rediscover our integrity.

In Rand's universe, at least.

But as a reader, I've joined myself to that universe, at least for the last few weeks, and likely the next few, as I negotiate her world by way of what my own has taught me, and perhaps learn the better or worse to negotiate my own world by way of what hers (in turn) is teaching me. And the question of the hour, is what will Mallory produce, without any external reference to what others would commission him to produce.

The question of the hour, is what I would be writing if I had no audience and no stage in mind to write for.

Before you try to get ahead of me, the preceding blog is not my answer.

I do have an audience to write for, and a stage. Ten months from now a religiously-themed convention will occur with or without my involvement, but the powers behind it have asked me to be involved by writing them a play. They've given me almost as free a reign as Roark had for the Stoddard temple, and I guess my fear is that even the foundations will draw a similarly scandalized disapproval.

Here are the first few lines.

(Darkness)

(We hear the voice of a MINISTER, far away.)

MINISTER: We make our beginning in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

PEOPLE (louder; we are in their midst): Amen.

MINISTER (still far away): If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

(sound of kneelers unfolding and PEOPLE shifting position for general confession)

(We hear the hushed voice of JONO, closer than the MINISTER, and getting louder as he makes his way past various PEOPLE, whose surprise and necessary movement in turn becomes audible.)

JONO: Sorry. (Oh!) Pardon me. I'm so sorry. (Pause. Now he is right beside us.) Ahem. (Pause. Hisses:) MALLORY.

MALLORY (hisses back, utterly foiled in her plot of ignoring JONO): WHAT.

JONO: Shhhh! I'm just wondering if you would be able to help with communion later in the service.

MALLORY: ...Are you serious?

JONO: Wish I weren't, but we're short an acolyte. Knew I could count on you.

MALLORY: Jono! You...

JONO (fading): Excuse me again. Ah! Forgive me, dearest...

(At once:)

MALLORY: God.
MINISTER: Most merciful God,

PEOPLE: I, a poor, miserable sinner...

(Fade out. Fade in the last strains of a postlude. JONO and MALLORY are taking off pectoral crosses/albs/cinctures in the sacristy.)

JONO: Thanks again for that.

MALLORY: Don't worry about it. Try to realize you're short an acolyte before confession next time, all right?

JONO: Always.

MALLORY: Jono? Did you hear me?

JONO: I'm having a thought is all.

MALLORY: Jono --

JONO: You know where the minister says, In the same way also after supper he took the cup -- blessed it -- gave it to them and said, "Drink ye all of it, for this is" -- I forget how the rest goes -- but do you think he's saying "Drink ye all of it" like, "Drink ye'all of it" or "Drink ye all of it," because I don't know --

MALLORY: Jono...

JONO: -- and it would be an easy enough thing to check, right? Either we get the "all" in English out of a Greek collective, second person plural, or as a modifier for "it", it being the wine --

MALLORY (firmly): Jono, shut up, please.

JONO: -- and I mean it would just be an interesting theological point either way, right? -- radical inclusion of all the disciples at the institution of the sacrament -- I wonder if Judas was there, do you think? -- or else a firm enough injunction against wasting the host to make you wish for the good old days of Pastor Schroeder; remember when he'd wrap up communion by just swigging the rest of the contents of the common cup?

MALLORY (breaking): Jono, I said shut it! Just shut it! What is with you today? Can you stop (words fail) being yourself, for one damned minute...

JONO (after a long pause): Yeah, mate, sure. Hey. How long have we known each other?

MALLORY (defeated; exasperated, aspirated sigh): Haaa... Junior high.

JONO: Sixth grade.

MALLORY: (bitterly) Sixth grade's junior high --

JONO: February of the sixth grade, Liberty James's twelfth birthday party. Dance party, remember? We didn't know each other but we were both invited, and I had the misfortune to be wearing that awful pair of khaki pants that bunched impressively at the zipper whenever I sat down. And the girls were all making fun of me, right, and you were right there, lost in thought or something, however you get, and they said, "Look, Mallory, Jono has an erec -- "

MALLORY: There are eight state laws that prevent you from saying that word within a hundred feet of the consecrated host.

JONO: Liar. Anyway, I knew you'd remember.

MALLORY: (sighs) Yeah, I remember. I said,

JONO and MALLORY: "Sure, that happens to me all the time."

JONO: Best friends ever since. You didn't even stand a chance. And how long have I been like this? (No immediate response.) How long have I been myself, as you...so delicately put it? (Again, no reply from MALLORY.) The whole time, kid. The whole time. (Settles in for the story.) So you tell me. What's with you today?




Still to come: Mallory's answer.