August 2, 2011
by Peter Blegvad
As the scene opens, two Armchair Travellers: Bellini and Salomé, are seen sitting in thin air as if on armchairs. We are in a virtual world. The future. When people need a vacation from reality, they go to special theatres to “catch a COLD” as the saying goes. A COLD being an acronym for a Collective Oneiric Lucid Delay. They buy a ticket, and are ushered to seats in the dimness. Sounds of deep breathing, snores and the steady hiss of leaking gas. They sit back among their fellow passengers and allow themselves to be collectively gassed with Travelling Gas. Sleep. In this sleep the passengers “catch a COLD” as the saying, born of endless ad campaigns, goes. A COLD being an acronym for a Collective Oneiric Lucid Delay. (The Collective Oneirics Company, [CO Co.] is the vast entertainment conglomerate which provides the populace with escapism, offering a way out of the world into a single long continuous communal dream in which one “pays to play” a part, dreaming that one has free will in one’s role.) This is the virtual world we are in. It’s an oneiric soap opera and it has run for longer than The Archers. Bellini and Salomé are in it now. It’s evening. Bellini and Salomé have met at the neighbourhood bustop. (With other passengers coming home from work, Bellini has just stepped off a bus which we see behind him.) Salomé has been waiting to meet Salami, her husband. Bellini and his wife, Baloney, are their next-door neighbours. Bellini and Salami work at the same plant. Belini tells Salomé that Salami hadn’t been on the bus this evening. They duck behind a bush for privacy. Salomé blurts “Belly,” Bellini sobs “Sally,” and they fall into each other’s arms. They’re both very refined and classy. But they’re cheating, (Salomé on Salami, Bellini on Baloney), having an adulterous affair. Unbeknownst to them, of course, their respective spouses, Baloney and Salami are having one too. They are as coarse as Bellini and Salomé are refined. Salami tells Baloney “I wish I’d met you before I met Salomé. She doesn’t understand me. You and I have so much more in common!” And when Baloney tells Salami “all I have in common with Bellini is the assonance of our nomenclature.” Salami: “I feel the same way, Belly!” And they clinch. Cut to the other couple clinching.