Thinking about my message in a bottle a few days ago, got me thinking of these words by Paul Celan – musing on his challenging poems this morning, but more of that in the near future.

“The poem can, as a manifestation of language and consequently in its essence dialogic, be a message in a bottle, sent in the – certainly not always hopeful – belief that somewhere and sometime it could be washed on land, on heartland perhaps. Poems are on the way also in this manner, they move towards something. Towards what? Towards something that stands open, something that can be occupied, towards a responsive “you” perhaps, towards a responsive reality.”

(Paul Celan in a speech acknowledging a poetry medal awarded him by the city of Bremen: poetry as a kind of precarious conversation or message).

I am no poet. All I have is my ‘cervus fugitivus,’ my ever present fugitive stag! My hope is that my stag will also encounter a genuine open – towards (that) something that stands open … towards a responsive “you” perhaps, towards a responsive reality.

I Like these words by Andre Breton – “We are still living under the reign of logic … But in this day and age logical methods are applicable only to solving problems of secondary interest … Under the pretence of civilization and progress, we have managed to banish from the mind everything that may rightly or wrongly be termed superstition, or fancy; forbidden is any kind of search for truth which is not in conformance with accepted practices” –  André Breton in the 1924 Manifesto of Surrealism.

The challenge facing the director of ‘The Fugitive Stag’ will be to creatively fashion the mythical, and, maybe in one or two instances, ‘moments’ bordering on the the surreal.

Surrealism – “to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind by the irrational juxtaposition of images“