Birth-Life-Death

It’s amazing how fixated we are on death. How death grips us. How unreal it seems until we face it. Until we are touched by it.

Death has been explored throughout the creative arts. From the old storytellers, through paint, through theatre, and even in video games.

Hironobu Sakaguchi became fixated after the passing of his mother. Well, not fixated perhaps, but exploratory. In VII and Spirit Within, he explored our connection to the Earth, to our founding mother. Is all life connected? Do we all share something in common with the world around us? Perhaps we are made of the same stuff as the grass, and the trees, and the birds. Perhaps we are all connected to one living, breathing planet through The Lifestream, Gaia. In IX, we see just how fragile and short our lives are. And how important it is to fully live them. We can surrender ourselves to the fear of death, and do whatever we can to extend our lives, no matter how evil our actions become, like the Black Mages or Kuja. Or, we can embrace each moment we are given, and live our lives to the fullest. We do not know how long we have, whether it be one year, or twenty, or an hundred, but each moment is precious. Each moment we have with the people we love, each kiss, each glance, each smile and each tear is precious. We take so much of our lives for granted. When we finally do pass into death, what becomes of us is unknown. Do we rejoin the stream of life and return to the planet that created us? Or do we just . . . stop?

My own interests in theatre have always been on the darker side of the human condition. Despair, death, suffering, and tragedy. When one looks at my disposition, it’s hard to draw a connection between my work and myself. It’s because I believe that theatre and creativity allows us to explore an aspect of life that should exist precisely there: in the world of creativity and fiction. Life is for living. For happiness. For smiles and hugs and friendship. Let the world of death and sorrow, let the sea of shadows rest on the page. Let it dance on the stage. Let it breathe on the canvas. Not in our hearts.

But of course, the reality cannot be so rosey. I try to live my life this way; I try to leave sorrow in the realm of the imagination. But it is impossible to ignore the real sea of shadows that whirls and crashes against us. From the immense tragedies in places like Haiti or New Orleans to the ravaging wars in the Middle East, it is impossible for sorrow to live in a fictional world. This is made all the clearer when death touches you so closely.

Bonnie Leikam, the mother to one of Audra’s dearest friends, passed away last week. Hers was a spirit untouched by malice, and greed. She was selfless, kind, and caring. And it’s hard to believe in a world filled only with happiness when someone so sweet is taken well before her time. It is a tragedy that should only be felt in the creative mind.

Of course, I recognize my idea as being an ideal, and that it is naïve to think a sorrow-less and hate-less world could exist here on this plane. But, there is something that I think can happen: we can be free of despair. Despair is the surrendering of all hope that is left, when we refuse to accept the light anymore, when we drown within the sea of shadows. There is no need to despair, for there is always hope. In Within the Penumbra, I killed Hope,but I do not believe that Hope can truly die. Hope is not confined within one body or spirit. Hope exists within all of us, and even though we may not always see it, its light is still there.

Perhaps I need to focus on that, more, in my work. Perhaps I need to allow Hope’s light to shine through, even in the darkest of tragedies. Or perhaps we can all see the light in our own lives are brighter, if the light in a fictional world is burnt out.

Birth-Life-Death. It is a concept that I have heard second-hand, but is apparently taught by Mr. Montalbetti. As I understand it, each moment, each scene, everything has a birth, a life, and a death. Guedo once equated it to Beginning, Middle, End, but I think that the resonance of Birth-Life-Death is far stronger. Guedo presents a textbook approach to the work; it is an approach that is solely felt within the analytical mind. It is the approach of a scholar, or a student of English. But Birth-Life-Death . . . it is something beyond the mind. It is something wholly recognized by one’s very spirit, by the essence of a human being. It is something understood without words, without analysis, and without judgement. It is. It is the way of things, the order of our very world, and a far more powerful approach.

From black mages in a video game, to arguments on theatre . . . It’s all together. Each one of us is touched by tragedy, is touched by death. And each of us explores, and handles death in different ways.

I hope, Bonnie, that at the Death of this scene, you find yourself in the Birth of another. That you are approaching a whole new world and Life beyond anything that I could conjure onto paper. Bless you.