08/12/2012

I was reading a Chiharo Shiota's book yesterday afternoon.
Something about her written emotions

really touched me




p.33 
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After the performance I always wash my body. Dirt upon dirt is everywhere. I try to wash myself, but it does not become better. Or I am already clean, but something stayed. [...]  I have the impression that my body is abandoning me. It is not an answer or a question about death; only my body is in a condition to accept anything. Even death. When I look at the blue sky or the ocean, I am overwhelmed by the same emotion. It is similar to the emotion after finishing a performance.  Something I cannot wash away… I still do not know what it is.

p.65
-   
[...]
Diaspora – you know already what that means. Originally, in Greek, it meant “to disperse seeds”. It was a designation for the expelled Jews, and later came to be used for people who have a shared cultural heritage but have been forced to leave their native country and are now living in different places without the possibility of returning.  These people are scattered to the four winds, only certain that their bodies cannot be snatched away from them.

p. 79
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It seems to me that there is no way back, no matter where I go.
I feel there is something common between the silence of the burnt piano and the silence on my way home, and that this is deeply hidden in my heart.
The threads are interwoven into each other. Get entangled. Are torn apart. And disentangle themselves. It is like a mirror of feeling.


p. 131

-
[...]

Days later, the wind carried the smell of the extinguished fire over to us. I then felt, every time I smelled it, that the smoke made me lose my voice.
This happened twenty years ago. I always carry this silence with me. Deep in my heart. When I try to express it, I lack the necessary words. But the silence lasts. The more I think about it, the stronger it gets. The piano loses its voice, the painter does not paint any more, the musician stops making music.
They lose their function, but not their beauty. They even become more beautiful.
My true word has no sound.