Myriam Cyr, who performed the letters of the Portuguese Nun in New York, writes in the introduction to her book on the same, about a seamstress from Brooklyn who came to her after one of her performances in tears. "She was going through a painful break up and Mariana's letters had given her the words to describe everything she felt but had not been able to express until now." Two thoughts suggest themselves:
The seamstress is like many, perhaps most, humans: she does not know how she actually feels. It's hard to manage one's life as a result; and practically impossible to be happy (unless the happiness come by accident).
So, to put some shape on her feelings, she borrows the words of others. She feels that these words express her own feelings well, but, since she's not in great touch with her feelings, who knows whether this is actually the case? Who knows whether the words, by expressing pain, and sounding nice, do not bamboozle her into thinking that she feels what the words express, while in fact what she feels would be better expressed by, say, the Lisbon-Sintra line timetable?
No comments:
Post a Comment