[Lyric] 4.48 Psychosis Excerpt (Sarah Kane)

4.48 Psychosis was first performed at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, London, on 23 June 2000. The cast was as follows:

Daniel Evans
Jo McInnes
Madeline Potter

Directed by James Macdonald
Designed by Jeremy Herbert
Lighting by Nigel J Edwards
Sound by Paul Arditti

- - - - -

(A very long silence.)

– But you have friends.

(A long silence.)

You have a lot of friends.
What do you offer your friends to make them so
supportive?
(A long silence.)

What do you offer your friends to make them so
supportive?

(A long silence.)

What do you offer?

(Silence.)

- - - - -

a consolidated consciousness resides in a darkened banqueting
hall near the ceiling of a mind whose floor shifts as ten
thousand cockroaches when a shaft of light enters as all
thoughts unite in an instant of accord body no longer expellent
as the cockroaches comprise a truth which no one ever utters

     I had a night in which everything was revealed to me.
     How can I speak again?

the broken hermaphrodite who trusted hermself alone finds the
room in reality teeming and begs never to wake from the
nightmare
     and they were all there
     every last one of them
     and they knew my name
     as I scuttled like a beetle along the backs of their chairs

Remember the light and believe the light

An instant of clarity before eternal night

     don't let me forget

- - - - -

I am sad

I feel that the future is hopeless and that things cannot improve

I am bored and dissatisfied with everything

I am a complete failure as a person

I am guilty, I am being punished

I would like to kill myself

I used to be able to cry but now I am beyond tears
I have lost interest in other people

I can't make decisions

I can't eat

I can't sleep

I can't think

I cannot overcome my loneliness, my fear, my disgust

I am fat

I cannot write

I cannot love

My brother is dying, my lover is dying, I am killing them both

I am charging towards my death

I am terrified of medication

I cannot make love

I cannot fuck

I cannot be alone

I cannot be with others

My hips are too big

I dislike my genitals

At 4.48
when depression visits
I shall hang myself
to the sound of my lover's breathing

I do not want to die

I have become so depressed by the fact of my mortality that I
have decided to commit suicide

I do not want to live

I am jealous of my sleeping lover and cover his induced
unconsciousness

When he wakes he will envy my sleepless night of thought and
speech unslurred by medication

I have resigned myself to death this year

Some will call this self-indulgence
(they are lucky not to know its truth)
Some will know the simple fact of pain

This is becoming my normality

- - - - -- - - - -

It wasn't for long, I wasn't there long. But drinking bitter black coffee I
catch that medicinal smell in a cloud of ancient tobacco and something
touches me in that still place and a wound from two years ago opens
like a cadaver and a long buried shame roars its foul decaying grief.

     A room of expressionless faces string blankly at my pain, so
      devoid of meaning there must be evil intent.

     Dr This and Dr That and Dr Whatsit who's just passing and
     thought he'd pop in to take the piss as well. Burning in a hot
     tunnel of dismay, my humiliation complete as I shake without
     reason and stumble over words and have nothing to say about
     my 'illness' which anyway amounts only to knowing that there's
     no point in anything because I'm going to die. And I am
     deadlocked by that smooth psychiatric voice of reason which
     tells me there is an objective reality in which my body and mind
     are one. But I am not here and never have been. Dr This writes it
     down and Dr That attempts a sympathetic murmur. Watching
     me, judging me, smelling the crippling failure oozing from my
     skin, my desperation clawing and all-consuming panic
     drenching me as I gape in horror at the world and wonder why
     everyone is smiling and looking at me with secret knowledge of
     my aching shame.

     Shame shame shame.
     Drown in your fucking shame.

     Inscrutable doctors, sensible doctors, way-out doctors, doctors
     you'd think were fucking patients if you weren't shown proof
     otherwise, ask the same questions, put words in my mouth, offer
     chemical cures for congenital anguish and cover each other's
     arses until I want to scream for you, the only doctor who ever
     touched me voluntarily, who looked me in the eye, who laughed
     at my gallows humour spoken in the voice from the newly-dug
     grave, who took the piss when I shaved my head, who lied and
     said it was nice to see me. Who lied. And said it was nice to see
     me. I trusted you, I loved you, and it's not losing you that hurts
     me, but your bare-faced fucking falsehoods that masquerade as
     medical notes.

     Your truth, your lies, not mine.

     And while I was believing that you were different and that you
     maybe even felt the distress that sometimes flickered across
     your face and threatened to erupt, you were covering your arse
     too. Like every othoer stupid mortal cunt.

     To my mind that's betrayal. And my mind is the subject of these
     bewildered fragments.

     Nothing can extinguish my anger.

     And nothing can restore my faith.

     This is not a world in which I wish to live.

- - - - -