On Monday evening, we gathered a group of people to have a discussion around some of the ideas that Ralph Lemon is exploring in his new work How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere?, premiering and touring this fall.

Joined by Ralph and dramaturg Katherine Profeta (who Ralph refers to as his “advocate for the audience” in his process) we read and talked about a couple short stories which are but two parts of the amalgamation of elements floating around the work: The Hare in the Moon (as mentioned in Jorge Luis Borges The Book of Imaginary Beings) and the Uncle Remus stories The Wonderful Tar Baby Story and How Mr. Rabbit Outwitted Mr. Fox.

Like any good conversation, we ended up with more questions than answers.

Each of the stories features a rabbit whose body is “thrown”—one into the fire to gain enlightenment, and one into the briar patch for survival. So, is there a way to understand them as the same rabbit—the striving for survival the same as that toward enlightenment? Can the clever trickster be as wise as the selfless Buddhist?

The Hare’s act of giving his body to feed a supplicant is one of generosity. But it is done for spiritual reward. Does the fact that there is reward somehow lessen the act of generosity? Is enlightenment the same as generosity? Is Brer Rabbit just as enlightened as the Hare? Are the Uncle Remus stories more understandable by us, coming from a Western, and particularly American perspective—for us is struggle a crucial element of the quest for enlightenment?

The ideas of enlightenment, grace, transcendence are present throughout How Can You Stay…,  but a key question is how do explore them through the body when it is impossible to achieve them physically? How can you DO something which pushes the body in that direction? How do you perform without “being” in the body?

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From Ralph Lemon:

My dear and evanescent art partner, Walter Carter, passed away recently in Bentonia, Mississippi, at 102! He just got too old, and too beautiful, I guess.

The last time I saw him he told me it would be the last time, but he said that it would be the last time every time we parted in these last few years. Of course I didn’t believe it.

I’m terribly sad but also feel like celebrating, what an extraordinary, fearless and present life it certainly was.

May we all have such a life, and such play.

R

Even though Walter’s education ended after the completion of the fourth grade, he possessed a wealth of knowledge. He was literally a Jack of all Trades. He worked as a sharecropper, planting and picking cotton, corn, potatoes. He also worked as a carpenter and in a sawmill. The job he performed the longest was planting cedar trees. In the last years of his life he was a vital artistic collaborator with Ralph Lemon.

Ralph was introduced to Walter in 2002 by Jimmy (Duck) Holmes, owner of the Blue Front Cafe in Bentonia, Mississippi, one of the few remaining “juke joints” in the Delta. In their first meeting, Ralph asked Walter about local blues musicians, such as Skip James and Jack Owens. After reminiscing about some dances, Walter demonstrated steps he had not done since he was teenager:

Standing still for a few seconds, outside of remembering, and then he starts to move, mostly his legs, sliding, without bending any limbs, announcing and then moving from step to step. First the one-step, then the two-step, then the slow drag. His body thin as a rail and light, stiff, shinning.  Arms rounded. Hat tilted to the side. His cowboy boots scratching out music on the sandy concrete floor, surprising himself. Then he stops, places his hands on his chest, coughing, smiling, a revelation.

Since then, Ralph has visited Walter twice a year, creating an art exchange in his house, his backyard, along some nearby country road. A conversation with the living reality of ordinary human existence—a day’s work, ritual, repetition (digging, greasing, moving, breaking, dancing, waiting).

-Walter, what do you think about this stuff we’ve been doing…does it mean anything to you?

-I don’t think nothin’ about it. Ain’t never done it before, and won’t do it again after you leave, and surely won’t do it once I’m dead. So what’s to understand? I know I like it.

-You like it, then does that mean it’s important?

-I’m 99, ain’t nothin’ important to me. And then he laughed.

-But you’re alive, that’s important, isn’t it?

-Yeah, that’s a fact. Living is important, but I’m living ‘cause I’m living, but know soon I won’t be. That’s the privilege of an old man like me. I know what’s comin’ and in the meantime I’m enjoying myself.

What a full and beautiful life.

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Artists work from a wide variety of sources when creating a work. The cast of Ralph Lemon’s How Can You Stay In The House All Day and Not Go Anywhere has a reading list:

Ways of Dying: A Novel by Zakes Mda

The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories:  China From the Bottom Up
by  Liao Yiwu

Crying: A Natural and Cultural History of Tears by Tom Lutz

The Mourner’s Dance: What We Do When People Die by Katherine Ashenburg

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