In My Nation

Not long after joining the project, Horner arrived one evening for rehearsal at 848 crackling with energy. Hannah started the session by having everyone sit around a small wooden table in the pleasant evening light of the small kitchen in the back room. She told them to close their eyes. Horner announced his intentions by twisting his body around to sit upside-down in the chair, with his legs dangling above the table. A smile played across Hannah’s face, but these antics were not too distracting, so she said nothing. The group began with “toning,” and immediately Horner felt alive and woven into the fabric of sounds the others were making. He grudgingly righted himself as, still seated in a circle, keeping their eyes closed, one of the group started off humming a tone and then everyone else gradually joined in, adding to the tone by harmonizing with it, or sometimes deliberately breaking the harmony.

Next, they were directed to play a game in which everyone was supposed to be from a different country. They took turns describing what their particular country was like. When the exchange came around to Horner — sitting upright now in his seat — he erupted in a booming voice, “IN MY NATION…” and listed off a few made-up customs and imaginary foods. From that point on, all of the others began their descriptions with the same phrase.

The group went around and around, until it grew dark outside and they could barely see one another in the dimming light. Horner’s mind was bursting with things to say, and he eagerly riffed off every detail or tidbit that emerged from the others. Hannah said, “In my nation, sometimes I go weeks without seeing another person.” Almost immediately, Horner replied, “In my nation, sometimes I go weeks without seeing myself.”

It went on like that. Everything was topsy-turvy, all rules of logic and laws of nature tossed out the window. Mirrors were made of marshmallow. Hands waved hello from open graves. Horner’s mind felt freer than he could ever remember it feeling, as though it were pure improvisational dancing in his head, no inhibitions, nothing but pure play.  His whole being swelled with an overwhelming sense of joy at finally having a chance to contribute to the project in a realm he was actually good at — words and words alone — a realm in which, he felt, he enjoyed a greater sense of facility than the dancers, however brilliant and nimble they might be.

Hannah turned on the lights and the game changed.

Still sitting at the table, still from different countries; yet now they practiced diplomacy. There had been some sort of imaginary dispute. Ashley was from the Land of the Squares and Rachel was from the Land of the Circles. They tried to work out a compromise. Eventually, the others — Kyle, Jamie, and Horner, along with Hannah — were brought in to help hammer out an agreement. The problem was, they didn’t speak the same language, or any language at all. They buzzed and snorted, gestured and shook heads.  It dissolved into pandemonium.

And then it happened, with Hannah picking up on threads from their play and nudging them along, that they each spontaneously invented their own language and tried to communicate with one another in earnest — poignantly, impossibly — using grunts, beeps, whistles, laughter, silence, even jumping up from their seats and chasing each other around the table. Jamie, Hannah, and Rachel struck upon the idea of exchanging objects, establishing a sort of give-and-take. Horner got in on this, grabbing a banana out of the bowl on the table. Jamie began taking her shirt off and Horner followed suit, stripping off his clothes with the idea of giving them all away. Hannah and Jamie disrobed as well, but stopped short of total nudity, sitting in their underwear.

By that time, Horner was off in a different world, beyond even the parameters of the game. He could hardly understand anything he saw or heard or sensed. It was an inkling of pure ecstatic bliss, a manic episode unlike anything he’d ever experienced. He ended up perched on a window ledge, wearing nothing but Jamie’s bra draped over his groin. It all came crashing down, literally, when Horner attempted to leap from the ledge onto the plastic chair from which he’d ascended, instead tumbling onto the floor and nearly destroying Hannah’s video camera. Everyone stopped what they were doing and rushed over to see if he was all right.

After that, rehearsal took on a more serious tone. They worked on dance “dialogues,” in which they were each allowed to say only one word, which they chose spontaneously. Horner’s was “walrus.” Rachel’s was “elbow.” Jamie’s was “student.” Kyle and Jamie were the first to go.

Kyle pretended to be sleepy, while Jamie was a tourist looking for directions. She roused him awake and he went through the hurried motions of giving directions, only they were delivered in the form of a dance. It was as though he were showing her how to move through space in this particular world. Eventually, she got so good at it, watching and mimicking him, that she grew drowsy and fell asleep; Kyle caught on to this hint, and their roles reversed, with him acting lost and bewildered, trying to wake her up and ask for directions.

Horner thought it was beautiful.

Then it was his and Rachel’s turn. She was visiting his country. She tried to communicate all of her needs and desires with her one word, “elbow,” less adequate even than the flimsy chair on which he’d attempted to land. Now if her word had been “belly-button,” or “armpit,” some more suggestive or connotative body part, he would have had something more substantial to work with. This was the skewed direction in which his mind was going. In truth, his brain had flown far past the point at which it was easy to get through to him at all, and Rachel grew increasingly frustrated. At last, he understood she was trying to say she was hungry. He nodded knowingly and rushed close to her, rubbing a book against his rump and offering it to her as sustenance. Flustered at this incongruous gesture, she stomped away.

But it was only a preview of the serious misunderstanding to come.

In a way, the enterprise was doomed from the start. Where Horner had felt so wild and free upon breaking into the world of language at the beginning of rehearsal, he was now confined to one measly word. When it was Horner’s turn to visit Rachel’s world, he took on the demeanor of an anxious kid trying to borrow money for a trip to the fair; Rachel couldn’t help but become his scolding, tight-fisted aunt.

He stalked after her, swaggering, one arm shoved into his shirt. Rachel huddled, purse-lipped, on a chair. He cajoled, he pleaded — she shook her head no and waved him away. Horner wanted to dance and fly, but he was anchored to the ground by her denials. They came to such an impasse that Jamie was sent in as an emissary to calm the waters between them. Together the two became playful, devilish schoolkids, Jamie and Horner sitting, in turn, on Rachel’s lap, tickling her. Exhausted by it all, Horner collapsed dramatically on the floor. Rachel leaned over him, pressing her hands into his chest.

Horner waved her off in mock disgust, then resurrected himself and began the pursuit anew. Rachel grew more frustrated than ever. She was trying to tell him something, but he was oblivious, too consumed by the exaggerated emotions of his role . He cornered her with entreaties, and she whirled on him, breaking down in tears, breaking the laws of the game itself: “I already gave you the money.” Apparently, this had been the meaning of her gesture in bending over him as he’d lain prone on the floor, but he’d utterly failed to catch it.

The room was electric. Everyone stood back in shock. There had been a total failure to communicate, and yet they had arrived at some kind of moment of truth. Something real had happened.

After a moment, Hannah called an end to the rehearsal for the evening.

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