THE VITAL NEED OF THE POLARITIES
…and something more
It’s Sunday. The 19th of October. The final day of the Choice Conference organized in Madrid.
With a small and heterogeneous group of people I’m going into town. A humid, rainy but not cold morning of a typical lazy Sunday of a big European city.
We enter a museum to see an exhibition. Small exhibition for the small group. The biggest piece showcased is a pink, curvy installation that randomly produces noise and movement. A plate on the wall exhorts not to touch the object.
The temptation to put the hands on the work and run across its surface is high. But the visitors cannot do it. However the exhibit brochure speaks about the tactile condition of the material environment and even about the erotic connection between us, the people, and “our” objects, between the skin of things and our skin.
The prohibition causes in me a feeling of wonder more than frustration. I move my hands over the installation, attracted by it but being careful not to touch it.
Suddenly a thought comes to my mind: how much intense and full of meaning is the instant before coming into contact with something, with someone? Which information does this suspension offer if we have the patience to wait and listen? How vital is the energy contained in the space between the two entities?
While I reflect in such a way, the image of the two fingers of the creation of Adam, painted by Michelangelo in the Last Judgement, appears in front of my eyes.
Immediately after, the concept of limen settles into the concatenation of thoughts, images and feelings that usually emerge from my mind and body. This Latin word can be translated into the term threshold, with the two meanings of beginning and limit. The border is also translated as limes, word that can signify dividing, difensive barrier or penetration route.
The thin line in front of us demands the suspension of the action and gives us the time and possibility to think about how to approach what, who is on the other side and to interact accordingly. It’s up to us. To perceive it as limen. Or as limes.
With these thoughts in my mind I walk beside the installation and look it from another perspective: now I see a round and hollow portion that gives me a feeling of cosiness.
I connect this image to the act of generating; first of all the concept of giving birth to an human being, then the building of projects, organizations, communities. Beautiful idea, in itself: it means creation, action that requires vitality, erotic energy.
But Eros alone is sterile, unproductive. Something is needed, very different, not so easy to mention. It’s Thanatos, the embodiment of the death. We can fear this concept, we can detest it, we can put it out of our view. Nevertheless, if we leave it out, we loose the possibility to create.
Both these two polarities are essential in their union in order to generate, for the life to happen. As the breath and the heartbeat remind us, life is based on the continuous coexistence of contraction and expansion.
And yet, it is not enough.
Eros desires to reach its absolute ideal as well as Thanatos aims to. The same and opposite tension to reach own purpose and the same result: the impossibility to achieve. The vitality is in the shock associated to the movement between the two, when the two are in connection and at the same time stretch towards different points.
Diversity, connection and shock are needed to generate. This is not a quiet, relaxing, perfect action. It can be extensively seen in the Nature and in the works of the human being. This activity of a few minutes, maybe a few hours, is a struggle asking for energy, strength, power.
It is part of the initial phase of the creation of a project or a system, when the tension and effort are perceived in the relationship among the people and the stress is felt in the body. Especially when the thing to create is almost a prototype and you have to work with different people, struggling between the will to affirm your ideas and solutions and the need to accept the others’ ideas and competences.
Like my feelings when I started working in the group born to create the Choice Conference 2019. The first Choice Conference. People who have been in contact, most of the time remotely, to create a complex event in a short time.
Polarities that enter in relationship with others. Bodies that want to move towards their destination. Molecules that move producing heat. Heat that generates life.
After this first phase, new different elements are needed to ensure that the thing grows and keeps itself alive; another kind of relationship begins, new emotions are felt and a stage of longer duration is implemented.
But this, dear reader, is completely another story.
