Entropy
An interview in one act by Chris Saffran
Textual note: An ellipsis (…) is herein used to indicate a line of dialogue trailing off, and an em-dash (—) to indicate the subsequent line is breaking in. Italics have been used sparingly to indicate emphasis in lines of dialogue whose meaning might otherwise be ambiguous and are not necessarily meant as direction for their delivery by the actor. Occasionally a question mark has been replaced with a period to indicate the inflection of a question as a statement, again this is primarily aimed at elucidation for the reader and not necessarily as direction.
Character note: The roles of Brown and Vigorously, should be played by two different people—ideally actors. Beyond this stipulation, the attributes of the characters have been left open for interpretation.
A banal desk. Crowding the desk’s surface are a curly-cord pushbutton phone, a coffee mug serving as a pencil holder, a sharpener, a haggard nameplate bearing the inscription “M. Brown, Associate Administrative Aggregate Resources Coordinator,” and several fairly neat mounds of paperwork. Sitting behind the desk, rotely sorting the papers of one mound into the others, is Brown. In front of the desk is an unoccupied and decidedly unremarkable metal chair.
A door-width strip of duct tape marks a spot on the floor several feet away, behind which Vigorously, clad in meticulously neat business attire, stands in an attitude of alert expectation with a collapsible stool tucked under one arm.
Brown checks a wristwatch, then palms the desk phone’s receiver off its cradle.
Brown Hadley, please send in the next...
Vigorously steps over the duct tape.
Hang on.
Covers the receiver.
Are you the next—
Vigorously Yes.
Brown Have a seat.
Never mind, they’re here.
Brown hangs up and consults a clipboard. While Brown leafs through its pages not finding something, Vigorously approaches the empty chair, kicks it away, opens the stool, and sits upon it primly.
Brown sets the clipboard aside.
Brown Something wrong with—
Vigorously I know nothing about that thing.
Brown The chair.
Vigorously I know nothing about it.
Brown It’s a chair.
Vigorously Nothing relevant.
Brown What could you possibly need to know about—
Vigorously I know nothing of its pedigree, its manufacture, age, and maintenance. I know nothing of the purpose to which you have put it, to whom you might have lent it, or indeed how you yourself came to possess it. In short I do not know if I can trust it. If it would support me or bring me low. It would not do for me to present myself to you by sprawling about the floor in a calamity of unbound chair. No. That would not do.
Brown Why would you think—
Vigorously Why should I think when I can kick? Time moves forward, friend, shall we begin?
Brown You just… whatever. Sure, let’s begin.
Brown rifles through some papers, finds the appropriate form, plucks up a pencil, sharpens it.
Your name. I couldn’t find it on—
Vigorously Vigorously.
Brown Pardon?
Vigorously I said, “Vigorously.” My name is Vigorously.
Brown Vigorously with a V?
Vigorously Of course not. Vigorously spelled the common way.
Brown I commonly spell vigorously with a V.
Vigorously Not as it is commonly spelled by you, friend. Vigorously as it is commonly spelled by me.
Brown Okay, then. How do you spell Vigorously?
Vigorously looks at Brown but says nothing.
Hello?
Still nothing.
I said, how do—
Vigorously I am.
Brown You are...?
Vigorously Spelling my name for you, as you have requested.
Brown I don’t follow.
Vigorously Tell me, friend, are you aware of the condition in which a letter is written but not pronounced?
Brown I am.
Vigorously Well my name presents the opposite situation. My name consists entirely of letters which are not written, but are indeed pronounced “Vigorously."
Brown Right. Okay. Right.
Brown’s pencil hovers uncertainly over the form.
Okay…
Vigorously Time moves forward, friend, shall we continue?
Brown Right. We’ll just…we’ll just come back to that one. Let’s see…children. Have you any children?
Vigorously Yes, I have one child.
Brown marks this down.
Brown Sex?
Vigorously Of course.
Brown Say again?
Vigorously I said “of course.” Certainly. Yes.
Brown I don’t understand, I asked about the sex.
Vigorously It was tolerable.
Brown What? No—
Vigorously A bit messy, but in retrospect—
Brown No, that’s not… I mean the sex of the child.
Vigorously My child does not have sex.
Brown No, no you’re completely misunderstanding—
Vigorously What I understand is that my child is an infant. Infants do not have sex, ergo my child does not have sex. Time moves forward, friend, shall we continue?
Brown What I’m trying to get at—
Vigorously Time moves forward. Shall we continue.
Brown sighs. Then has an idea.
Brown Okay... Let’s continue. Next question. A completely different question.
Vigorously Very good.
Brown About your child, that you have.
Vigorously Fire away.
Brown Is this child, your child I mean… is your child a boy or a girl?
Vigorously As it happens, yes.
Brown So…
Vigorously Is this some kind of attempt to entangle me?
Brown What?
Vigorously To constrain my responses to where I become tractable? Predictable, even?
Brown Definitely not.
Vigorously Because if that is your aim, friend, your machinations are fundamentally flawed.
Brown So I have this form…
Vigorously You try to send me through one of a pair of doors, but have you considered that I might proceed through both? Or neither? Or that I might escape through a third? Or a window?
Brown And… there are these questions…
Vigorously There is more to the pantheon of the ancients, friend, than Venus and Mars.
Brown lets the pencil fall.
Brown I literally have no idea what… Oh, I see what you did there. That was pretty good, actually.
Vigorously I am aware.
Brown picks up another pencil. Sharpens it. Prepares to re-enter the fray.
Brown Is your child a girl?
Vigorously Yes—
Brown Yes!
Checks a box with a flourish.
And what is the name of your daughter?
Vigorously Obix.
Brown Obix?
Vigorously Obix.
Brown Dare I ask, Obix with an O?
Vigorously No. Obix with a P.
Brown Of course. And would this be a silent P?
Vigorously Not at all. Obix is spelled with an Obix P.
Brown puts down the pencil.
Brown An Obix P.
Vigorously Yes, an Obix P.
Brown An Obix P.
Vigorously An Obix P.
Brown You repeating it doesn’t make your meaning any clearer.
Vigorously An Obix P is indistinguishable in appearance from the leading P’s of Purgatory and “Parsnips for sale” signs, but when you see an Obix P you must not say “Puh.” You must say “Obix.” Do you see?
Brown Nope. But that’s okay.
Picks up the pencil, writes a P
P… then what?
When Vigorously doesn’t respond, Brown looks up.
That’s it? Just the one letter?
Vigorously You have spotted the genius of its efficiency and elegance, friend. Why have people writing four letters when they could write but one? Why teach my daughter that her name, the thing that uniquely marks her essential noumenon and is her proxy in this perceptual realm is nothing more than a crude amalgam of things that are not her, when I can instead teach her that her name comprises but one element, one thing, and that thing, that singular thing is her. Do you see? She is her name and her name is her. Obix is her name and her name is Obix!
Brown So, it’s just the one letter.
Vigorously Yes, just the one.
Brown finds the next question on the form.
Brown And when were you…
Brown puts down the pencil.
I’m sorry, I need to ask: why?
Vigorously The answers to that are many. Be specific.
Brown Why did you name your daughter Obix?
Vigorously Your question begs the question of choice, friend. From the moment I first laid eyes upon my daughter, I knew she must have a name. Everything that exists must either possess a name or evanesce. Namelessness as an alternative to namefulness is nothing but a cheap illusion, thinly veiled. Nameless poems are all named Untitled, and nameless authors are to a one named Anonymous. That thing over there you called a chair: its maker named it chair. True, it is unlikely that at some point she held the thing aloft and said “Nascent object I name thee chair.” But do not doubt that upon completion of her toils had a neighbor entered her workshop and said “Sister, what have you wrought, what have you brought forth from these elements, what have you forged into existence with your labors?” our maker would have looked at her creation and called it “chair.” For yay, that is what she had made. And you and I know this from our experience with the many chairs we have seen and sat upon. Indeed I would argue that the preexistence of the name gave that thing its form. Do you see? That the idea of chair in the mind of our maker guided, nay forced the situation of its taking that form, fating that it be set to the usual purposes to which other chairs have long been condemned in perpetuity. Sat upon. Farted upon. Kicked. But what if it could have been more? When you look at it can you not open your mind to envision the proud vein of ore its metals once were, and the mountain from which they were stripped away? Can you imagine no greater ambition for the progeny of that great and mighty mountain than to be…a chair? That chair? Friend you ask why I named my daughter, I answer that your question lacks merit on an elemental level.
Brown Fair. But my question wasn't “why did you named your daughter,” it was “why did you named your daughter Obix.”
Vigorously “Why did I name my daughter,” and “why did I name my daughter, Obix,” support equivalent answers, ipso facto they are equivalent interrogatory statements. My response stands.
Brown What? No they aren’t.
Vigorously Time moves forward, friend, shall—
Brown No, hang on a second. “Why did you name your daughter,” and “why did you name your daughter, comma, Obix,” mean the same thing. But what I said was “why-did-you-name-your-daughter-Obix,” which is different because I’m emphasizing the specific selection of the particular name you chose, not the binary process of whether or not to name her at all.
Vigorously Look here… Oh, good point. Touché. In any case isn’t it obvious?
Brown It isn’t even a little bit obvious.
Vigorously But the mountain! …The chair!
Brown Have nothing to do with—
Vigorously Of course they do! Look, friend, before my daughter came howling into this world I bore her no thought whatsoever. Do you see?
Brown See what?
Vigorously I forced the embryonic pre-child from my mind completely. I made no arrangements. Bought no crib. Nor miniature clothing or stuffed animal proxies.
Brown Why?
Vigorously Do not ask why, ask what. What could that ore have been were our maker not thinking “chair” throughout its genesis. It could have been the sword of a kenjutsu master, or some critical component of an expedition to the moons of Jupiter!
Brown There’s really no overstating how unlikely—
Vigorously Unlikely? To be sure. But not impossible in the absolute. Can you truly not conceive of a single fantastic chain of events whereby the elements of that chair were diverted from this fate and instead found their way into an industrial aerospace manufacturer?
Brown I… suppose?
Vigorously Well, if some long-lost-to-antiquity mine-owner's pre-formed notion of the utility of that ore could fate it to the hands of our maker, then surely our maker’s pre-formed notion of her creation could have influenced the degree to which it fulfilled its potential. Hear me friend when I say I determined to take no such chances with Obix. I would not stand in the way of my child realizing its potential. And so I resolved not to give it a single thought until it presented itself to me. In fact, on the day of Obix’s birth, I was quite taken by surprise.
Brown What does any of that have to do with naming her Obix?
Vigorously Do you have a child?
Brown What does that have to do with—
Vigorously Do you have a child?
Brown Look, the point of this isn’t for us to discuss my—
Vigorously Do you have a child?
Brown Yes! I have one child.
Vigorously And is your one child female?
Brown Yes.
Vigorously And did you name it?
Brown Of course.
Vigorously And what did you name it?
Brown Penny.
Vigorously Penny with a P?
Brown Yes.
Vigorously Irrelevant. Do you see?
Brown No I don’t see! You just asked me—
Vigorously My asking does not make it relevant. Time moves forward, friend, shall we continue?
Brown No, wait… why did you just ask me all that if it wasn’t relevant to answering my question?
Vigorously I asked because I was curious. I asked because you asked me the same things. I asked because I’m sitting here. Time moves forward—
Brown No! No. Just give me a straight answer. Why did you name your daughter Obix? You say one letter is more efficient than several, fine, that makes a kind of sense. You say you didn’t want her name to be a compilation of letters…or things... clearly, you wanted her to be unique. An individual. Unhampered by any kind of preconceived notions related to her name. So people wouldn't be like “Oh, she’s a Susan, so she’s probably this kind of person,” or “Her name’s Tiffany, so she must be that kind of person.” You didn’t want her to be put into a box.
Vigorously Removing all elegance of language, you’ve grasped, I think, some element of my meaning.
Brown But what I’m trying to understand is why didn’t you just name her P? Regular P. The one that’s spoken and written like the P in pimento?
Vigorously Are you proposing, friend, that I ought to have saddled my daughter with a name that is only capitalized when it appears at the beginning of a sentence?
Brown What? Oh, okay not like the P in the word pimento, but like the one in the exclamation pimento. You know, like “Pimento?!” That P. I mean, it still would have been only one letter, and that one letter would have equated to her name. And it still would have been unique…I mean, I’ve never met anyone named P before. So no worries on the box front.
Vigorously Do I understand that at the kernel of your inquiries is a desire to understand how I came to choose the Obix P?
Brown Yes!
Vigorously As opposed to the more common variant?
Brown Yes!
Vigorously The decision was arbitrary.
Brown Oh.
Vigorously Time moves forward, friend. Shall we continue?
Brown Okay.
Brown picks up the pencil. Leans heavily over the form. Then puts the pencil back down.
No, I’m sorry, that’s not good enough. Arbitrary? Your reasoning was arbitrary? That’s not an explanation, it’s a non-explanation. Not even. It’s just lazy.
Vigorously Of course it was arbitrary! It’s all arbitrary. The initial alignment between the stemmed figure P and the voiceless bilabial plosive “puh” you cling to so dearly was no less arbitrary. Why should such linkages be adhered to absolutely? Fine, yes, in the common every day goings-on of a developed civilization I concede the utility of a continuous relationship between written and spoken language. But there is no reason for such restriction of choice to exist in the assignation of a name to a person. And if reason be absent, why act reasonably? The entire universe continually trends toward abstraction and non-specificity, the very direction of time itself is defined by this trend. Who am I to resist it? Why even should I try? If anything may be learned from the moments you and I have heretofore shared it is that specificity requires energy. And while to live is to spend one's energy fighting universal trends, I'll not deny, we each of us must eventually run out of energy, cease fighting, and die. Believe me when I say I have lived my life quite vigorously indeed, yet even I grow weary of this struggle. The universe will have its trends, friend, it will not be denied. And so here I sit before you upon my little chair.
Brown Time moves forward.
Vigorously It does.
Brown You’d like us to continue.
Vigorously Like? We must. We must always continue.
Brown Okay.
Brown picks up the pencil, looks at the form.
Let’s see… when were you born?
Vigorously arches an eyebrow.
Brown Actually, we’ll just skip that question… Um…here. How long have you…
Brown puts down the pencil.
What did you mean “we must always continue?” I have a choice, don’t I? I can choose not to continue.
Vigorously No.
Brown But you just said limiting choices goes against the trend of the universe, right? Specificity requires energy? So how can I not have a choice as to whether or not I continue? How can I be inherently confined to a specific choice, the choice of continuance, if the universe inherently trends towards non-specificity? I’m part of the universe!
Vigorously Because the question of continuance does not exist, friend. What would be the alternative? Time moves forward imposing perpetual continuity on all things.
Brown scoops up the pencil and jabs it toward Vigorously.
Brown Bullshit! Dinosaurs!
Vigorously Dinosaurs?
Brown No longer exist.
Vigorously Don't they?
Brown Of course they don't!
Vigorously Of course they do. They’ve simply changed. Now rather than being big stompy lizard-birds, they’re fossils, trees, people, diamond rings, gossamers of guano, cartons of milk, the air between us, and a myriad other permutations of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, et cetera. And what is more, they had no choice in the matter.
Brown That’s fucking semantics. They no longer exist as dinosaurs, ergo dinosaurs, as an actual race of beings, do not exist.
Vigorously You’ve got the rabbit by the hare, friend. Consider the pencil in your hand. Why is it a pencil? How do you know it is a pencil? Because it has the classical appearance and functionality of a pencil. But now break off the tip. It no longer has the classical appearance and functionality of a pencil. And, while I concede some pencil purists might, in a fit of ecstasy, proclaim it to no longer be a pencil, could you, you honestly say with a clear conscience and sincere heart that the thing no longer exists?
Brown No…okay fine…dinosaurs and all the pencils ever manufactured still exist but the point is my choice—
Vigorously Choice? What choice? There is only change. Consider: the vein of ore continues, only now it does so as a chair.
Brown slams the pencil down.
Brown Because the chair-maker chose to make a chair!
Vigorously Not at all. Our good maker made a chair because she was inclined to make a chair. Just as a starving man is inclined to eat a meal set before him. The universe was aligned in such a way that the path of least resistance involved making a chair rather than not making a chair, and so she made a chair. But the universe is unfathomably complex, so we say she “chose” to make a chair because it makes us happy. Nevertheless—
Brown Stop! Please, just stop talking for a second. You’re saying that choice is an illusion concealing inevitable change.
Vigorously Yes.
Brown Inevitable change. All change is inevitable.
Vigorously Yes.
Brown And so all things can and must change?
Vigorously All change is continuous and inexorable, regardless of our—
Brown I don’t mean theoretically, esoterically, or philo-fucking-sophically. I mean meaningfully. In a way that is meaningful to me now. In a way that I can observe right here and now. You’re saying that all things, even I, can change?
Vigorously Certainly. You and I both can change in many palpably meaningful ways. We might for example change our clothing, or position, or orienta—
Brown We can change positions?
Vigorously Yes.
Brown With each other?
Vigorously Of course. You could sit here and I there, and we could go on that way until—
Brown Okay.
Vigorously Eh?
Brown I said “okay.” You said you would sit here, and I would sit there, and I’m saying okay.
Vigorously What I said was “you could.” You could sit here, and I could sit there, and—
Brown Okay. I agree to your proposal.
Vigorously My words had more the character of a hypothesis than a proposal. The point I was endeavoring to underscore is we must still—
Brown Continue, I get it. But let’s test your hypothesis. I mean, it couldn’t hurt. Right… friend? I sit where you are. You sit where I am. We switch places. And then we’ll continue, like you said.
Vigorously I’m not entirely sure I see the point in actually—
Brown I just want to...understand. Why were you explaining your views to me if not for me to understand them?
Vigorously To be honest, I sometimes tend to start talking and—
Brown I want to experience the change you’re talking about…I want to see… to see what it’s like sitting on that side of the desk. And you could see what it’s like sitting on this side. Is there any reason not to try it? It might be... you know... interesting.
Vigorously Oh very well, but we’ll have to—
Brown Great!
Brown hops up from the desk chair and holds it maître d style for Vigorously, who gets up looking hassled. Brown seats Vigorously at the desk, then approaches Vigorously’s stool, moves it aside, picks up the metal chair, and sits. By now, Brown is breathing heavily.
They look at each other.
Vigorously So, shall we cont—
Brown explodes off the chair and dashes offstage, exiting over the strip of duct tape on the floor.
No, I thought not.
Off stage, Brown lets out an unrestrained cry of exaltation.
Fuck.
The phone rings. Vigorously eyes it. Eventually answers.
Vigorously Hello?
No, it’s Vigorously. I’m afraid—
Something crashes offstage.
I’m afraid Brown’s gone.
Well, time moves— Actually, hang on…
Shirtless and feral, Brown races back on stage, ignoring the duct tape, and kicks the metal chair.
Brown Ha!
Brown kicks the collapsible stool.
Brown Ha!
Brown takes off again, this time through the audience, with another primal roar.
Vigorously Never mind. It’s Hadley, isn’t it?
Yes, you too.
Hmm?
Oh, very well. Send the next one in, Hadley.
Vigorously puts down the receiver. Then picks up the pencil. Examines the tip. Begins to sharpen it.
Fade out.