Lyrics

Damn everything but the circus! (To himself) And here am I, patiently squeezing fourdimensional ideas into a twodimensional stage, when all of me that's anyone or anything is in the top of a circustent.... (A pause) ME: I didn't imagine you were leading a double life—and right under my nose, too HIM (Unhearing, proceeds contemptuously): The average "painter" "sculptor" "poet" "composer" "playwright" is a person who cannot leap through a hoop from the back of a galloping horse, make people laugh with a clown's mouth, orchestrate twenty lions ME: Indeed HIM (To her): But imagine a human being who balances three chairs, one on top of another, on a wire, eighty feet in air with no net underneath, and then climbs into the top chair, sits down, and begins to swing.... ME (Shudders): I'm glad I never saw that—makes me dizzy just to think of it HIM (Quietly): I never saw that either ME: Because nobody can do it HIM: Because I am that. But in another way, it's all I ever see ME: What is? HIM (Pacing up and down): This: I feel only one thing, I have only one conviction; it sits on three chairs in Heaven. Sometimes I look at it, with terror: it is such a perfect acrobat! The three chairs are three facts—it will quickly kick them out from under itself and will stand on air; and in that moment (because everyone will be disappointed) everyone will applaud. Meanwhile, some thousands of miles over everyone's head, over a billion empty faces, it rocks carefully and smilingly on three things, on three facts, on: I am an Artist, I am a Man, I am a Failure—it rocks and it swings and it smiles and it does not collapse tumble or die because it pays no attention to anything except itself. (Passionately) I feel, I am aware—every minute, every instant, I watch this trick, I am this trick, I sway—selfish and smiling and careful—above all the people. (To himself) And always I am repeating a simple and dark and little formula...always myself mutters and remutters a trivial colourless microscopic idiom—I breathe, and I swing; and I whisper: "An artist, a man, a failure, MUST PROCEED." ME (Timidly, after a short pause): This thing or person who is you, who does not pay any attention to anyone else, it will stand on air? HIM: On air. Above the faces, lives, screams—suddenly. Easily: alone ME: How about the chairs? HIM: The chairs will all fall by themselves down from the wire and be caught by anybody, by nobody; by somebody whom I don't see and who doesn't see me: perhaps by everybody ME: Maybe yourself—you, away up ever so high—will hear me applaud? HIM (Looking straight at her, smiles seriously): I shall see your eyes. I shall hear your heart move ME: Because I shall not be disappointed, like the others