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MODERNIZING FAUST

     Listen to Mefistofele for about the 20th time and again marvel at the universality of the plot, and get the idea of writing a play that goes: BZ and Richard Hayman sit down (onstage) to talk about writing a new jazz/rock/avant-garde musical about an updated Faust, but having ME turn into the temptor and clear-eyed Richard being the tempted not by selling his SOUL, but by promising that he'd DIE, where if he'd say, "Stop, it's beautiful," he would then live forever in a perpetual Nirvana. Rather than the classical and Demonic sabbaths, he could time-travel into the PAST to see if there were ANYTHING there that would content him entirely, then into the FUTURE to the point of MAXIMUM ENTROPY where it was clear the universe was going, without falling back on itself unless HE caused it to fall back on itself, just for the excitement of it, and if he did it a NUMBER of times, even THAT self-actualization would become boring and he'd want MORE. The only question is "More WHAT?" and how to get it. The third would be "living in the eternal now"---a sort of modernistic stoned-out reality on drugs and Actualism, where each moment seems to be a peak-experience, all the books have been read, and all the people have been met and known, but since the actualized person ALWAYS wants more, where does he go from THERE? Got to the CLIMAX, too, where I tell the audience that IT has to decide the ending, and maybe have the slapdash SPECTACLE that would symbolize Faust LOSING and having to be reborn; the quiet tapering off which would symbolize a frozen eternity of perfection, or the dialectic that could continue talking to the audience until it CHOSE to leave, until the devil could link arms with the last and say goodnight to them at the STAGEDOOR, which is then the symbol of the entry to LIFE AGAIN. OR, the idea of STARTING with a recording of the telephone operator announcing "The time is 7:59, and 50 seconds" until the play overwhelms it with the first musical number, which then comes BACK to leave the audience to clear out itself, but of course the ANNOUNCING of time isn't time, and there ISN'T time in a peak-experience anyway, so it's a Chinese puzzle again, layers within layers, mentioning Hair and Krishnamurti and Actualism and Zen and est and Joseph Campbell and Star Wars and Bob Dylan and records and vortexes and drugs and everything that's part of our times and OUR quest for meaning and excitement.