Okay so there’s this guy. Let's call him Orpheus
He's quite famous. Good at music
Okay, so there's a lot of stuff written about Orpheus, about how
he was this great guy, great poet, amazing at the lyre
Right, but there’s not that much about what he was actually like.
you know what I mean?
Like, for example, like... I've seen a lot of pictures of him.
Okay, a lot of paintings. There's hundreds, maybe thousands.
And I shit you not, in every picture. In every picture... he’s got
his top off
Like every single one
And alright, he’s got a nice body, but you know it’s every picture
And you know, he was always playing his lyre
Like all the time, walking around, playing his lyre
Singing. Just walking around, through the forest, through
the field, by the river, anywhere he wanted, any time of day, middle
of the night, doesn’t care. Are you getting this?
Okay, because the other thing I haven’t told you. The other
thing I haven’t mentioned is that Orpheus is the son of a king
His father is king
And you know who taught him to play the lyre?
GOD
Beat.
So you’re imagining this? There's a guy, son of a king, a god as
his music teacher, and he’s walking around, top off, chest out,
singing
And the thing is, in all the books, all the writings about
Orpheus, they talk about how everyone was enchanted by him,
his song was so beautiful, that everyone, I mean everyone,
people, animals, rivers, trees. They just loved him.
Okay, but what they don’t say, what they don’t tell you, is that
his song was so loud, and so powerful, that they couldn't hear
their own song
They couldn't hear themselves.
Silence.
Except...sometimes...In the quiet hours, when they were
alone, with themselves. Or with their children, their lovers.
Sometimes then, they could hear it. Their own songs. Their own
language, in their own mouths. Their own voice.
It's just, outside, it was only Orpheus
Son of a king
Pupil of the gods
Deaf, but to himself
Pause.
So what happened to Orpheus?
Okay. So. He's walking around one day, singing his song and he
comes across the Ciconian women.
And the Ciconian women, they’re tired. They're so tired of
Orpheus’s song. Because Orpheus’s song, has been playing in
Their ears since they could remember.
And one of the women, she spots him, and she says – to her
friends she says ’there he is, that motherfucker, with his
fucking lyre again.’
She said it in Greek
She says I've had enough of this. It’s gone on too long and she
picks up a stone and throws it at Orpheus’s head.
Beat.
It hits him. It's a great shot. Only the stone, it doesn't hurt him.
Just bounces off like a marshmallow. Cus the stone is so
intoxicated by Orpheus’s song, that its heart’s not really in it.
It just falls off. Lands at his feet.
So the Ciconian women, they get together, they stand up,
together. They throw stones, and they throw sticks, they throw
their arrows, and their swords, and that’s when they hear it
We hear a song.
Low at first
Just one woman
We listen.
And after a while, another woman joins in
The song gets louder.
And then another
Louder still.
And another, and another and another
Everyone singing.
Until, the whole crowd is singing and they’re crying, and
they've got their fists in the air
And they keep going, don’t stop, and their stones become
melodies, and their arrows become words, and they speak the
language of their souls
With their voices raised, they tear this son of the gods limb
from limb
They give the animals their rightful names,
The trees blossom, green and reds
The plants multiply
The rivers swell
And their song is so loud, it is so loud, and so beautiful, that the
world wakes up
It wakes up from its drugged-up sleep and it listens
Pause.
But then the gods wake up too
And they collect the scattered limbs of their dead son
And they sink the women into the ground, and twist their raised
fists into the knotted branches of trees
They sink all of them a billion trees, a million acres
But if you listen, if you really listen
In the silence of a forest
You can hear them
Their fists raised high
Still singing
Their song