FACING THE EYE

EXTRA (MALE)

…What I mean is, feeling so remote from other people, feeling the weight of constant disquiet, of being the exception, of wearing one’s existential angst. I suppose it’s bearable if you make something of it… I don’t know, maybe a work of art, a discovery of some sort, a film, some remarkable thing…

Whenever I hit rock bottom, I console myself by thinking that all this pain will one day be analyzed in my biography, and other people will connect all the interesting dots between my pain and my creation… Time’s running out though, and I still haven’t created anything, nothing to base a bio on… nothing that will live on… That would really bug me to die and leave nothing behind… if they could just publish my biography. I know you’ve got to earn that though. It’s not like—Facebook and existential angst aside—I haven’t got the utilitarian skills to get me a bio; what a pain! The luckier ones have what it takes to get bio’ed the way they should: poverty, a major handicap, a history of childhood molestation, learning difficulties, dyslexia of some kind, orphanhood, political refugee status, or just plain homosexuality. I’d settle for any of those: something to make me stand out and get noticed, a grain of sand in the works. I’m deprived of all that: not even left-handed, nothing!

Still I am hampered by… (head in hands) all that, all of it… I have to bear the cross of my superiority without any of the benefits!

the choir rejoins the extra in front of the eye. They all stare at it, expecting an answer.

…It’s like I don’t have the talent of my genius. Sure, that’s it. I’m lacking the talent of my genius.

WHOLE CHOIR

Sure, that’s it. I’m lacking the talent of my genius.

They become the salsa class again.

MARIE 2

…With the Renaissance, Humanists turned from more occult forces to embrace earthly life. Connections were sought between the sacred and the natural: a fusion of divine grace and the world of the senses. Thus angels mutated into a new union of the material and the ethereal as symbolized by their feet, now often planted firmly on the ground.

Thus we can assume a double effect of this humanism: the deification of Man and the humanization of Angels.

MARIE 2 rejoins the dance class.

TEACHER

(to the group) Okay, okay, here’s what we’re going to do. The women will move around clockwise and change partners. What you have to know about salsa is it’s the man who decides when you change steps. If you are front-and-back and the man wants to switch to the sides, or on-the-spot, or rotation, he must signal it with his hand on your shoulder blades. Gentlemen, don’t be afraid to show direction to the ladies—no need to push! Here’s what I want: on seven, a small breath and hand on the shoulder blade, light pressure. One more thing: ladies, even if the man isn’t quite following the music, if he makes a mistake, or even if he’s completely lost, follow him anyway. He’ll get it eventually and adjust by himself, but not by following the lady, okay? Salsa’s not about feminism, got that?

MARIE 2 is now partners with KARINE.

MARIE 1

…and the rule of men was then at its apogee: it was now his turn to shell peas, snap stems, pare fruit, dissect animals, as well as dig up bodies, open them up, split their skulls and look inside—to autopsy bodies so he could better portray the world in painting.

They were the ones who had to discover the laws governing the universe, laws no longer having much to do with God, but understanding light that gives shape and colour to landscapes, so that finally it reflected on mountains from the side and moved them into the distance, on bodies that looked human, and on bodies of water that also came to life.

Never had humans been so thirsty for understanding, never had they so doubted their eyes—now so clearly capable of being deceived, of being veiled layer upon layer by Nature.