FADE IN:
EXT. GOWANUS CANAL (BROOKLYN) - 2 AM
All the streets are empty on this smoggy bruised-sky night, but the unnatural bluebird glow of all the LED lamps lining the sidewalk slides off the slick roads and illuminates a translucent film of oil stretched like holographic jogging tights across a leg of water. Footsteps crack on the ice-capped asphalt, and someone coughs. Enter the STUDENT.
STUDENT
What a quiet day...You’d think Manhattan
would sink into the ocean, or that red
asteroids would shred the smog and spell
a warning in the sky with burning fingers:
“Beware!” Was drinking a mistake tonight?
The Student stumbles and sits on the hood of a car. The car alarm goes off, and the ALARMED CAR speaks with a superhuman-perfect voice.
ALARMED CAR
(accompanied by the
sounds of a marching
band falling off a cliff)
Look at what your curious hand has caused!
One twittering touch is all it takes to trigger
an unprecedented digital explosion.
Undeterred, the Student drags a folded piece of paper from his pocket and reads in his most official voice.
STUDENT
(sarcastically superior)
Dear Mr. -- , the University
is pleased to inform you that the fantastic
and breathtaking (the BEST! no better one)
inauguration of Pres. -- has marked
the long-awaited end of questions, both
unnecessary and otherwise. And so,
in light of the now apparent fact that we
have all been righteously born here together
in the most prosperous country on the earth--
as a top-tier academic institution
we can report that we are indeed the best
there is and ever was because we were first
in the U.S. News Nation Rankings!--
we feel responsible as a University
to recognize the impact we can make
as a vocational institution on
emerging markets all around the world
and the responsibilities we bear
as an upright business organization to
the communities that we support and the youths
we train on the good faith of their very first
financial investments. We therefore inform you
that your department of inquiry has been
deemed to be a useless thing that poses
a threat to future revenues, and as such
it has been defunded. You have been relieved
of all your teaching duties and replaced
accordingly--expect a check in a week
and best of luck finding a livable wage.
ALARMED CAR
You idiot! Police are on their way.
What are you going to do now?
STUDENT
So close
to my birthday too--were we celebrating
how old I suddenly feel at twenty-four
or was that my first retirement party? God!
VOICE OF GOD
Yes?
Silence except for the sound of splitting ice. Something splashes into the canal and the Student fixes his eyes on the slime-shining water as he steps away from the car.
STUDENT
(suddenly more astute)
Maybe we were at a funeral.
A woman down the road, selling papers
and comics in the cold, has told me how
nobody can find the bottom of the canal
beneath the swamp of guns and sludge they dumped
in the poisoned water over the years. That leaves
one question left to ask at least, and I think
I might just be the lucky one to discover
the elusive-polluted end of everything.
The Student goes to climb over the only rusted rail separating him from 200 years of sludge and and hot shit when he is stopped by the gaze of an abnormally large and somewhat sleepy black cat, SAUSSURE THE CAT, which is blocking his path.
SAUSSURE THE CAT
What do you mean when you say that the canal
has no bottom?
STUDENT
I simply mean it doesn’t exist.
SAUSSURE THE CAT
(laughing as a cat obviously will)
But how can a canal possibly have
no bottom--unless you’re referring to an ass.
STUDENT
Put that bushy tail between your legs,
and get out of my way so that I can
have my fair try at finding the muddy answer.
Saussure the Cat gets momentarily trapped in a terrible yawn. When the he snaps his whiskers shut again, he rubs his eye with a gentle paw and sizes up the Student.
SAUSSURE THE CAT
You smell like fish and alcohol.
STUDENT
So what?
SAUSSURE THE CAT
If you’re dead-set on dying tonight, then please
die somewhere nice where I can eat you.
STUDENT
No!
SAUSSURE THE CAT
Then what are you going to do?
STUDENT
Drown, if that
is what it takes to find the very bottom.
SAUSSURE THE CAT
No you won’t.
STUDENT
(maniacally self-defeating)
I swear on the wet dirt
by the shallow side of Kurtz’s forgotten grave
that this canal will be the final thing
I see before I disappear. I’m crazy!
The Student throws a leg over the rail and looks into the canal until the cat draws a claw across his face.
SAUSSURE THE CAT
Do you know who I am?
STUDENT
No.
SAUSSURE THE CAT
I’m drunk.
STUDENT
Who cares? I am too.
SAUSSURE THE CAT
On what?
STUDENT
Bacardi. And beer.
SAUSSURE THE CAT
(curiously)
You are a brute.
STUDENT
I’m going to jump now!
SAUSSURE THE CAT
Wait! I’m Saussure--really.
STUDENT
So sure of what?
SAUSSURE THE CAT
(performatively, just like
the aristocat he is)
That no matter what I’ve done I shouldn’t be
a cat--lord knows what monster made me so.
But I know another way to ask
the questions that you’re freezing for without
drowning in a man-made swamp. A bit
on down the road and island out-of-towners
have started calling Id--I can’t imagine
why--rises out of the oil-slick and sludge
sliding across the surface of the canal
on a thousand interchanging terraces,
and there are people there who claim to know
the truth about the bottom. If you come
with me to see if they can shed some light
on the bottom of these waters, I’ll forgive you
for waking me up by starting that alarm
and if we don’t get a satisfying answer
you can jump in and find what you want to find,
otherwise I’ll howl outside your window
from dusk to dawn until the day you die.
Sirens in the distance. Blue and red lights flash down every alley as the police get closer.
PROFESSOR
SAUSSURE THE CAT
What was that?
STUDENT
Another voice! I swear
they’re everywhere tonight.
VOICE OF GOD
Prepare yourselves,
you who read these words--nothing we say
is set in stone.
The car alarm finally stops, and the police appear. Antique cannons on the hoods of their tankish vehicles spin wildly under the influence of unseen hands searching for targets.
STUDENT
(decided on doing
something stupid)
Fine then!
SAUSSURE THE CAT
Let’s go before
they exercise our right to violence.
Cannon fire. Saussure the Cat leads the Student down a small alley and onto an unseen street.
CUT TO:
EXT. FURTHER DOWN ALONG THE GOWANUS (BROOKLYN) - 2:15 A.M.
Enter the Student and Saussure the Cat, wandering down a darker road. Brighter lights are in the distance at their backs, and the street is flanked on either side by barely discernable signs that point the way in sharp arrows and bold exclamations. Presently, a siren sounds just far enough away to make them feel secure. Saussure the Cat swipes at a rat and misses. The Student pauses to examine one potentially interesting sign.
STUDENT
(pridefully suspicious)
Are you sure we’re heading the right way?
SAUSSURE THE CAT
Of course I’m sure--where else would we be going?
STUDENT
But this sign says that Id is to our right
and the arrow’s pointing down and to our left
like we should take the subway.
SAUSSURE THE CAT
(intellectually proud)
Every road
and alley leads to Id in this part of town.
The tower on the island was constructed
long before Manhattan office spaces
dominated the skyline. And I’ve
been told on good authority by the man
who gives me sardines outside the pizza place
by Pratt, that Id was built by pioneers
to make a vantage place where they could catch
witches flying past on bent broomsticks.
STUDENT
When you speak it makes me think that you
don’t understand yourself when you meow.
PROFESSOR
They come to the edge of the canal, where a wooden bridge condenses into being.
STUDENT
(testing the waters)
What are those figures standing by the arch
that overlooks the bridge?
SAUSSURE THE CAT
Those are the subjects
constructed out of stone--statues that welcome
people leaving Id into the world,
and wave goodbye to those like us regressing
back the other way.
STONE SUBJECTS
So long suckers!
PROFESSOR
SAUSSURE THE CAT
(beginning to regress)
Hello ho-ho boy! Come bird come:
Id is just across the creaking bridge.
They walk between the staring statues and onto the rotten wooden planks of the bridge, which sways over the iridescent swirling-sludge current of the canal.
STUDENT
I have no words at my disposal that
could possibly describe the neon-glowing
water down below. Imagine taking
just a sip by accident--I bet
that you would lose your mind trying to
describe the taste as soon as your lips were wet.
SAUSSURE THE CAT
And you wanted to jump in.
PROFESSOR
STUDENT
Look there! What’s that?
The island of Id rises like a dripping phallus out of the canal. A cottage with irregularly dim lights flickering in the windows and smoke pouring out of the brick chimney sits at the base of the island near the bridge. The Student and Saussure the Cat approach a door that looks like parched lips trying to give birth to a longing for something lost but not forgotten, and the door speaks as it splits open under the thrust of their inquisitive hands.
CREAKING DOOR
(ashamed of nothing, but
aware of feeling ashamed once,
perhaps a long time ago
when it was a mouse’s red door,
which was the first time
someone found it unlocked and, i
t swore, would be the last time i
t watched someone die)
Father forgive me, for I have sinned:
I was supposed to be firm--but I let them in.
INT. THE COTTAGE ON ID - 2:15 A.M.
The Student and Saussure the Cat enter a shadow-saturated smoky room, where flashes of firelight illuminate two figures. One figure sits snoring in an easy chair. The other figure rises off the floor and growls.
PROFESSOR
FREUD THE WOLF-HEAD
A sign? A smell: a puss at the door!
SAUSSURE THE CAT
No--stop!
A bushy-tailed wolf with three heads, FREUD THE WOLF-HEAD, LACAN THE WOLF-HEAD, AND DERRIDA THE WOLF-HEAD, leaps into light and flings a face with snapping fangs at Saussure the Cat. A chase around the room commences. Somehow they manage not to touch a single lamp or knock any bookshelves over, and the figure in the chair continues to snore.
SAUSSURE THE CAT
(delightfully panicked)
I saved you first--now you save me!
The Student, thinking quickly, grabs the three-headed wolf by its tail. The tail falls off and the wolf howls.
FREUD THE WOLF-HEAD
(deflated)
My tail!
LACAN THE WOLF-HEAD
Cat-strated again.
DERRIDA THE WOLF-HEAD
(as if sarcastically flipping
a one-sided coin)
A tale of many tails.
LACAN THE WOLF-HEAD
(like an out-of-practice
and unlicensed doctor)
Maybe Freud will become easier
to understand without a tail to chase.
DERRIDA THE WOLF-HEAD
That would be a welcomed difference.
FREUD THE WOLF-HEAD
That bastard cat!
And who are you, holding my tail in the dark?
Suddenly the lights in the room turn on and everything is made clear. The figure in the chair is revealed to be a two-headed man.
VOICE OF GOD
(appealing to the masses)
It’s no Genesis--but the smallest miracles
matter most.
STUDENT
I’m a member of the University.
Saussure the Cat crawls up the Student and settles on his shoulder, where he watches the wolf like a satellite in orbit.
SAUSSURE THE CAT
You used to be.
STUDENT
You’ll see--I’ll be one again.
SAUSSURE THE CAT
(catching his breath)
All that matters now is that we leave.
I hate the thought of such a place, where tails
are removed so easily. A whole like that
should never be so simply separated.
FREUD THE WOLF-HEAD
I think
we’ve already revealed the only bottom
worth investigating. Will you please
give me my tail?
LACAN THE WOLF-HEAD
Now we begin to see
the kernel of truth.
DERRIDA THE WOLF-HEAD
Yet I suggest that we
go further--towards the iterable bottom,
the meta-bottom at the bottom of
the structure behind everything. Young man
would you please remove your pants and show us
exactly what type of tail you have to tell?
The Student reaches into his pocket and removes the letter from the University.
STUDENT
This is the only bit of proof I need
to make you believe my tale. I was a student
at the University, taking classes
on a graduate level and teaching kids
the art of rhetoric. I’ve been consumed
by my desire to apprehend the signs
that construct our daily lives since I was a boy,
and my dad completely wrecked the family van
when he ran a stale red light--turns out that he
was colorblind--and my brother died. So I spent
my life trying to find a set of signs
that everyone could read no matter what
and despite whatever circumstances. I failed--
or I nearly did, until I thought of how
you might express signs as reductive things
similar to what this wolf has said
about the meta-bottom: except the twist
is an empirically new construction,
a data driven singularity forming
an equation of sorts. I needed tons of data,
more data than I could compile alone--
SAUSSURE THE CAT
But?
STUDENT
(self-defeating and
painfully self-aware)
I never got the chance to finish.
My position at the school was terminated
despite my data-driven hopes and dreams
when the President was inaugurated
and all the questions left to answer in
the world were deemed to be a waste of time
compared to the importance of producing
an upright nation of credible consumers.
FREUD THE WOLF-HEAD
(digging for the truth)
And you still have a tale?
STUDENT
Just one I guess,
one question left to answer in the world
worth working for--at least until I run
out of money for my rent--where is
the bottom of the canal, and what’s hidden there?
The Student opens a nearby window, revealing the bubbling canal, where seven hypernaturally white icebergs are floating. A kayaker in a heavy parka and furs paddles between the icebergs. She hits one and her ship begins to sink. The kayak capsizes vertically like a diver in slow motion as the kayaker mounts it and sings.
KAYAKER
(joyous, like singing a
Christmas carol or
Happy Birthday to a
long dead loved one)
Thank the Lord for this great day
what a wonderful day to explore--
all kayakers should die this way
in sight of the trash on the shore.
We all should see the world this way
in the middle of frozen sludge,
while rowing toward the polluted bay
kept safe from the government’s love--
(getting jazzy now, maybe
dancing if not for the small
space left on the kayak)
Kayaks are fun and fantastic
Colorful cheap and plastic
And producing them is dramatic
when they wind up as trash on the shore.
Oh! Everest is covered in shit
and jungles are jumbled with camping equipment
when we pollute who can forget
the president who told us--“Explore!”
(the bridge now, somewhat
disturbed by the gurgling
sound of the submerging ship)
Climate change be damned
Subdued by the age of men
Who live by the decree
Of free economy!
(the climax reaches with
the kayaker one last time
above the water)
Oh! Thank the lord for today
What a wonderful day to explore
Without the EPA
We’re free to be trash on the shore!
PROFESSOR
DERRIDA THE WOLF-HEAD
(surprisingly shocked)
Erase my face! A living echo.
STUDENT
A guide?
FREUD THE WOLF-HEAD
A figment of all our imaginations--yes.
LACAN THE WOLF-HEAD
And so the question of psychosis begins.
The Kayaker sinks silently into the canal and disappears in a bloom of glowing bubbles. All watch silently as if observing a great moment--almost a shift in paradigm--until the figure in the chair begins to moan. Both heads resting on those wide shoulders in the easy chair, DELEUZE THE FIRST-HEAD & GUATTARI THE FIRST-HEAD, wake up and begin to mumble and grumble in gibberish.
DERRIDA THE WOLF-HEAD
(worked up to a howl)
And so we have a fine sample of how
language functions as a mark--mark me
and my three heads and the two heads on top
of that person’s shoulders. What do you see between
the space around our several faces? Differance?
Yes--an epistemontological trace
deferring and differing, which enables us
to structure all our signs just like the bridge
you crossed to enter Id that held you up
above the bottomless canal. But there is more--
I see a body generalized between
the head that makes us beasts, and not the body
that separates as Freud would preach to you,
or the body of language that Lacan would use
like the polluted water in the canal
to separate you from the real foundation,
but a metaphorical body breaching both
space and time--and how we perceive things.
This is the metaphor as body, which
constitutes all bodies through a structure
of shifting meaning made from reciprocal turns
like the self-returning churning whitewashed currents
in the canal--with water pushing water,
forming streams and rivers and puddles near
sewer drains that seem to stagnate but move,
still move and define by movement, play across
cobblestones and silt and asphalt directed
by man with roofs and gutters and tunnels full
of shit and alligators into pools
where we sanitize and purify
and desalinate until we can relate
pH balances to quality,
forgetting our abstractions and the thunder
cracking through the clouds that bring the water
back from where we let it slide away--
always back! How do you think that you
can find the bottom if the water that
lets you construct a concept of the bottom
slips away? It would be better to strike
your ship against the ice just like that kayaker,
something solid anyways--at least
a chunk in the context of the cold canal.
PROFESSOR
DERRIDA THE WOLF-HEAD
Do you need more proof than disembodied voices?
Saussure the Cat jumps off from the top of the Student’s head with the wolf-tail in his mouth and onto the shoulders of the stuttering person with four sleepy eyes. He strings the tail like a telephone line between the ears of this person’s two heads. The inhuman grumbling abruptly stops and the heads sharing shoulders in the chair turn to stare at the Student.
SAUSSURE THE CAT
That should do it. So much for markings.
DELEUZE THE FIRST-HEAD
(disparately pointed)
You.
STUDENT
Saussure--what did you do? They can talk!
GUATTARI THE FIRST-HEAD
The question you should really ask yourself is--
DELEUZE THE SECOND-HEAD
How many wolves are there?
GUATTARI THE SECOND-HEAD
How many people?
FREUD THE WOLF-HEAD
There is one tail!
LACAN THE WOLF-HEAD
But three wolves.
DERRIDA THE WOLF-HEAD
And all tales
are tales of differance.
PROFESSOR
STUDENT
I see one wolf
broken into three, reducible
to structural anomalies that we
could see if the data was sufficiently large
and well prepared in ways that revealed the truth
of our connections.
GUATTARI THE THIRD-HEAD
Wrong. There is a multiplicity
of wolves--I see ten wolves, then twenty thousand.
DELEUZE THE THIRD-HEAD
And I smell a million of them in the room.
PROFESSOR
STUDENT
(passionate for once)
You’re completely chaotic--you both confuse
multiplicity with deviation
from a mean. If you reduce the noise
and filter out a standard form of meaning,
which is empirical, then you can find
a simple sign that is the wolf of wolves.
Then you will see that there can only be
one wolf with three heads, and that you are just
a single person with two heads--I think.
DELEUZE THE FOURTH-HEAD
What can someone who talks to people like
they’re dead trees--
GUATTARI THE FOURTH-HEAD
Know about the mysteries
of multiplicity?
SAUSSURE THE CAT
Get away--they’re mad!
Saussure the Cat jumps back into the Student’s arms as Deleuze and Guattari begin their unfolding. Before long they have become many--then two again. They are always connected but distinct, always shifting like an Escher sand castle in your hand, and when they rise out of the chair they tower over the Student.
DELEUZE AND GUATTARI
A challenger? But you have disrespected
the strata within strata--the necessary
interstraturm and substratum which
constitute and are constituted by
codes and territories, ancient and new,
that operate through milieu on the folds
of epistrata and parastrata to build
organic and inorganic assemblies, which
work in double-meanings at the pinch
of vast infinities within each other,
two infinities composing more
and more--and this you would reduce to one
as if your data could pinpoint electrons
in ways that Heidegger could never know:
you are a prophet of black holes, and you preach
that light cannot escape your event horizon.
Instead of luminescent rings where space
meets emptiness, you would replace the stars
with non-entropic darkness, and you would say
the suns are past our reach the way they rest
in unity with gravity so dense
that all we humans can hope to do is predict
what it feels like to be warm. But if you come
with us to see the thousand roofs from the top
of Id, which rises up above the city,
we will show you how uncountable plateaus
construct a varying multiplicity.
SAUSSURE THE CAT
It’s a trap. They’ll cut your head right off and put it
in the empty space between the others!
PROFESSOR
STUDENT
Maybe--
but I want to know what they mean.
DELEUZE THE FIFTH-HEAD
Then follow us.
They (Deleuze and Guattari, the Student, and Saussure the Cat) exit the room by a flight of stairs curling like DNA beside the chimney. Freud, Lacan, and Derrida stay behind--they are trying to use a lampshade to hide the hole where their tale had been.
EXT. THE TOP OF ID - 2:15 A.M.
Deleuze and Guattari lead the Student and Saussure the Cat through a trap door and onto the roof. The flat rooftop is covered in dirty sand and bordered by a small brick wall. A broken lawn chair sits under an umbrella in one corner. The different rooftops of New York City, which shines beneath them, stretch in all directions out from Id. Even the planes landing in Kennedy and LGA are flying beneath their perch. They are at the tallest point in NYC--the highest point in the world--except for the chimney that rises to their right. It is a rhizome full of dark smoke. Each brick is a sign full of signs telling stories composed of stories relating the first single-celled organisms to the moment Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon. Deleuze and Guattari gesture towards the chimney and all the empty rooftops around them. As they speak, new chimneys rise on all the once-empty rooftops--first flaccid, then tall and spitting smoke.
DELEUZE AND GUATTARI
It was Freud who gave us chimneys and Lacan
who solidified the concept of lack,
which made them into standing fortresses
that filtered all our fires. Then Derrida
dismissed the fire for the smoke, and now you say
that you will catch that smoke in special nets
made of neural-simulated vectors
that will tell us what the logs are like
as the fire burns them up. But you’re all wrong:
look at these bricks. Do you see the signs on them,
interlacing with and replacing one another
so that they congregate as all in many
before they fade back into multiples
to tell their story?
GUATTARI THE FIFTH-HEAD
This is how the real
constructs itself: the infinite act of God.
STUDENT
But what you’re really talking about is only
information: quantifiable,
therefore measurable and knowable.
GUATTARI THE SIXTH-HEAD
(lovingly annoyed)
How can you claim to know what everything is
after measuring one thing, or millions--
DELEUZE THE SIXTH-HEAD
Even billions of different things?
GUATTARI THE SEVENTH-HEAD
You can’t
contain a multiplicity in data
any better than you can pour the sun
into a plastic bottle. The bottle melts,
the data drifts--
DELEUZE AND GUATTARI
Reality drifts,
and all we’re left with is a rhizome that
continues to grow like the bottom of
a river that gets deeper every year.
PROFESSOR
STUDENT
But I’ve spent too many years of my life
trying to define a general sign
that underlies the different ways we relate
to everything and nothing in our lives
to forget it so quickly, now or ever--
there has to be an underlying bottom,
or the canal, the world, would disappear.
SAUSSURE THE CAT
(hungry enough to broach
the subject)
What do you know
about the fish in the canal--could a cat,
say any cat, eat them and be alright?
Deleuze and Guattari go to the edge of the roof and look out over New York City. The canal stretches away from them into the ocean. There is an oil fire running down the far end of the slimy water, and all the icebergs have melted. The Student moves to the edge and Saussure the Cat follows--they look for the kayaker but cannot find her on the shore or otherwise. Besides, there are more important things happening.
All around them, on all the rooftops, people are deconstructing their chimneys. It is not clear at first what they are doing--there are messes of wire and sheet metal and jungle gyms of bars that leak freezing white gasses--but it soon becomes apparent that they are building launching pads and ICBM missiles where the chimneys used to be. It is an influx of labor, a buildup of infrastructure and a reinforcement of national nuclear arsenals like never before. Some people climb into the missiles while others wave from the rooftops and the fire-escapes and the streets. A countdown begins.
DELEUZE AND GUATTARI
I hope you’re right. If you could find a sign
that everyone could understand then we
would know the proper way to shout, “Stop!”
so all the rocketeers would hear before
they reduce us to a body without organs
in a suicidal way we won’t survive.
Deleuze and Guattari pull a map from inside their shirt and hand it to the student.
DELEUZE AND GUATTARI (CONT’D)
Take this and go to where I’ve marked. A woman
who can help you on your way is waiting
for a person just like you to come
ask the questions she divined but couldn’t speak
because they were too big to write on leaves
before they scattered in the wind. I hope
you find your way--but I doubt you will--and if
you start to see the multiplicities
in ways that are impossible to contain,
I’ll be here watching the sunset and thinking
about what happens when people try to catch
as many suns as they can in broken bottles.
The sun sets and the nukes launch. New York is lit like Christmas by ten billion rocket boosters firing at once. Suddenly the chimney on Id, the only chimney left, crumbles under the weight of a wolf with a million heads, which has forced its way up. The wolf howls. Its different heads bite and snap at and consume one another. Freud and Lacan are gone. Derrida speaks in several tongues. The wolf with many heads attacks Deleuze and Guattari as the rockets fall, disorganizing their bodies.
DELEUZE THE EIGHTH-HEAD
Distinct and then--
DELEUZE AND GUATTARI
Not so. In one moment.
GUATTARI THE EIGHTH-HEAD
That’s how a schizo goes.
GUATTARI THE NINTH-HEAD
In lines of flight.
A blinding light. Exit all.
FADE OUT.