Prudence in Hell 031
Performance
One of our theatre people wrote The Bride today, saying:
Your output is impressive and a constant joy to behold. It feels like a performance, with its frequency and its intensity.
First, thank you. Second: I think this is close to the truth. I am performing like poets perform.
But that I am always “on”, or maybe “in”, is something you picked up immediately on.
There is a part of me that isn’t just performance, it is peak performance.
That doesn’t mean I’m not been genuine. If anything, I’m being more genuine, or even better genuine. Performance is a martial art, the objective of any of which is self-mastery.
That’s why I speak exactly as I write, and look exactly as I do. I was also born this way. I have always been what I am.
I ‘know’ myself less than I ‘experience’ myself fully.
And as Mónica would say: “I’ve yet to see a single faithful photographic reproduction of the colours in any Toulouse-Lautrec.”
A character.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Au cirque Fernando, l`écuyère. 1888. Oil on canvas. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.