ACT I: THE EYES
A single spotlight. The performer stands center stage, still. Long pause before speaking.
I looked into their eyes and I saw the universe behind.
Beat.
But then I looked closer and it was mine.
Steps forward.
Home. The one I’d been looking for.
Silence. Then, quieter:
We are the last generation that knew a world more here than there.
Takes out their cellphone.
Cold. Simple.
Examines the device. Lets it drop. Looks at their hand.
The heat of a body is more than temperature. It’s expansion in unimaginable ways. Rhythm. Push. Vision. Intention. A beginning with an end, and a whole lot of wonder in between. Stolen.
The human experience with no touch is a window with no view. A concrete wall between us and infinity.
Searching the audience:
What have we agreed on? How? When did it happen? When did we decide it was okay to steal from each other? To steal the warmth through attention for consumption. It happened too quietly. Slow drain.
We give without thinking and take without measure.
Pause. A stroller appears in the back. The performer addresses the baby inside it.
Ask all the questions. Fill with intention. What do you want? What do you get? Out of this. Ask yourself loud and clear, so clear that it won’t matter if you actually find answers. Because the goal is the walk. The prize is the living. And in the giving is the receiving. For more giving in a loop of receiving.
Back to the front.
Your true home is inside the living’s eyes. Soulful penetration for a fertile congregation.
ACT II: THE CAGE
The light shifts. Colder now. Pacing begins.
The domesticated self.
In between lattes, bills and workouts. Bio-hacked as we can and burning down the hours for some basic living buying. Above somebody and below somebody. Socially and in apartment buildings. Unable to think further, you buy polyester, unnecessaries and designer on credit.
Faster now, building:
Logos, dilution, delusion and emissions of energy harvested. Fast tapping thumbs making it all crumble. Flagging thoughts, tilted heads, following protocols and feeding “how to’s” to the void. Unable.
To touch, to argue, to have discussions, to nude.
Stops. Quieter:
Mentally sexed up lonely to exhaustion. Repressed. Gooning. In and out of work hours ballooning. Breaks to recover. Not sooner. You wait for permission to exhale. Then inhale shallow.
The heroic turned autonomous unintentional.
Looking at hands:
This pain, this heartache, the pity. The flame, the lust, the grief. Unchecked, ignored, but they’re still breathing down your neck complaining. Rightfully. The inefficiency of the bone exposed, but the majestic dimensions of the mind forgotten. Wrongfully.
They see a privacy wall and try to see over it by jumping
Hard to see truth from here, isn’t it? Their privacy wall so high. So much so that we don’t even know if there’s truth on the other side of it. I’d have to jump high enough to see Europe just to catch a thread of truth untampered.
If we aren’t together imperfect, we are alone unsatisfied and forever wandering. Therefore we carry our tears down our spines and wander.
Are the controllers the ones we see? Are they hiding actually and is that their power? Or are we all just victims to the magic underneath us? Financial systems, behaviours. All unpredictable, some claim. Then we’re just a boat on a maelstrom.
Wake up. This world requires us to be power. To protect what’s worth keeping. Our democracy, our humanity, our children and the living promises that will be coming. Each other also.
Think. And fight.
We aren’t in utopia yet. We might never see it. But if we aim there, we might hit survival. Satisfaction. Even happiness.
How do you feel staring into the pixel void? We see what we want to see. See that exactly. Learned and entertained and well behaved. And all the fury of the unfair blasted on my screen to then soothe me with some cuteness. Followed by some abs and buttocks, skin and beauty. Then again some science so that I don’t question whether or not I should be here. I am learning. I am curious.
But the truth doesn’t stay in the numbers and summaries. It stays in the cells after living through your retina. Your pores.
Don’t give yourself to the artificially kind.
Each word landing like a blow:
Phone. Mac. Pad. Watch.
My eyes can’t take the pixel anymore. Not at night. Not first thing in the morning. No.
Breathing hard:
The organically intelligent and naturally inefficient need rebellion to stop the death of well being.
Pacing now, agitated:
Where is your tribe? The ones you trust. Where is your tribe? The ones who have seen you do wrong and still know you are good because they’ve seen you do good a hundred times.
The ones who watched you smile at strangers, teach an ignorant man how to catch their fish, help someone shelter, lend a friend moments when they needed them. The ones you hugged until they could feel your heart pumping, or the one you lipped so carefully they finally believed they were loved.
Those are the things that build connection, and that’s community. Not another buzzword for brands to increase margin. Where is your tribe sibling?
Categories don’t guarantee connection. Proximity doesn’t guarantee intimacy. Bags of people. Clumps of strangers forced together. That’s what it feels like. Now I say this to you marketing expert for that brand. You say the word community as if you and us understood it. As if we had experienced it. As if most of us had a clue. Had a tribe. Where’s your tribe? Then the truth will tell you if you can try to build one.
To die empty, empty of connection, that is the biggest horror any human should fear. One fifty. That’s how many people you can keep in your mind. Not thousands. Not millions. Not what globalized hyper-connectivity pretends we can hold.
Social media is more useful to corporations than to individuals.
The individual has to figure out: Whose eyes can I look into and find refuge?
If you cannot look into someone’s eyes and be seen, your home does not exist.
The light goes red. Urgent now.
We Are Already There
This must be the beginning of a revolution. Because we’re not approaching a dystopia.
We are in it.
Don’t look at the future saying, “One day we’ll be robots.” Look at yourself now. The cracks of the mirror spreading like roots.
Mimicking the posture:
This sad awning of the head. Crane-like, looking down. Bending. Breaking slowly. Wrapped in bubble wrap. Lonely with thousands of connections. Drowned in vibrations, echoes of synthetic affection.
To one person:
Do you want that?
Pause.
Pretending we are ascending into some higher form in the name of evolution, when in fact we are dragging the technology that belongs outside of us into our insides like poison.
The tools we’ve created should enhance our world. Not hollow us out from within.
Don’t fear the Matrix. Don’t fear some chrome dystopia. Know we are at a bottom and we need to hoist ourselves out of it.
Be afraid of right now. Only if that will mean action.
Who is actually living? I try every day.
ACT III: THE TRENCHES
The light shifts to warm gold. The voice changes. Fierce. Sensual. Commanding.
The ones actually living are in the trenches of love.
Of touch. With passion, compassion and friction. The trenches of chaos and sweat and heartbreak and joy.
Wake up. And I take back the fear. We need courage and then mission. Poised and possessive of the mind we’re entrusted with.
We will dance until we’re gasping for air, drenched in fluids. The smell of human.
We will love with urgency. Fuck like we were meant to. In body, out of the mind to suffer that gorgeous little death that pleasures, tenses the muscles.
Give yourself to love. Do it with devotion, with compassion, with exposure.
It is the song your body sings. Kinetic.
The warning:
They call us watchers.
Beat.
They call us watchers. Did that sink in?
The truth:
Only other watchers and their eyes looking back at you will be meaningful feedback. Only another watcher’s hand on your shoulder will be consoling. Only another watcher’s kiss will lip you right.
Standing tall:
Strong humans with strong connections are invincible. We are watching.
Black.