We've done a lot of work on the flower scene since you posted your thoughts on Ophelia, Jorge, but here are some musings in the wake of our discussions and experiments:
Can this speech eulogize love (a positive thing in itself, the pure definition described in the "one pebble" speech) while at the same time mourning the way people have treated it? I think the negative things that have come out of it, exemplified in the "this is why a man" smashing scene, should certainly take precedence over the glowing, dreamy thoughts that may give way to those negative things. Still, I think it's useful to remember that, as you've pointed out, this is the sort of bad news, or death sentence, that can't be delivered too harshly, not without causing more smashing, more pain. To couples still in the fluff zone, still having their first picnic and "I cherish you" moments, the realization that sooner or later destruction will come is not exactly an easy one to take. The flowers can act as consolation - not to dumb the truth down, not to make it better, but just to show that what's dying is a beautiful thing, not a scary thing in itself. I am trying to tell this truth as gently as I can; I don't want to yank the growing weeds out of the ground but instead carefully make them aware of the ruin they're about to cause.
Selling flowers is one of the ways that I relate to the world. Just as making sure that Harold enjoys the tart earlier in the play gives me a boost, a sense of having done something productive, a reason to move on to my next task, giving people a nice bouquet helps me feel connected to those around me. In this case, my routine (giving flowers, finding those precious little moments to share with others) provides me with a context in which to place this darker news - the gravity of which I wouldn't usually welcome into my life. I need somewhere to hand off the things I've found out following the rejection, the disaster, and the recovery I've just gone through, and I need that handing off to fit into my personality. I am not going to scream at people or yell at them or force my warning upon them; I'm not going to outwardly condemn them or persecute them. I am going to walk up to them, carefully, knowing that they are on the other side, foreign. They're aliens or kittens, to use Mark's analogies. This is going to be as difficult for them as it has been for me.
This is not about delivering bad news to a specific couple or letting a certain person know about impending doom. It's about coming to terms with something painful, taking it in, seeing people who are still back where I was, before I knew the pain, and taking the opportunity to give them this news, to let them get out, to tell them what's to come, what not to do, what it's too late to avoid doing. The flowers give me a medium I'm used to as well as a way to establish the trust of my listeners before telling them what I have to say. Flowers are not immediately threatening; only when you see the destruction inherent even in them, even in the pretty and innocent things (even a child bears marks of uprooting, chopping, ruin), do you see the funeral going on everywhere.
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2 comments:
I'm sorry I didn't respond to this post any earlier. I really enjoyed what you had to say about the scene. It demonstrates that you've given it a lot of thought and truly know what your character is going through.
On another note: I really liked the title analogy of "flowers as pacifiers" considering that you are handing out babies and flowers with baby heads. Pacifiers...get it? Were you thinking of that when you wrote the title?
Yes, the pun was intended, but I'm glad you picked up on it. :) The flowers replace the babies' heads, effectively silencing them, and yet they might also amplify a message the babies themselves represent but can't deliver. Childlike innocence (like your next post discusses) is both complicated and clarified by the flower-heads. Similarly, toward the end of the play, the baby heads lend the sunflowers a sense of time, burden, weight, death - all things that the flowers themselves, though cut and fallen, wouldn't necessarily convey.
Babies and flowers both allude, I think, to peace as well as chaos, to innocence as well as pain. By putting them together, we don't get rid of the extremes (positive/negative, good/bad) but rather point them out, making clear that, at least in this world, you can't have one without the other. You can't calm and comfort the aliens without also giving them bad news; you can't fall in love without messing it up.
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