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Dear A.,
Thank you for inviting me to
your sunny hemisphere, but I don't feel like
leaving my winter sanctuary. I would have come if
warmth seemed to me less ignoble, light less
embarrassing. A cosmopolitan season would encumber
me with its conveyor belts, boring lineups,
demeaning controls. The crowds of tourists at the
international facilities can hardly make me feel
urbane, well-travelled, cultivated. Provincial
minds could. It was possible to learn from them.
But the parochial has become broad-minded, the
traditional modern, the prejudiced enlightened, the
benighted well-informed, the unaware deliberate,
and one is reluctant to learn from equals.
Reminiscing about my past work
could have tempted me. To capture spontaneity with
my camera. Steal a soul once more. The soul of
someone who from birth has eluded calm ponds,
shadows, mirrors, the evil lens. Of one who
suspects anything generating
self-consciousness.
Souls were fascinating.
Integrity, genuineness, depth, dignity, wrinkles.
All that we reject for ourselves is fascinating. I
could live months on the blood of such a soul. But
as even Plato guessed in his Symposium, the soul is the softest thing that
exists. Its natural delicacy cannot bear certain
forms of self-examination. The enigmatic maxim
"Know thyself" could be fatal. Narcissus' soul was snatched as he caught a view
of himself, not from within but from a pool. He
became his double, his echo. And those who saw
themselves in the mirroring pupils of Gorgo's eyes were turned into stone. Like the
evil lens would turn them into prints,
transparencies, pixels. Not harmless reflections,
mind you, but prodigious images that mimic the
soul, diffuse it into alien motives, strategies,
schemes.
I used to let my black and white
collections of characters hang in a gallery, or
sell them to magazines. Art is often made of stolen
souls. I presented them as tokens of my perceptive
eye, emblems of my style, symbols of my free play,
badges of my ego. Once exhibited, they were
forfeited. The analyses of critics, the comments of
the educated public, exhausted their remains, my
reserves. Their blood dried out, recycled a
thousand times, thinned out by evaluations, sipped
by appraisals, sucked into articles. The images
lost their radiance, their gravitas. Looked
trivial, wore out. As if they had lost their soul,
like their models.
Later I returned to my old
preserves, looking for more. I found them full of
suckers: vampires with cameras and bloodless
victims charging for posing. We have bitten their
throats, and now they are at ours. Years ago they
were afraid of having their souls stolen. Now that
they have none, they would gladly sell them. They
strike a pose, impersonate ancestors, masquerade as
themselves, attitudinize. They are aware, plugged
in. They have given up their ease, their indolent
meditation, to adopt premeditation, malice,
ulterior motives. They "know themselves", you may
say. They are us.
I labored, toiled, worked my
butt off. Self-consciousness demands exertion,
struggle, sweat. But envy motivated me, lent me
strength. I was jealous of their rhythm, their
ability to hit the mark with no effort. I wanted to
learn, to get rid of effort altogether, to be them.
To be them plus my equipment. I was young. I
believed then spontaneity could be acquired,
absorbed, osmotically perhaps. I feigned innocence,
experimented with impulsiveness, improvised. I was
spontaneous with forethought. I never learned. They did. So to answer your question: a soul
cannot be stolen by the evil lens. No longer. It's
a superstition. Has become.
I hope to see you here next
summer then. Or in the spring will be great. Some
new cafés have opened. We could check out
some exhibitions.
Best,
C. |
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