Disturbed

So, I've been reading reviews of the performance I went to. It's good to have context: the main person had himself shot earlier in the morning of the performance I saw (and I think, "what if the shooter had missed?!?" He was shot in the left shoulder.) and another performer had been buried for five hours (for multiple performances) which is certainly dedicated (and I'm not doubting he's a great actor, but even if he weren't how could you not be emotionally powerful after being buried for five hours?) but that's also really crazy. (Though I suppose illusionists have been doing similar stunts.) So, there is more context, but I'm neither a lover nor a hater of the performance, even though I will say that it still pisses me off, though not as much as Monday. It's taking method acting to the exteme. It's like having people pay to watch you get really close to killing yourself. The shooting was a reenactment (so not original and if we are honest, it's crazy) and all the performers had to abuse themselves in some way prior to the performance.  Someone used the word cultish, yeah that's very cultish. Where do ritual and torture meet?

This was performance art, avant garde, godless and offensive. There was the spitting of wine onto the "creatures" early on.  Most reviews thought this was a form of humiliation (which it might have been) but I took the spitting to be trying to be shamanic, which no one mentions, so maybe I'm wrong.  I was at the same performance as the reviewer who cried her eyes out at the final show.  I did not cry.(And I was kinda' eagerly waiting for he final act because people had been building it up so much. It didn't do anything for me, I don't know if it would've been different had I known about the buried alive thing, but I was kinda' disappointed. It didn't touch any emotional chord in me, I suppose it got buried for me in all the excess. In the end, it was overkill.) But then again, she witnessed him being shot earlier. Seriously, who does that? Way, way, way too extreme.  This is a really dangerous (though, I suppose nothing new) direction for performance to be pushing, creating a sense of one-up-manship.  (It's mentally unhealthy, I'm not buying the 911 catharis line. There are other ways to find that.)

I am going back and forth on keeping this published.

It's not a sin to be happy. It's not a weakness to believe in love. Illusion is a bandaid, a momentary fix, someday you will have to deal with all the stuff underneath.