blog of Joe cz Liao
Despite my lassitude after a long day of plentiful traveling, and my warm comfort in bed doing my bedtime reading, I was suddenly awashed with a strong urge to write. The trigger was the encountering of the word ‘magic bullet’…
I recall a few years ago, 2006 that was, while I was in LA, I went to a play/musical with a few friends called “The Black Rider – The Casting of the Magic Bullets“. My friend Yankov who, then as a master’s student at the UCLA theatre school, inspired us to all go out to the play. He had warned us about the slightly unusual style in advance, and as I was along with others also in the process of putting together a stage performance then, I paid a lot of attention to the highly stylistic stage design, lighting and directions. Occupied by all the spectacles, I failed comprehensively to appreciate the classic, well-known, (originally german) ingenious story.
Wilhelm, a file clerk, falls in love with a huntsman’s daughter. In order to marry, Wilhelm must prove his worth as a hunter and gain her father’s approval, but, as “a man of pen and ink”, his shot is lousy and his hopes of marriage worsen. That is until he is offered magic bullets by the devil, Pegleg – who assures him that his bullets will always have a sure shot. However, Pegleg stipulates that, while most of the bullets will hit anything Wilhelm pleases, one of the bullets is under Pegleg’s control. Foolish, naive, and overrun with desperate hope, Wilhelm accepts the Faustian pact. On the day of Wilhelm’s wedding, the final bullet strikes his beloved dead. He then goes mad, and joins the previous victims of Satan’s cunning in the Devil’s carnival.
—A Synopsis from our beloved Wikipedia
Ever since my childhood, I have always been curious about where one would actually find the devil to make deals with. Not that I was prepared to make one, but I was genuinely curious, or thinking ‘just in case’. Now that I am not as ingenuous as then, when I was reminded of this story tonight, I suddenly realized the (banal) fact that the deal has always been in place awaiting us to jettison our long upheld values, moral standards and integrity.
Now, who doesn’t want a few magic bullets? Thoughts anyone?
