USHUAIA BLUE excerpt by Caridad Svich

Excerpt from USHUAIA BLUE by Caridad Svich (In this scene, Pepa, native to Ushuaia, Argentina, lighthouse keeper, speaks with Sara, native to a small Southern City in the US and a researcher in bio-acoustics and film.)

PEPA: There are many different kinds of religion SARA: (simply) I believe in this rock. This stone in my hand. I believe in its song and the song of its ancestors.

PEPA: You hear the song?

SARA: Yes. PEPA: Luka heard it too.

SARA: Not you?

PEPA: Sometimes I hear it. When I get all the noise in my head to stop.

SARA: Not easy PEPA: Sometimes all I hear is the sound of tourists. And it takes days and days to get to really listening again.

SARA: Tourists aren’t that bad.

PEPA: Who am I to complain? For years, Ushuaia was a forgotten place. No one cared about (in Spanish) el sur mas sur del sur.

SARA: Not true.

PEPA: We’re not Paris. We’re not Hong Kong. We’re not New York City.

SARA: Captain Fitzroy – PEPA: The British, the Welsh, the French, the Argentines. They have all claimed us at one point or another in our short history. Just as the Argentines say Antarctica is theirs, when we know it belongs to no one and everyone

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SARA: Just the earth.

PEPA: But oh, how people love to cut up big and little pieces of the earth and say it is theirs. Flags and flags everywhere. Flags on tops of flags.

SARA: Wars.

PEPA: Wars and men.

SARA: Women, too.

PEPA: But mostly men. … And I think: how can we listen to anything? How can we train our ears to really hear the song of the wind and the trees again?

SARA: Sometimes in silence.

PEPA: Yes? SARA: When I’m out there, on the glacier, I pretend there is silence, even though there is always the sound of the ice PEPA: And what is underneath SARA: Cracking, gurgling, crying PEPA: But you ignore it?

SARA: No PEPA: You just said you pretend there is silence SARA: I pretend so that I can make myself listen, really listen PEPA: What do you hear?

SARA: Sometimes nothing.

Sometimes just the sound of… like the sound of water against a rock.

And then sometimes everything –

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Lights start to focus on Sara, isolating her, as music or subtle sound-scape underscores her speech. Although slightly heightened in poetic affect, the tone of this should remain direct, and conversational.

SARA: Thin sheets of ice singing crackling notes As sea sponges and eels wrestle the passages of the deep – Like an oboe or a low bass steady in its rhythm against the mighty earth; Layers of time folding and unfolding from before Fitzroy knew anything

To the hum of the research station With the languages of different people from different countries Blending into a kind of music filled with ones and zeros, dots and lines, And the sign of waves on a screen

And then, later, as darkness descends, A kind of sadness sets in, low and blue like the blues of the South From where my family is from And this sadness becomes everything – The ripple of ice, the drop of almost rain

This blue is so blue a case study could be made And I think: is this blue my blue?

Is this the only trace

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Of who we’ll be at the end of our days?

And I try to hold it all in The blue of the earth The blue of the moon The blue of the blue of the sky hung low Until I think I cannot hold this blue-ness any longer And then Just then Another sound calls me away

from the station Someone on a machine But also, just for a moment, I think – a sound from the future – As bright and blue as the ice itself -

Light slowly returns to the level at which the scene has been played, as sound also fades.

PEPA: Luka’s language is nearly dead. The Yamana or Yaghan people’s word-music is all but gone, save for a word or two.

SARA: Mamilapinatapai.

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PEPA: And even it has become just a word. A ripple across time. Across space.

Something someone can look up on a computer or a phone divorced from all context.

We lose things. I’ve seen it happen.

This ice is not the same as it once was. Too much suffering.

When I had sheep on the farm, I could see it on their faces.

SARA: …

PEPA: People say animals are stupid. Small brains. They don’t make faces.

But I know different.

And I know the look of sadness – blue-ness, as you said – like a monster from the sea – that can come over them when the suffering of the earth is too much.

The suffering we bring upon it and ourselves through our own stupidity.

SARA: Greed PEPA: Why do we need so much? Why do we need so many things? I see them.

The tourists with their… this phone and that phone and this device and the other, and always with an eye elsewhere – like what they have is not enough.

When what they have could feed a small village.

Sometimes the noise is like a sickness. This noise of suffering.

And I think we will drown in this ridiculous noise.

Because we will not know what else to do.

But then I remember this thing that happens sometimes when I wake up from a terrible sleep.

I put my feet on the ground, and it is cold because I have forgotten my slippers, and oh, how my feet shiver. Like the hurt of the earth itself.

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And I want to curse at everything.

Use all the beautiful terrible words in all of the languages.

But I don’t. I let my feet find their warmth. I let them not give in to the cold.

And as soon as I do, my whole body is thinking of hopeful things.

Even though it knows somewhere there is massive stupidity and greed and power and hate.

I take a step. I look out. I think – I will not let myself understand where I am.

I will not let myself know too much. Because it is only when I say I do not know… that maybe some true knowing comes through.

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Scene Sixteen At the research station, Jordan and Sara, their partner.

JORDAN: Late.

SARA: Mhm. JORDAN: So quiet.

SARA: They must all be sleeping.

JORDAN: One more day.

SARA: Already?

JORDAN: We head back tomorrow.

SARA: How did I-?

JORDAN: Did you forget?

SARA: Time.

JORDAN: This place can SARA: Just lose the sense of it...

JORDAN: And we’re hardly done.

SARA: We don’t need to know everything JORDAN: Huh? SARA: That’s what Pepa says.

JORDAN: She’s become the focus of the documentary?

SARA: It’s not a docuJORDAN: (gently) The Ushuaia chronicles. Right.

SARA: I feel like I know her.

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JORDAN: Well, you’ve been interviewing…

SARA: Like from some other…

JORDAN: What do you mean?

SARA: You don’t think we can?

JORDAN: I’m not one to SARA: You’re the one who told meJORDAN: Huh? SARA: Don’t you remember?

JORDAN: …

SARA: When we were students. That time with the, what was it, squirrel? Chipmunk?

JORDAN: Echinoderm, actually SARA: That you felt a kinship JORDAN: Calling. To the field. There’s a difference SARA: How? JORDAN: You’re talking past lives stuff SARA: I’m not JORDAN: You said you felt as if --- you feel as if you know Pepa--- from some other…?

SARA: So? JORDAN: What other? There is no other SARA: When you’re standing in the Adelie rookery surrounded by the little stones everywhere, the ones where there used to be nests, where we know the penguins made nests once. Bones and feathers tell us a story JORDAN: A story of ghosts

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SARA: We know them JORDAN: We don’t knowSARA: Their bones and feathers.

JORDAN: We didn’t live here 700 years ago.

SARA: That’s not what I mean JORDAN: Sara SARA: It’s not just us JORDAN: …Ok. SARA: Why are you placating me?

JORDAN: I’m not SARA: When we come here, every time we come here JORDAN: It’s been a long day

A moment.

SARA: I love my job, too JORDAN: Where’d that-?

SARA: Sometimes it feels as if… you think I’m…

JORDAN: I’m proud of you. You know that.

SARA: You act as if I’m…

JORDAN: We’re all stressed. I get that.

SARA: I didn’t even mention the word “stress”

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JORDAN: Look, it’s late. And it’s going to be a helluva long trip back. So, let’s just, you know…

A moment.

SARA: You used to break leaves with your hands.

JORDAN: Huh? SARA: Cousin Piper told me.

JORDAN: I was a kid. How does she even remember-?

SARA: You’re still breaking things JORDAN: How am I-?

SARA: Everything we’re standing on… (Sara walks away) JORDAN: Sara, where are you going?

SARA: …

JORDAN: Sara?

In continuous time, Sara walks away from the station, and along the expanse of seemingly endless ice.

After a while, Sara disappears from view.

And now all we hear is the hum of voices And then the hum of the ice.

And then…

Silence.

For a long time.

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