Northern New England Review
Welcome to the website of The Northern New England Review. The NNER is a semi-annual literary magazine that publishes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction by talented writers living in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.
The magazine is edited, designed, printed, bound, distributed, and publicized entirely by students of the Editing and Publishing class and the Graphic Production II class at Franklin Pierce College in Rindge, New Hampshire.
The NNER seeks to encourage writing and the arts in northern New England by highlighting the work of talented regional authors and holding semi-annual reading events for charity.
The NNER is distributed to over 500 libraries, writers, and readers in the region. A limited number of free subscriptions are available.
Unsolicited submissions of poetry, short stories, and creative nonfiction are welcome. Submissions are not returnable; contributors should not send originals.Maximum length is 1,500 words.A word count should be present on all submissions.Authors should send no more than four pieces total per submission period.
Contributors should live in or have strong ties to Maine, Vermont, or New Hampshire. The editorial board reviews and selects submissions only between September 1 and November 30 of each year. Authors should include a short biography.
We are proud to present the following piece by Robert Lawson, available exclusively on the NNER website. We hope that you enjoy this selection.
Robert Lawson
Occam's Razor was created at the suggestion of performance artist Theresa Reeves, and was performed by her in
December 1995 at Dance Theatre Workshop in New York City.It was previously produced by the New England Actor's
Theatre of New Haven in April, 1995.
Text is performed by one woman. The setting is neutral. It is important that the performance be vigorously physical one, the
manipulations of the black board and rapid sketching as much as integral element as the text.
PERFORMER Okay. . .good
[She strides back to the board.]
Good good good good good.
[She starts drawing again, this time dotted lines, like the lines on a side of beef for butchering. When she is done with his effort, again she strides away from the board to another position, pivots and looks at it; almost immediately she nods her head, starting to really feel her confidence building.]
Oh excellent. This is...absolutely.
[She strides back to the board.]
Good good good good good. . .
[She grabs the chalkboard, moves it in a complex pattern around the stage, changing direction as if the wheels were stuck in one direction, man-handling the board until it is situated closer to the audience. She stops, looks out at the audience; nudges it one way then another to make sure everyone can see what she has drawn. Then :]
Can you do this? I mean what've we really got here but a simple diagrammatic schemata of the human brain, of a slice, a cross-section of the human mind - may I call it that? Do you mind if I identify this abstract as a cross-section of the human mind? Do you mind? If I were to ask you to stare at this simple line drawing for five minutes, could you start to imagine within the confines of these chalky lines the limitless potential of the human mind? Within these lines, this chalk, these...
[She is captivated by the piece of chalk she is waving around.]
...chalk, this compressed essence of a multitude of bones of innumerable critters dead dead dead for a myriad of years - myriad. May I use that word? Myriad? A host of years, a throng of... aeons. A multitude of the dead...
[She has lapsed into a revere. She breathes a deep breath, looks up at the chalkboard, sighs. Her gaze drifts out into the audience, she looks at someone particular.]
You look... so... familiar. . .
[She clicks back in]
But I digress. And yet my question remains : can you - but you're asking me 'what?' - can I do what? Would you please just pause a moment? Could you please just hold on to your gol ding horses for the confines of a second?
[She turns to the board and writes 'Bill' in one of the dotted line areas.]
I never liked Bill. I mean, I loved Bill, or rather, I loved him as much as my mind would allow me to. My heart, by that point in time, had a sort of coppery taste to it - not quite brass, not quite iron, still a little pliable, but still and all, you might say kind of... impermeable. Non-conducive. I blame most of that on him, I mean another him, but... (she smiles) tune in at 11:
No, I found a place for Bill, a comfortable, defined area within the territory incognita of the medulla oblongata that seemed, well, rather cozy for a man of Bill's largess. But Bill, well, he didn't seem too happy with that particular arena within which I had incubated him, and he started to ooze into other areas -
[She draws arrows into other dotted parts of the brain.]
Into dreams mostly was where he violated the code, and that's a toughy 'cause you know, you really feel out of control, sometimes, when you're dreaming - does that happen to you? Is that the most irritating thing or what? Jesus, I love sleeping but I hate losing control of my dreaming, but anyway, Bill, started, as I said oozing into my dreaming, and then, worst of all -
[another arrow]
- Bill started leaking into my memories, and I am not speaking here of the short term, I am talking long haul memories, the ones that find a linkage point and lock on only to be grudgingly dredged up one grim day, or more than likely to reappear, uninvited, excited by some unforeseeable stimulant like an odor or a taste or a deja vu, and that, my dear friends and colleagues, is the most irritating thing of all unless it's a particularly pleasant memory with no irritating associations like --- well, let's not get into that, shall we.
[She smiles, looks at the board. Pause. Then she turns to the audience, and walks casually towards them.]
Do you know those matchbook things? Like correspondence course things; like 'be an accountant in 30 days', that kind of thing? Stay with me here, 'cause here it gets a little tricky, and if you start in to jotting a few notes, well, I'll certainly understand. I was lying in bed, having a cigarette, which is a very bad thing to do in bed, but anyway, 2: damn 30 in the morning and what's running through my head? Bill, Bill, Bill. Bill this, and Bill that, and Bill's eyes and Bill's hair and Bill's ... well you get at what I am speaking, oh yes, ladies I am sure. So. What goes out? Not my dreams or memories of Bill, no sirree-da-lee-be-bop. My damn cigarette goes out, too much moisture in the bayou or something, so I reach for the matches to light 'er up, and there it is. There on the cover.A correspondence course. In brain surgery. I think - this is for me.
[She turns to the board and starts to re-outline the section marked 'Bill' with a solid line, over and over again as she talks; hopefully the chalk will start to screech.]
I'm thinking a little brain surgery is in order here. A little snip and tuck here and there - of course, getting just the 'Bill' file out of the general stock borders on the rudimentary. But it's the delicate fine-tune work on the dream stages and memory coils that are the toughies, 'cause you certainly don't want to stop dreaming entirely, do you? (pause) You don't want to stop remembering everything, do you? (pause) Think about it. Think about the things you don't remember anymore - what a pile of stuffing that is, am I right? Multitudes of the dead. . . swarms... swarms of nasty waspies. . .
[Again, she is lost in thought. Then she looks up, smiles, and begins to draw arrows, etc. on the board to illustrate as she speaks.]
A: remove the brain pan -- and change the oil (she laughs at her own joke; then dismisses it). There's memories there, buried deep in the soil : this is what it said, the pamphlet I got from Deliverance Correspondence School. B: hone your blade - doesn't have to be anything special like those doctors use, as they smile and charge you an arm and a leg for a little snook of knowledge - make a small incision here... and here, cut from stem to stern - this is 'C' by the way, for those taking notes. D: identify and remove the offending memories, and, now this is the tough part - you got to squeeze 'em until they scream, 'til they give up the ghost, as it were.
[Looking into space, she gets lost for a moment.]
Yeah... that's the hard part, the real hard part.
[She looks back to us, smiles, reconnects.]
But sometimes you need it. You got to find some way to, well... get out. But it takes courage.
So what do you think? Think you could do it? Feel lighter. Almost a guarantee, all those dead things in your mind, all that weight. Infestations of the dead. A veritable plague. All that weight, all that... regret.
[She erases the 'Bill' section. Looks sadly at it, back to audience.]
Could you? Could you do this?
[She starts to leave, slowly, stops and turns.]
Oh, uh - matchbooks by the front door on your way out. Have a cigarette. Think about it. Rid yourself of the memories of... Huh. What was his name? (smiles) I can't seem to recall...
Whatever.
[She continues her stroll offstage.]
Yeah... feels you so much lighter.
[She lights a cigarette and smiles sadly, then turns to take one last glance at the board - she is a little shaky, emotionally; but she smiles bravely.]
Dreams you so serene.
[She continues out, and at the edge of the stage, pauses, as if she had just remembered something ironic; smiles.]
Hm.
[Then exits. Black out.]
END.
ROBERT LAWSON is a playwright, composer, director, and member of the faculty at Franklin Pierce College. His work has been produced on stages up and down the East Coast, and published in the journals Poems and Plays, American Writing, and The Northern New England Review. He is the artistic director of Andy's Summer Playhouse, a theatre devoted to experimental performance work for kids. He is currently working on a new screenplay with filmmaker Jonathan Glatzer. His Faust, or the Archeology of Desire is slated to be produced in Boston in May, and his most recent work--a new music-theatre piece about Melissa Drexler entitled Poison Heart--will be produced at Franklin Pierce this spring. He will be spending the coming fall in Europe working on a book analyzing contemporary European theatre and performance art for Smith & Krauss, slated for publication in early 2000.
This will be finished soon...
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