TISM

[The TISM garden. Centre stage, an ornate samovar. Windows upstage look into the mansion’s

outhouse. We can see garden tools inside. Also discernible, a gardener, wearing a traditional serf

head scarf, denoting his orthodox beliefs. Downstage, two members of the gentry sit talking either

side of the samovar.]

HUMPHREY B. FLAUBERT: I urge you to restrain your expectations, Ron.

RON HITLER-BARASSI: But Humphrey, who could? These questions are not from some cheap web

journal or small-minded fan site. Here are questions from Musicology, Humphrey. Musicology!

HUMPHREY: And have you heard of this publication?

RON: No. No, I admit it, I haven’t. But look. [Ron lifts an envelope from the table and holds it high.]

Does not the name Musicology denote a scientific outlook, a level of thought and careful

observation all too rare in our culture? This is not Musicfan or Musicmad or Musicjukie: these

questions are from a journal that champions the type of rational thought that is Russia’s only way

forward!

HUMPHREY: I warn you Ro—

RON: No! I open this envelope as I open my heart, expecting that the world’s beauty will respond to

my invite! Here is the world of intelligence, the world of aesthetic taste, the world that rises above

the lazy hack juvenilia of the common press!

[Ron opens and reads the questions from Musicology. Humphrey looks on as Ron’s face

transforms from hope to despair.]

HUMPHREY [trying to take the letter from him:] Oh Ron, Ron, I tried to warn you…

RON: Here is the first question. [Reads from the letter, voice breaking.] “Since your debut album

Great Truckin’ Songs of the Renaissance in 1988 through to your latest in 2024 Death To Art how has

it been watching the decline of Western civilization?”

HUMPHREY: Oh, Ron. This must have been from some work experience kid too lazy to even use Chat

GPT. [Takes the letter.] This is crayon! It’s written in crayon!

RON: No, no Humphrey!! Can’t you see – this, this is a brilliant question.

HUMPHREY: I fear your consumption has returned. Your eyes are unnaturally feverish!

RON: No, no! This question is about the course of civilization itself! Musicology has not failed us! The

Athenian school of deep thought that is the Musicology office has pondered long and hard – oh, so

deceptively hard – over these questions! They are seekers, like I! They wish to reflect on the long

gestation of what is most noble in our lives! This question harks back to the very start of the human

quest for knowing, from the cuneiform Sumerian etchings that make sense of the stars to the Greek

ideals of balance and reason. Roman order is also here, and a questioning of the long held disdain

for the so-called ‘Dark Ages’ – indeed, Humphrey, as we have often discussed, not dark at all, but a

period of exquisite art and creative endeavour. And, god knows, we both have doubts about the

rigid historiographic orthodoxy that clings to a simplistic idea of ‘the Renaissance’, but we both

acknowledge the great glories of the achievements of the early moderns. Reason is in this question,

too; all of Diderot’s Encyclopédie, and the questions of the Enlightenment, the mistakes of the

revolution, and, yes, its freedoms, the intoxication of a time, of which Wordsworth said “bliss it was in

that dawn to be alive.”

HUMPHREY: Oh, restrain yourself!

RON: Forfend! What, cease I, on this march through human achievement? What, stop now, before the

secrets of evolution are finally revealed, the darkness of myth and irrationality defeated, the new

mysteries of the quantum before us? And look…there are more questions, more and more, all of

equal power! Reading them is like having one’s very soul examined by God’s eye! Hear, hear this

question, which I select at random: “Set to perform in your first headline tour for 20 years alongside

a cavalcade of Aussie icons.” [Ron stops reading, and turns a shattered face to Humphrey.] “Aussie

icons,” it says Humphrey. Have you ever heard such poetry, such originality? And look, it goes on:

“Was it a case of donning the conversation hat, chugging a six-pack, and getting on the dog and

bone to rustle up the perfect collection of stars to join you on stage?”

[Ron faints to the ground. Strangled sounds can be heard, only faintly identifiable as words:

“Chugging.” “Dog and bone.” “Conversation hat.”]

HUMPHREY: Wake up! Did I not tell you your hopes were irrational? Why, these questions must be the

work of the most cackling popinjay, the most slovenly serf, the most vicious benighted dunce. Did I

not warn you? Did I not predict this?

RON: [standing defiantly:] Oh, yes, you did, you did – as you always do! I acknowledge that you are

correct, as always – correct in your overbearing male way, correct as always, but never right! Never

true! [Ron struggles with her clothing, and, reaching under her shirt, takes off her bra, and throws it

away.] A man can never know what it feels like to be free of what binds a woman. I reject your

“correctness”, your “rationality”, your smug male certainties and platitudes. Oh, how ignorant you

are of all the ways women perform for men!

[The gardener emerges from the outhouse. He and Ron passionately kiss. The gardener

takes his rake and slowly tips the samovar to the ground. The tea splashes on Humphrey’s

formal trousers. Ron and the gardener leave together, Humphrey remaining on stage alone,

despairingly using Musicology’s questions to wipe his Russian arse.]