Unknown author

The Itinerant Theatre

For a time I went through the world like a third-rate traveling company, the kind that arrives in town with extravagant dignity, unloads four planks, a dusty cloth, two tired lamps, and announces to passersby a performance nobody had asked for.

I was doing something similar, except that instead of curtains I carried notebooks, music, a badly parked sensitivity, and a certain absurd faith that someone might care about the secret tremor of another consciousness. The slightest crack in a conversation was enough for the setup to begin. Here the violin, here the pages, here this somewhat excessive way of looking at the world, in case it interests you. People, with good judgment, usually had somewhere to be.

Seen from now, the spectacle was endearing. Also slightly pathetic. A young man unfolding his little inner stage machinery in front of people who had only gone out to buy bread or waste an afternoon. There was something heroic in that clumsiness, as if he still believed that life sometimes grants a respectful silence to hear what one has brought in his hands. Life, more practical, checked the time and kept walking.

For years I confused other people’s lack of interest with a logistical error. I thought perhaps the set had been arranged badly, that maybe it would be better to speak less about one thing and more about another, to hide the violin for five minutes, to ration the oddities, to offer a more portable version of myself, suitable for indoor use, resistant to boredom, easy to assemble. A pocket edition of the soul. I am almost moved by the effort when I remember it. What fervor in that usher of himself, announcing an intimate work to strangers with the enthusiasm of someone still expecting a review in the newspaper.

Then one understands something of brutal simplicity. Someone who feels curiosity does not need to have your chest opened with bare hands. They come closer on their own. They ask questions. They look attentively. They remain. The others continue along their natural itinerary, which usually includes distraction, narcissism, fatigue, some decorative superstition, and the midday menu. Nothing personal. Each person manages their hunger as best they can.

I suppose part of that fairground vocation came from long ago. In some homes validation circulates with the ease of wine. In others it preserves the mystical prestige of a dead language. The parents look at themselves with a severity so old they no longer notice it, and the child learns early to polish his inner trinkets to see whether someone might lift their eyes. I perfected the act quite a bit. I should have carried little bells.

Now the performance still exists, though it has grown more sober. Less barker’s call. Less need for an audience. The theater opens only when there is someone in front of it with enough eyes to withstand the scene. The others may walk past in complete peace. I even wish them a good afternoon. I have stopped chasing spectators through the square. At a certain age one becomes very grateful not to have to sell tickets to one’s own soul.

And yet the tenderness remains. I look at that young man carrying his planks on his back and he does not inspire contempt in me. He inspires something worse: involuntary sympathy. I would like to tell him to lower his voice a little, not to set up the stage at every corner, to save the lamps for those who can tell the difference between the light of a shop window and that of a vigil.

I would also like to shake his hand. He was carrying a real work. He simply chose the wrong places.

UNIVERSE B

For a while I went through the world like a third-rate traveling theater, the kind that arrives in the town square with two damp planks, a tired curtain, and a faith in the human race so disproportionate it bordered on madness. All it took was for someone to look at me a second longer than usual and I would already be unloading the whole inner stage set with an almost religious fervor. Out came the violin, or an idea, or a line written at three in the morning, or one of those private obsessions one keeps the way others keep family jewels, and I would place it all under an imaginary light, waiting for the proper reaction, the small miracle, the unmistakable gesture of someone who finally understands that there is delicate merchandise here.

The other person, meanwhile, may simply have been asking the time.

Seen from where I stand now, the scene has a touching dignity. There I was, director, leading actor, stagehand, and beast of burden, mounting a full production in the middle of the street for spectators walking past with a grocery bag and their minds elsewhere. There was something heroic in that lack of sense. Something faintly comic too. Like those musicians who tune with grave seriousness before playing in a bar where no one has stopped chewing.

I suppose one learns that trade at home. There are families where a child is looked at and truly seen. In others, he is handed, with the best kind of clumsiness, a collapsible stage and a tacit instruction: earn it. Invent a visible way of existing. Do something, play something, think something, make yourself memorable. Then we’ll see. My elders had more than enough to do keeping their own performance afloat to applaud mine. Each of them was busy making up the cracks as best they could. So I went out into the world with an excessive repertoire and an absurd faith in the pedagogical power of self-exposure: now they’ll see, I thought, now they’ll see.

They saw very little. And rightly so.

With the years I began to understand a truth of almost offensive simplicity. People who are genuinely curious do not need a solemn invitation. They come over to the fairground stall on their own. They look closely at the objects, touch the curtain fabric, ask a precise question, remain seated when the performance begins. The rest are already carrying their own night upon them and walk on with a composure that now even strikes me as respectable. No one is under any obligation to be moved by the spiritual inventory of a stranger.

Since then the company has cut staff. The persuasion department shut down. No more pamphlets, no more introductory speeches, no more urge to pry open my chest like a man selling fake watches in an alley, except that instead of watches I was offering readings, music, a way of looking at beauty that would make half the city yawn and send the other half running.

What a strange trade. There is something tender about that young entrepreneur of the soul, convinced that his bankruptcy mattered to someone.

Now I prefer another economy. Few people. Little explanation. The violin still sounds without needing witnesses. Writing appears whenever it pleases, like a fine-boned rat that knows the house’s pipes by heart. And from time to time someone truly listens.

A few, yes. Enough that there is no need to take to the road again with the tent on my shoulder and that noble expression of the provincial artist who still believes in the high season.

[03_Experiments]