The Mummery Book
— part 4
"If Dylan Thomas and Buddha shared a soul, The Mummery Book is what I would expect from such a joining."
— Robert Boldman
Author, Poet
You will find yourself deeply moved — and challenged — by the way Adi Da Samraj uses language throughout the enactment. Scenes involving Raymond and his beloved Quandra, for example, are exquisite. Here the chorus addresses Raymond:
Your feeling-heart
must take Her Open—
like recessions
of the Sea
And She will trace
Your Sun-lit pain-of-body,
down—
in the sky-blue ointment
of Her Moon-cool hands.
And She will Speak
Her Love to You—
and Call You Wonderful.
You Are the One
That Sounds Her anklet jewel,
in the sand.
At other times, as in the passage from the barber shop scene quoted earlier, the script crackles with energy. Often the language flows with such a concentration of insight, paradox, and visionary imagery that it is, deliberately, hard for the thinking mind to follow — at which point you "let go" and fall into the perceptual mind with a different kind of understanding, allowing the action to play in the theatre of your intuition.
An Orphic Feast
The depth and richness of the enactment comes not just from the action and script.
In scene after scene, the entire theatre is bathed in stunning color and black-and-white images, over 700 in all, projected onto 12 large screens around the room and sometimes on the actors themselves.
These are not just any images. They are drawn from a compilation of amazing artistic works created by the author, Adi Da Samraj, who is also an internationally-acclaimed visual artist.
The exhibition of His artwork at this year's Venice Biennale quickly became a must-see event. Adi Da's art is designed to allow you to participate in the true nature of reality through the aesthetic experience of beauty.
Because all of Adi Da's images reflect this core intent, they naturally correlate with the action of The Mummery Book, and they are carefully selected, scene by scene, to add another striking visual dimension.
(To read Adi da's own writings on the unique purpose and nature of His artistic work, you may want to purchase the collection of His essays entitled Transcendental Realism: The Image-Art of egoless Coincidence With Reality Itself and Aesthetic Ecstasy. Click on the preceding link to purchase this collection from the Dawn Horse Press.)
Finally, a wide range of instrumental and choral music — including some original work composed specifically for this enactment — adds further to the rich sensory environment, working in the same manner as the projected image-art to reinforce or play against the shifting moods and content of the narrative.
Next: A Profound Transformation
