Self is the only dress we cannot remove from our body. It grows both inside and outside us, encapsulates us and in fact takes both the guilt and the pride from us. It sticks to our being like a slimy leech and stays with us as long as our consciousness continues living. The biggest illusion, perhaps, comes from the idea of the permanent self which is believed to be built inside the isolated box of our inner shell. Consequently, our self-image stands before our eyes like an invincible, indestructible amorphous mass shaped by the millions years of earth movements. We can neither get rid of it nor can we do without it. The very name of ego, like a second person living under our skin, breathes with us, lives with us and most importantly feeds from us.
Like self, pain is another universal truth about the human beings. We come to this earth as a result of a painful process and soon after we arrive we cry. Except for the physical pain which is caused by cruelty around us, the psychological aspect of pain should be considered as a trick of an ego, a prank played on us many times just to make us believe that we inherit our mental traumas from others. However it might sound true for those who need condolences, we can still believe that our self-indulgence in moral values is very much responsible from most of our pain.
Ngo Thi Thuy Duyen’s stage performance starts with the dreams at the midst of global eyes like Coca Cola, KFC, Channel etc. In a world where image of luxury surpasses the reality of needs and makes the most useless thing look like the most prominent thing, the dreamer has no chance but just dream about the future. It is all that can keep the modern person alive among the giant waves of fear and desperation created by the mega cities, mega buildings and mega dream breakers.
In Turkish, the word for frustration can literally be translated as “broken dream” in English and a common saying of soused nights is “Life is an accumulation of broken dreams.” Whether these broken dreams come from our own faults or from others’ selfishness is an ambiguity which remains unresolved in Duyen’s performance.
The dancer in the performance imitates her idols, tries her best to be like one of them and perhaps enjoys the way hard-work brings her a certain level of satisfaction. But then suddenly, the rashes appear on her body. They pop up on the skin like wild mushrooms after the rain, they force her scratch her body crazily like a constantly self-grooming cat. It spreads like the ink in the warm water, spreads and infects wherever it touches… Then she scratches more intensely as if scratching will ease the pain if it is done continuously. But it doesn’t help at all. The more she scratches, the more blasters appear on her skin like the sand dunes in the limitless womb of a desert. Perhaps, what she scratches is the residuals of her own self or the self which is imposed on her by others - then we must admit that she somehow welcomed to this self either intentionally or unintentionally at some point in her life- .
At a later time, she seems struggling to dig under her skin in order to get the other self which is hidden there for long time, waiting to be discovered like a King Kong in a forgotten jungle. Her endless effort does not give any expected result other than the fatigue and perhaps an insulting level of self-hatred. The shell created on her –again by whom is an unanswered question- remains the same no matter how much she tries to crack it, no matter how much she thinks she does not belong to it.
Being a slave of the box we are born in is one thing, being a stubborn resistant to it another. Duyen’s bold performance at Zero Station on 5th November night, shows us that it is not important whether you can crack the shell and jump out of your labyrinth in which you are born but it is important to resist, to rebel and to go against it no matter how long it could take, how much it will cost. No one can guarantee a new world to you, no one can promise a painless world.
Pain is universal and we are here to fight against it…
About the author:
Ali Rıza Arıcan was born in İstanbul in 1977 and studied Mathematics at the Bosporus University. After the graduation in 2000, he has worked in Thailand for 6 years as a Mathematics and Physics teacher. He has been teaching Statistics and Economics in Vietnam since 2006 up to now. He started writing short stories in 2001. With the first three short stories he wrote, he has been awarded with 2001 Gençlik Kitabevi Short Story Prize. Since then he has been writing short stories, novellas, articles, poetry and book reviews. His first short story collection has been published in 2007 with a title of Pasifik Öyküleri (Pacific Stories). This has been followed by his second book which has a title of Motorsiklet Üzerinde Aşk (Love on Motorbike) in 2009. The Bicycle is his third book and also the first publication in English. He plans to publish another collection of short stories in Turkish by the end of 2012.
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