The Fortress of Solitude in the thoughts of the Superdude
Is the infinite zone to be Superalone.
It’s the place that our Superguy is able to Supercry.
Beats retreat from the fray. But it wasn’t always that way.
In the beginning there was the S and the planet Krypton, cryptogrammatically the S at the heart of our Super Strong Man of Steel’s creation myths – his superannuated birth story that places the symbol anywhere from the literal Super S of Super Man to the cryptic codex of the Silver Age Siegel and Shuster segue into pseudo semiotics that sees the S as the First Nation symbol of Hope.
From First Nation finds First Republic and redoubling the S sees literally Latinate Hope dressed as spes – another serpentine double S sandwiching perpetual existence that does exactly what it spes on the tin. Often in Hope. Dorothy’s Thin Bloke. The Tin Bloke. If the Tin Man “only had a heart”, dee dum dee diddly dee… Just because I’m presumin’
That I could be a human
If I only had a heart…
A real man with no start, a Steel man with no past, cast adrift from the slow blast, made his mark as a Clark, yet was only one half of the whole cell, the whole brain, and wholesale he loved Lane, yet when they were asunder, the C’s forced him under –
Just a Warp with no weft
Or a midriff bereft of a sibilant clef.
We return to the heart of our Matter.
Of Our Latter Day Manhatten man.
Our Superman. Supercript but writ small. The last mite in a bursting of light fleeing the might of malignant Kryptonite. Jet black Jor El gets Kal El jettisoned from Krypton to Earth.
Wrapped in a cape but trapped as an ape. Forever to sever the link from his brethren. His kin forced to flee, he’s tethered inert, interred to the earth to fates lying in wait for the child in a crate. Or a manger. Or basket. Cast off downstream, a mythical dream floats away from the dreamer and into the dream.
Deep in the darkness the shard finds it’s niche, hooked in the earth to take root and release – surge faster than a seeding bullet! More powerful than bindweed! Able to overgrow tall buildings at a single bound!
It’s within us all. The Secret Citadel. The Fortress of Solitude.
Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman! Born again.
First Performed at Pulp Diction, Cafe Mila, Godalming, 25th October, 2013
BOB CRYER 