PRODUCTION JOURNAL

Here are a few excerpts from an interview with Risto Ojassaar.

Risto was a member of the dance troupe aboard the MS Estonia. The building sized luxury ship sank on September 28th, 1994:

"The contract with the Estonia was our big break. We even worked up a new, modern dance for the occasion. But, it ended up being our first and last performance. The show was well-received and ended to enthusiastic applause just after midnight.

As the clock stuck 1:00 a.m., everything seemed fine and everyone went through the same routines they'd gone through a hundred times before. That's when there was the sound: a deep, metallic bang, like the sound of an enormous sledgehammer striking and then reverberating through the hull.

'Now we have hit an iceberg!' shouted one passenger drinking in the ship's Pub Admiral. Investigators said this was the catastrophic moment. After being pounded by a series of unusually large waves, the bow door tore off the ship, snagging and yanking open a critical inner door-the last barrier between the car deck and the open sea. The crashing noise was the sound of the 50-ton bow door bouncing off a front part of the hull. Like an enormous whale with its mouth wide open, the Estonia then lunged at the waves as if it were trying to swallow the sea.

What I thought was, `Okay, now the ship has tilted and it will tilt back.' It never did. In the hallway, panic had already set in. Passengers, some clad only in their underwear and many of them screaming, were bolting for the main stairs. Only later did I realize that meant almost certain death. I was lucky. The manager of my dance troupe, who was in a cabin nearby, was thinking more clearly. She had been on the Estonia before and understood that with the ship on its side, the main stairwell would no longer lead them us of the ship. I started that way too, but she grabbed me and shouted, `No! This way! To the other stairs!' She saved my life. Pulling each other up steep, treacherous stairs, we made our escape. They say that from the time the door fell off to the time the ship capsized, passengers had a mere 15 minutes to make an escape. Most of the 989 people on board never stood a chance. "

Emerging at last onto an outer deck, Ojassaar and his manager had no time to think about what to do next. Within seconds, before having a chance to don life jackets, a mammoth wave swept the two overboard, separating them. The next time Ojassaar saw his manager was at her funeral.

989 people were on the Estonia. Only 137 survived that night.
Today, Risto Ojassaar is a car salesman.

Here are some links about the metal warship which we will call home on Oct. 12, 13, 14.
http://www.battleshipnc.com/
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/ships/dafs/BB/bb55.html

Owl

My owl is interior space.
Spoiled and malignant, he perches on my insides
And when I let him, soars thruogh my caverns
Dangling enormous claws and peering about for prey.
When he hunts I have learned
Not to move for I have been
A rabbit caught by an owl in an open field.
My own owl in my own field
So I know how sharp his talons
And how far the woods.
He struck so fast and sure his claws
Closed about my spine before I rabbit realized
His breath was my breath
His ears were my ears
And I did not move.

"Rural Free Delivery", Runyon Woods, Loom Press, Chapel Hill, N.C., 1975
 

Here's an excerpt from "Someone" by Dennis O'Driscoll

someone is writing a check that will be marked "drawer deceased"
someone is circling posthumous dates on a calender
someone is listening to an irrelevant weather forecast
someone is making rash promises to firends
someone's coffin is being laminated, shined
who feels this morning quite as well as ever
someone if asked would find nothing remarkable in today's date
perfume and goodbyes her final will and testament
someone today is seeing the world for the last time
as innocently as he had seen it first.
 

BURIAL
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Mine is a body that should die at sea!
And have for a grave, instead of a grave
Six feet deep and the length of me,
All the water that is under the wave!

And terrible fishes to seize my flesh,
Such as a living man might fear,
And eat me while I am firm and fresh,-
Not wait till I've been dead for a year!
 

Further Research

USS North Carolina-Captain Dave
(http://www.battleshipnc.com/)

Stanford Prison Experiment
(http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/relaged/970108prisonexp.html)

Stanford Prison Experiment Discussion
(http://www.prisonexp.org/discuss.htm)