Chorus monologue

CHORUS

EXT. A SMALL, SLEEPY TOWN

The NARRATOR, a dry soft-spoken type, is watching TODD walk down the sidewalk.

NARRATOR

(To the audience)

Watch closely the man who always assumes he's being observed. He imagines his life playing out like the plot of a film. There is never a time when he doesn't feel evaluated, catalogued. He gets embarrassed when he plays the guitar badly, alone. He hums theme music when driving fast cars around curves in the road. He imagines all of the days of his life at work combining into a montage, a meaningless blur. He doesn't believe in God, but deep down he imagines there's an omniscient being somewhere watching him, keeping track and deeply fascinated.

I was part of a Greek chorus once, you know. We told tales of highest tragedy and darkest drama. I myself told of battles that drained the seas and shook the land, of men whose helmets gleamed like suns, men who stood like mountains. I said things like, "Oh fate, the venom of thy barbéd tongue numbs all men to the bite."

Now I say things like, "Todd was a man who spent his days brooding before a screen, then wondered where the day had gone." There's very little heroism left in the world, and where there is, it is marred by moral ambiguity. There's no telling which city deserves to triumph over another in the tales from today. Were Todd wiped out in a missile attack, he would be the first to argue that his country had engaged in unprovoked, aggressive military tactics against third-world countries to exploit them for natural resources.

Perhaps that is the great tragedy. Here I am, with the voice of a poet and words that make men gods, but there are no more gods. Not in the heavens, not in our minds, not in our stories or even our words.