came, hour after hour, day in and day out, for nearly three months.
Each time, she looked down, gathered herself, and then looked up
afresh at the new face.
As Marina would say of her art, “The proposition here is just to
empty the self. To be able to be present.”
Is it really that hard—to be present? What’s so special about that?
No one who was in the audience, who sat across from her, would
ask such questions. For those souls lucky enough to see the
performance in person, it was a near religious experience. To
experience another person fully in the moment is a rare thing. To feel
them engage with you, to be giving all their energy to you, as though
there is nothing else that matters in the world, is rarer still. To see
them do it for so long, so intensely?
Many viewers cried. Each one said the hours in line were worth it.
It was like looking in a kind of mirror, where they could feel their
own life for the first time.
Imagine: If Marina’s mind drifted, if she daydreamed, the person
across from her could immediately sense that she was somewhere
else. If she slowed her mind and body down too much, she might
have fallen asleep. If she allowed for normal bodily sensations—
hunger, discomfort, pain, the urge to go to the bathroom—it would
be impossible not to move or get up. If she began to think of how
much time was left in the day’s performance, time would slow to an
intolerable crawl. So with monklike discipline and warriorlike
strength she ignored these distractions to exist exclusively in the
present moment. She had to be where her feet were; she had to care
about the person across from her and the experience they were
sharing more than anything else in the world.
“People don’t understand that the hardest thing is actually doing
something that is close to nothing,” Abramović said about the
performance. “It demands all of you... there is no object to hide
behind. It’s just you.”
Being present demands all of us. It’s not nothing. It may be the
hardest thing in the world.
As we stand on the podium, about to give a speech, our mind is
focused not on our task but on what everyone will think of us. How
does that not affect our performance? As we struggle with a crisis,
barry
(Barry)
#1