We're All on the Edge of Madness
I
A monolingual English speaker struggles to explain that his first language cannot be translated into words. That it lies beyond a unit of sound. That meaning, as one understands it to be, surpasses that which we call language, that which we call speech.
They—the four performers stood in front of a crowd bent into beta persei stars against cold concrete—polyphonate to the stories of people celebrating their lives. An assassin, a child, a person on the edge of recognition. Bookended by; ‘what a time to be alive.’
The mental image of Tony Blair as a euthanasia nurse rouses laughter.
The mental image of a police officer’s foot on someones throat stirs silence.
Animals dutifully study in their animal classrooms. They learn the necessary skills to embrace their role as adult animals burning in the forest on fire. Their mothers never come home.
Everyone is on the brink of something terrifying.
II
We are introduced to a sonic landscape.
A city that, on the edge of light, harbors containment. The tantalizing realization of something one should not touch lingers on in the silhouettes produced by a machine. It rotates with a series of projections that accentuate objects of various transparencies.
A victorian magic lantern for a post-apocalyptic world.
En la obscuridad uno se convierte inquieto, inestable en nuestra ignorancia.
The mechanisms of electricity highlighted by this machine tease a naked city devoid of it: naked as in exposed, as in vulnerable, as in lacking sensuality.
Tension, palpable tension.
A swarm of moths, of angels that know no bounds. Man is no different.
Man is no less moth than the butterfly.
III
A figure pliés under strobes.
We capture their movements in fragmented clauses, as if the eyes were a camera and the figure our subject. A ballet port de bras and poise.
The frustration of a cauterized wound.
They prep the wall, one slap, two. Splat. Cake makes contact.
The strobing continues on undisturbed. Who was affected?