Invincible September
Do not go to sleep angry; stay up and fight.
Invincible September - "Do not go to sleep angry; stay up and fight"
Mike Daisey, "the master of storyteller" according to the New York Times, started his monologue "Invincible Summer" with an intense gaze at the audience. Daisey looked around the room and at the table before he opened his mouth; he was constructing his own time and space in the room. "Do not go to sleep angry," Daisey spoke, "stay up and fight."
Daisey had on minimalistic clothing: a black linen shirt, black pants and a pair of brown perforated dress shoes. And on the table in which Daisey sat behind, there were but three necessities - none of them props: a cup of water, a folded handkerchief, and the script. He drank from the cup of water to rehydrate himself, wiped with the handkerchief to absorb his sweat, and turned the pages of the script to indicate his passing of chapters during his performance. The items on Daisey's table and the garments he had on were deliberately kept basic for one reason - to not divert the audience's attention from Daisey the monologist and his monologue, "Invincible Summer."
"Invincible Summer" starts with marriage of Mike Daisey and his wife, Jean-Michele. With a description of Seattle weather in the background, Daisey tells of his comical wedding with Jean-Michele - the wedding in which they invited 250 Polish relatives, and drank scotch instead of the traditional wine. He jokes how his enjoying the wedding eventually led him and Jean-Michele to be left behind until there were but the two of them, and laments, on a lighthearted note, that they were the only ones left to do the cleaning. But Daisey says, even while he was cleaning, the toast his father gave at his wedding earlier stood on top of his mind - "Do not go to sleep angry; stay up and fight," - a comment directed at the friction of marriage life, and a quote from the toast that first started as a joke. Then Daisey talks about his success in the field of performing arts; his theatre gained local, national, and international attention, and was faced with a happy dilemma; he was offered a .com internet deal. However, Daisey continues to be local ; because he didn't want his privacy to be exposed on the web, he declined the offer. But, instead, got a book deal - the deal that made him to move to New York city at the time of peril; it was Summer 2001.
The core plot of "Invincible Summer" revolves around the fall of the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. Daisey says he moved to New York city with the intention to write his new book. However, his intentions were quickly countered with intense heat of New York, which ultimately incapacitated him in writing and caused him to procrastinate until the very last minute it was due - September. And in mid-September, en route to his publisher, with the final copy of his book, Daisey says he stopped by at a Starbucks coffee shop in lower Manhattan. Then he heard a thunder - not of a lightening bolt but of a plane crash. When the first plane crashed, Daisey says, he was not at all shocked; he thought the incident would just end up as nothing but a sentence in a history book, and severe traffic in the meanwhile. But when the second plane crashed, Daisy "could not think." His perspective changed. Daisey says when he walked out of the Starbucks, he saw a mass of people just like Daisey - thoughtless and motionless. Daisey says he followed the current of the people, but was caught by a hand of a lady that pushed him into a taxi cab. The taxi's - and Daisey's - destination was the Brooklyn bridge, where people on their way out of New York flooded the way "like exiles," Daisey remarks. With the story still caught up in between the New York exiles, Daisey then talks of his last activity on that day, a phone call to his wife - "I am okay."
Ironically, like how it starts, "Invincible Summer" ends with a marriage - this one being Daisey's sister's. As time passed, Daisey continues, the days in New York turned close to normal again. Daisey confesses that Jean-Michele's visit to New York taught him what would be an utter difference between "those who were there" and "those who were not there," but Daisey says that every other aspects of life was back to normal. Building on the recovery of New York, Daisey talks about his favorable return to encountering the desirable - the ordinary and the "mundane" - events of life; he was invited to a wedding - his sister's. Even though Daisey's parents gave him the notice of their divorce during what was supposed to be their last "happy family gathering" before the wedding, his father showed up with a girlfriend at the wedding, and his mother cried upon his shoulders, Daisey says he was okay; Daisey was happy his life went on to see his sister taking her chance in life with her lover - eventually to give new life. Daisey had realized, when he called his wife on that day in September and told her that he was okay, that he could had been a victim if he had not stopped at the Starbucks. And at his sister's wedding, Daisey says, he gave a toast to the couple. "Do not go to sleep angry," Daisey's toast went, "stay up and fight."
Mike Daisey's comically told "Invincible Summer" includes the theme of persisting life. Daisey's incessant jokes, equipped with pre-oriented movements for better elocution, makes the story enjoyable for the audience. Daisey entertains the audience in telling his story as a discrete measure to help them consume, subliminally, the moral of his story - that life will go on, and when it does, one must "stay up and fight."
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