Navy Blue
Poem by Oona Doherty & Bush Moukarzel

Hello.
Thanks for coming.
It’s good to see ya
I didn’t know you’d be here.
I’m surprised.
You’ve come a long way.
A really long way.
Four and a half billion years.
That’s a long way to come to see a show. But I appreciate it.
It means the world to me.
I’m happy you’re here.
All the way out here.

In space.

Are we floating? Or are we falling?
Can a thing be falling if it never hits the ground? Unless everything’s falling.
Am I falling?
I’m the one in blue.
Next to the one in blue.
Next to the one in blue.
Such a small thing, almost nothing, surrounded by darkness, surrounded by all that space.
Surrounded by what’s called Everything Else.

A small, insignificant thing on a small, insignificant thing. A pale blue dot on a pale blue dot.
But look again.
There’s a whole world in that dancer.

A microcosm of everyone you love, everyone you know, every human being who ever was. When
she raises her hand its not her hand rising. All the hands rising. When he turns his head, its not
his head turning, all the heads turning, my heads turning, my heads turned.
Like the world spins on its axis
Round and around and around to end up where we started.
Falling.

Look again.
I’m every creator and destroyer of civilization, every young couple in love, every mother and
father, every hopeful child
My child.
A pale pink dot. Little insignificant thing. What’s she gonna be?
Out of a pale pink dot grew every inventor, explorer, every corrupt politician.
Every Jim crow, Donald trump, or Arlene foster
Every Marine Le Pen, Margaret Thatcher, or Adolf Hitler. Every Xi jingping, Idi amin or Kim
Jong-Un,

Every Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, or Anders Breivik, every Harvey Weinstein, Simon
Lindberg, or Dr. Luke, every Maya Forstater, Luka Magnotta, Ben Shapiro, every Jordan
Peterson, Ben van Beurden, Josef Meingele, or Bernie Madoff, every Dominique Strauss-Kahn
or Sarah Palin

every Leopold II, or Leopold III or presumably fourth if there’d been a fourth, every Ronald
Reagan or Vladimir Putin.

Every one of them Every single one of them a pale pink dot on this pale blue dot – a little mote
of dust suspended in a sunbeam, struggling for significance.

Look again.
At a rising of a feeling, at the intent of a movement.
What’s it about? About being blue?
Every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived here
About the endless cruelties visited by the people of one corner of this pixel on the people of
some other corner, about the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so they
could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a fucking dot.
Rivers of blood turning this pale blue dot into a pale red dot.

A history of bodies beaten black and blue and red
20th April 1968 Enoch Powell spat shite,
25th May 2020 George Floyd
28th June 1914 Franz Ferdinand is assassinated in Sarajevo
21th July 1969 a man walks on the moon

6th July 1967 the nigeran civil war begins
16th August 1819 the Peterloo massacre takes place in Manchester
22nd September 1980 a full-scale invasion of Iran by neighbouring Iraq

17th October 1961 Algerian masacare in paris
16th November 1995 Ratko Mladic is charged with genocide
11th December 1994 Russia sends tanks and troops into Chechnya
12th January 1879 the British invade the Zulus
24th February 2022 Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine

Hurling so slowly through a thick black soup of time. A parasitic organism eating itself alive and
regrowing over and over. An algorithm on loop.
Birth germ death birth germ death.
Birth germ death birth germ death.
Birth germ death birth germ death.
Birth germ death birth germ dance.

Look again at that dancer
What the fuck
That’s me.
The one in blue
Next to the one in blue
Next to one in blue

delusion

What the hell am I doing?
The engine of dread. The poison of privilege. The core is rotten.
In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save
us from ourselves.

So Yes, I will have a double,
Yes, I will fall
open arms into and out of my own ego. Let go let go the great let go.
Evaporate you little snowflake
off into the candescent art world of twinkles
Game over. Silver lion biennale smile. Deep breath asana on a frankincense oil burner night.
Make art and think about the cosmos.
Agonise over which farrow and ball paint you’ll use on the skirting board.
My amazon prime next day delivery, my mortgage, bricks and mortar, my motor, my murder
ballet. More money
More walks with cappuccinos talking about the big project
More bullshit.
I never sacrificed my privilege.
I made a show and bloody dance about it,
it paid for the paint.

Listen
all these bodies bruise-blue.
What does it cost, this pale blue dot?
Costumes €3000
Light design €3500
Projection design €4500
Sound design €7500
Technican €2000
Projector hire €2000
Set materials €1000
Tech rentals €15,000
Marketing €1800
Dancers €122'835
Accommodation €55'455
Travel €22'800
choreographer fee €10,000
childcare €3000
This speech €2500
A total production budget of What are we on?........ €291,656

And what’s the point? Who’s it for?
What will it do?
I see myself
falling
into insignificance.

The only thing left is to mutate.
Accept. Eat it all alive and kicking.
Into the deepest darkest blue night. A navy blue dread. The most evil honest reflection of what
your existence really does. Is doing. Moment by moment while you intellectualize beauty.
Waiting for a Boris Johnston update losing concentration and looking at his hair. Opened
mouthed at the nun in the middle of the road stopping the fighting. Crying over black lives
matter in a home-owner oasis in Co. Down. A milky haven. Dazed and confused t-shirts with
open arms falling into a deep dark blue abyss.

Through time and space and regret and privilege and denial and dance.
That’s it. It’s just that.
Inside that dancer is a world of work. Every blue collar, every essential worker, labouring to keep
this inessential story going, the story of how we came to be here, what we did when we were
here, and where we might be going.
This faint flicker of a falling man through deep blue night. Squinting eyes catching the last trail of
leg through space, a comet’s tail, dragged across the acrylic night sky. Arch back and look up to
where we were, what we are.

The meteor sinks its teeth in the ground. Thank god. A bloody mess

Nothing.
A pale blue dot.
There’s nothing you can do
We must love one another and die.

Thank you, Lord, for insignificance. Thank you for meaninglessness. Thank you for letting this
all pale into insignificance. This dance show. That dancer. A pale blue dot on a pale blue dot. The
only home I’ve ever known. Thank you for letting me live here. An insignificant thing on an
insignificant thing. Thank you for teaching me the importance of being unimportant. The
significance of insignificance.

And now that I mean nothing. And now that I mean nothing. I can do anything.
I will walk out of this theatre, and you will walk out of this theatre, and we will do unimportant
things and those things, thank God, will matter.

Such responsibility.
Look again.
My face is pale.
Look again
My thoughts are blue.
Look again
Until I end.
full stop.
pale blue