Blasphemy?

Ben Travers gave us tickets to his new play, and… I like the guy, but there’s something really wrong with him. It was terrible - really, really objectively terrible. I thought I got what he was trying to do in terms of production design, with having the different periods and settings and what not all jumbled up, but…
 
It really seemed like a ritual, and when I realized that it made me feel dizzy and like I was going to throw up. It involved the symbol from our basement, the weird “yellow sign” thing. Shaw and Ann and I all saw different things at one point in the play - and not just different things on stage; I remember this really rude couple in front of us talking and then getting up and leaving, and they swear it didn’t happen. It was as if there were a whole bunch of plays - from different times and places, even - that were all happening at the same time and overlapping.
 
Like that girl that we went to see at Bedlam. Talking with all those different accents… and she wasn’t even an actress or anything. It was like different people, broken up and patched together. And she had read the play too...
 
It reminds me of those awful paintings - I think I wrote about them before? That’s what I thought was going on with the design at the start of the play, that it was a deliberate juxtaposition, that they were saying “this could happen anywhere” by jumbling up the times and places that the different costumes and set pieces and whatnot were from. Tom saying about how it’s supposed to bother you, the surrealist paintings. Well, if that was Travers’ aim he sure hit the mark.
 
The thing is, after there was a huge row - a riot, more like. I mean, we were all a bit shaken up, but there were people who were so upset, they just lost it and started attacking each other. The play did that. I know it did. It made people so afraid, so panicked, that they were hurting other people. Art is powerful, I know that. But…. this is just wrong.
 
And now there’s some big shot director at the Old Vic looking to get a copy of the play - the original one, that Travers’ version was based on. And sure, we could probably get it for him. The thing is….. I really don’t think we should. I know, I know - Shaw would go completely off his head and probably Ann too at how much money we’d be giving up. But there’s got to be a reason it’s so hard to find. Yeah, censorship, I know. But….it’s hard to get rid of something printed that completely. The last time it was performed, people burned the theater and salted the earth. I’ve seen the newspapers.
 
And of course there’s an easy answer to that, right? Just do a little of my own creative magic and whip up a completely authentic looking version. And that would be great - I’d love to work on something like that, and I’d love to soak some rich producer even more. Except… I know, as soon as I see this written down in front of me I’m going to think it’s complete rubbish. But…there’s this rumor going around. There’s a book Jackie’s looking for a copy of, the Necronomicon, a specific edition - the Dee (as in John)-Endicott (?) edition. But there’s a story that’s been going ‘round about it, about how the one that’s supposedly in circulation right now was created by a master forger - still haven’t heard a name, but I haven’t dug that much on it up until now. It was a forgery….until it wasn’t. Something about the weird magic in the book itself made it start to change. What Travers did, that was just based on what he remembered of the French play. I could make a forgery, change things around so it wasn’t the same as the original….and if the rumor about that other book is right, it could become the real thing. Not to mention I’d have to read it, or at least some of it, right? And someone would have to translate it out of French to read to me, and translation… that involves some serious, deep investment with the text. Can I ask someone to do that, after seeing what it did to that poor girl at Bedlam?
 
I mean, that part would be pretty great. I just… don’t want it to hurt other people. And I don’t know if I could make it different enough to prevent it from doing that. Wow, that absolutely does sound daft when I look at it written down.
 
Things do change between the idea and the page though, don’t they? I sat down and I was going to write about how art doesn’t have to be “original” to be brilliant after I had a tiff with Ann. And this is what came out.
 
So that’s the thing with keeping a journal - you can go back and see what you were thinking before. And reading what I wrote last summer, that whole thing about art and truth…? I’m sure there’s more I need to think through there, but… the whole thing just makes me queasy. Like this is a deliberate perversion of power. A…. almost like a blasphemy. That’s not the right word, but there aren’t words for this. I don’t feel like I can in good conscience bring another copy of this into existence. If I was positive I could make a fake version then that would solve all the problems, but…the idea that a magical text can start off fake and become real is outside of anything I’ve ever had to think about before. I mean...it doesn’t seem like that should be possible. But Von Kant’s “dog” shouldn’t be possible either, and it was very, very real.
 
I’m going to have to think about this. I don’t want to go against the interests of the store - or my friends. But this is something that can get other people hurt. It’s taking something that has the potential to be beautiful and wonderful and making it twisted and wrong. How can I be a part of spreading that to more people?