Writing Marcellus Hale

The process of writing this play has to be like hydraulic fracturing.  I’m drilling down in myself, the issue, the people's pain as a result of the actions taken on the issue.  I am making explosions which I hope will release a natural resource of words.  The difference is that I want to release spirit not gas, and I don’t need to turn that spirit into commercial purposes.  I'm looking for the spirit of goodness in people, not gas.  Goodness in people, goodness in land, goodness in self, goodness in life.  Human beings "run" on the spirit of wanting to do good, that's the animus that activates the body.  

The spirit can be spirits as ghosts from the land or... 

the spirit can be the entrepreneurial spirit. A person who is animated by the entrepreneurial spirit loves that gas fuels machines and produces energy that makes things work.  His spirit is expressed through the machines that are activated by gas and he is energized by that activity.  But for others, spirit comes from the land.  That spirit connects them to country, place, home, all the physical embodiment of what nurtures and sustains one’s self.  

Nature.  Machines.  The more we are dependent on spiritual connection to anything through energized technical devices fueled by gas, the harder it is to even know what it is to be connected to what is natural beyond our control and to achieve harmony with it.  This blog, for example.  Ironic. 

This blog depends on some gas energy to power it, as does using paper to record ideas.  But I am not trying to exploit nature for monetary gain.  This blog reflects my effort to connect to what is natural beyond my control by taking me out and away from how I know my world by engaging me in the world that impacts my life.  The blog is not nature and the people who have been given dominion over it.  It's a way to engage in the responsible actions of a citizen who participates in the creating of a just dominion in harmony with the natural domain.   

Brain flash. Story. Character. Dialogue clips. Nephews and army buddies.  Marcellus Hale.  A young man back from the Mideastern wars returning to his small town in Upstate.  Pressures on him about what he’s going to do.  His Dad owns a farm that’s not making it.  His mother is part native-American descended from the Lenape people. 

Father says to Mother: Signing a piece of paper!  That’s all it is!  A paper!  You go too deep!  It’s just a letter size piece and it comes back to us in a little check.  And you make it like it's going to the dentist drilling in my teeth that says go deep and feel that pain rack your body to get the decay.  This is not decay.  This is honey.  We can live on the land.  Sleep in the morning.  Lie in the hammock in the sun.  But you just want to go deeper and deeper until we’re dead and as poor as dirt grinding our teeth in the soil!