Whimsy is lost in the attention demanded.
We envision being “in thought” as an endearment. We praise our attention held solely in the bosoms of the thinking mind, a hallmark of connection. Such is the obsession harboring control and calling it kindness where often the better word for it is abuse.
- How did attention become the currency?
- Who benefits from this?
- Is there anything left to save the day?
— Manon. #recognize
Over three consecutive nights, I sat in a hall bathed in a bright red covering every corner, chair, and carpet. Crystal white chandeliers dangled like shooting stars.A grandeur of immense magnitude projected itself onto every soul in the one-thousand-five-hundred-seat Teatro Regio di Torino.
And yet the space didn’t restrict the sound from jumping over the orchestra in the pit and onto the farthest corners, a testimony not only to the power of the human voice but also to the engineering ingenuity that made the necessary acoustics for it to be amplified.
Every night Manon played in different renditions by three distinguished composers.
Daniel Auber was dull. Jules Massenet was my favorite. And well Puccini was Puccini and the fact that you only recognize him from the three is telling enough.
In Massenet’s version, Manon is under trial, and the stage designer built a balcony overlooking the stage where judges and jury sat as the play went along being witnessed from above.
One of the scenes has Manon viscerally abused by an older man. The depiction was despicable and even more disturbing with two audiences one from above on the stage with judges and jury and another us 1500-person listeners sitting in our comfy bright red chairs like kings.
For a moment there, I questioned why the heck are we still watching Manon. How can we sit still in witnessing something painful and be ok?
No answer came immediately.
Four hours later, the opera was done. Italians do love their entracte which are less about bathroom breaks and more so a 30-minute social engagement after every act.
The attention demanded floated in and out of three sets that night: one on the stage, one observing the stage from within and outside of it, and the last well took a darker turn altogether fascinated at the allure of suffering on display.
— Judge & Jury. #understand
Three operas. Three Manon. And on Sunday, I left Torino.Took a bus over the Alps into France, and on that ride, my attention drifted to an odd choice for a podcast — a harrowing story with so much courage, pain, and vulnerability beyond measure.
It was a testimony from a young man who survived being molested and raped throughout his childhood. Toward the end of it, he said this:
There are so many days, like even yesterday; when I was thinking about how I just sometimes want to struggle and feel pain. And sometimes, I want to quit my job, sell my house, live in a one-bedroom apartment, and have nothing just so I can feel it again.
I just want to feel that pain again I want to feel that uncertainty in life. so I can imagine that the people that do go down the drug-using routes and abusive routes are chasing that high, chasing that feeling that they are so familiar with…
I couldn’t help but wonder how many of the 1500 souls in that room are experiencing the resonance of pain endured in their lives through the visceral abuse this entertainment showcased.
It is hard to imagine how what we seek is a reflection of the most hurtful things we have endured. It sounds paradoxical and it is.
Yet the mind seems to feel safer in the known even if it’s the cause of the harm in the first place — an unimaginable thought that explains something that, in reality, sometimes is better left misunderstood.
— Gods among us. #accept
The walls of the hall fall. And in zooming out we replace our world today to be on that stage. With the mind as both judge and jury and the audience, we start to glean at the abuse dynamics endured and unraveling.The perpetual cycle of suffering is steeped in the narrative of the mind with technology amplifying it at every turn and taking the blame because it is an offense to the mind to admit its shortcomings.
Humanity’s democracy experiment failed. One of the mind’s most noble models. And yet we still glorify structures and figures of abuse justifying their success in what we feel familiar while in reality is drenched with vile disgust and harm.
The frailty of technology is that it tries to save the mind of itself and, in doing so, always sits center stage to its judgment. The pull safeguards the illusion and leaves us in shambles in the aftermath, afraid to leap into the whimsy of the gray where negotiation, dialogue, and the mind suffer from not knowing.
The curtain closed. The veil lifted. And in a moment’s notice, the crystal white chandeliers brightened signaling the end of the show for us to wake up from this trance of being and applause.
Until next time,
Carlo
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