Excerpt from For Your Eyes Only by Elliott Durko Lynch

Editor's Note: This issue has been the longest in publishing that I think we've ever done. Originally we started putting the issue together in 2007, we finally got to press in 2008 and 2009 and are still getting copies out to people! I have been very remiss in at least getting things onto to the blog or the website, which I also blame on a lack of internet connection at home and a lot of personal issues. But here is the first of several pieces that we've "recently" published.


Mea culpa! Mea Culpa!






Excerpt from the show ‘For Your Eyes Only’
Performed October 19 – 21 2006 Intermedia Arts Naked Stages Program,
Generously Funded by the Jerome Foundation

Performed by Elliott Durko Lynch, with Sara Shaylie, Anna Marie Shogren, and Matt Alto.

Written by Elliott Durko Lynch




Among other things, the fictitious character Howard Nobody, who makes a few appearances in the show, has a myspace page. The password unfortunately was lost on October 21st 2006. It is available for view at www.myspace.com/howard_nobody.


Among other things, the fictitious character US_POSTAL WORKER, also has a myspace page, which has suffered the same fate. www.myspace.com/the_postal_worker
Neither of them appear in this script.

Before the performance starts, with theatrical knowledge that the show ‘hasn’t started’ Elliott sits on floor with his laptop and watches YouTube Videos, the screen is mirrored on the Big Screen (the cyke wall). Preferably with Audio.

The Videos/Pages visited/played are:

Billy Idol, Eyes Without A Face (Official Music Video)

Celine Dion, All By Myself (Official Music Video)

Someone to Watch Over Me (Covered by a young teenage woman)

Two Mypace Pages:

Myspace Website US POSTAL WORKER (the videos of “Wait a Minute Mr. Postman” are played).

Myspace Website Elliott’s Myspace Memorial



Elliott strikes the laptop, the stage is empty with the exception of a table in the front corner of the stage, with chair, microphone, Amplifier, lamp, tape recorder, and manila folder. He sits in the chair, turns on the amplifier under the table, opens the folder and begins to read.

I've been writing letters, like an act of rebellion. I do this because over a year ago, one month after graduating from University, and five months before I began to pay for it, I received a letter in the mail, from my friend Ryan Hagen.

He is my oldest friend outside of my family. We knew each other in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, where I grew up.

<< Out of the Folder Elliott takes out the letter >>

His letter starts,
June 7th 2005,
“Elliott, I'm sitting now in a little coffee house in Bar Harbor, Maine, on a clear Tuesday afternoon. With some effort I carried my 15 pound typewriter in my backpack as I made the 8-mile bike ride across the interior of the island from my house in Seal Harbor.

I mention that its a Tuesday because the meat of this letter is actually another letter altogether, one I have tried to write you for at least a year -- tried and failed, I suppose. It’s about another clear Tuesday from our pasts, one that left its marks on me in ways I have only just begun to understand and only barely begun to put to paper in the correct way.”

<< Elliott puts the letter aside >>

That Tuesday, the Tuesday from our pasts, was the second Tuesday of college for Ryan and me. He was in New York, and I was in Minneapolis. That Tuesday was September 11th, 2001, and we were realizing the how enormously privileged our lives were.

This performance is about privilege,
This performance is about necessity

I was compelled, by a force.

My brain has changed, my life has changed. I never thought I would despise myself, despise what I did, or despise what we do. but I do.

I can't live without my computer. I grew up with it. I remember it. I remember it well.

I remember with it.

I was compelled to save everything, by a force.