Preview – Ring Up the Curtain
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Ring Up the Curtain
A liver: Wolves are fascinating animals.
A pancreas: Lions too?
A liver: Sure! And tigers or leopards, for that matter.
A pancreas: Eagles?
A liver: Majestic, domineering, merciless… Oh yes!
A pancreas: Hawks?
A liver: Indeed. Noble animals too, are they not?
A pancreas: What about sharks?
A liver: Many people are fascinated by them. Steven Spielberg being one of them!
A pancreas: Snakes?
A liver: Believe it or not, they too have their… admirers! And their enchanters…
A pancreas: Why do people like them?
A liver: What do you mean?
A pancreas: Well, they’re all such dangerous and cruel predators…
A liver: Yes.
A pancreas: …and potentially lethal, when not actually so…
A liver: Yes?
A pancreas: …and, well, scary, frightening, terrifying… No?
A liver: Oh yes, they are!
A pancreas: Then… Why?
A liver: Why do people like war movies, true-crime series, thrillers, and the like?
A pancreas: Uh?
A liver: Why play videogames where you chop off heads or get eaten alive by mutants?
A pancreas: Eh?
A liver: Why visit crash sites, historic battlefields, abandoned prisons, former gulags?
A pancreas: Ah?
A liver: Aren’t people attracted by morbid, macabre, and, yes, utterly frightful things?
A pancreas: I guess they are…
A liver: Don’t they show an almost universal interest in death itself, and deadly phenomena…
A pancreas: Hm…
A liver: …not least in their most atrocious or twisted forms, even if they say they’re repelled?
A pancreas: Like what?
A liver: How many films or shows have they made about horrific murders, rapes, mutilations…
A pancreas: Oh!
A liver: …serial killers, psychos, Bonnie-and-Clyde-types, sadistic villains—or even heroes!
A pancreas: “Sadistic… Heroes?”
A liver: Sure: Plenty of those! Think of what Achilles does with Hector’s cadaver, for one.
A pancreas: Aye, right, I remember that passage of the Iliad giving me nightmares as a kid…
A liver: And the Movie Masters of Vengeance, no? The Grand Viziers of Gruesome Vendetta?
A pancreas: Who are they?
A liver: Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Liam Neeson…
A pancreas: I guess it’s true. Besides, Hollywood doesn’t lie, even if it lies all the time!
A liver: …the list is so long, in fact… And there’s plenty of bloody heroines too!
A pancreas: “Heroines,” uh? Like what?
A liver: Uma Thurman in Kill Bill? And haven’t you watched Carrie and Lady Vengeance?
A pancreas: I see, aye… And the splatter movies they’ve made with Milla Jovovich, hm…
A liver: People love tales of revenge…
A pancreas: …because they spray a layer of ethical justification for…
A liver: …sadistic thrills, yes. And the masochistic ones too, in fact: As a counterpoint.
A pancreas: I get that, I get that…
A liver: The “thrills?”
A pancreas: Yes, but also the “ethical justification,” or the… perceived need for one.
A liver: Why do you think that’s the case, eh? Why do they seek… apparent morality?
A pancreas: Hm… I don’t know.
A liver: You really don’t, or are you too afraid to look?
A pancreas: Good question… I don’t know that either!
A liver: What could it be? Try and… hypothesise, speculate, ah?
A pancreas: Uh… Wolves?
A liver: What “wolves?”
A pancreas: Those that people find so… intriguing.
A liver: What about them?
A pancreas: Are people… Wolves?
A liver: In what way?
A pancreas: The way Machiavelli, Hobbes or Sade described them… Us, in fact.
A liver: Are we in a state of constant warfare?
A pancreas: Hm, I guess we aren’t, unless…
A liver: “Unless?”
A pancreas: …circumstances force it upon us.
A liver: What sort of “circumstances” are you thinking about?
A pancreas: Outright warfare, for one. Like, say, in Ukraine, or in Congo and Sierra Leone…
A liver: I see.
A pancreas: …but also in daily business life, in a more… sedate, surreptitious, sneaky way.
A liver: Oh?
A pancreas: I mean, people would not actually compete with one another so savagely…
A liver: Ah-ah?
A pancreas: …thrust their elbows into one another’s ribcages till they spit blood…
A liver: Ah!
A pancreas: …and cut throats for money, a promotion, a new opportunity, a better job…
A liver: Yes?
A pancreas: …were the system different.
A liver: “Different?”
A pancreas: Yes, not based on competition, rat races… Like in The Apprentice!
A liver: On TV?
A pancreas: Everywhere!
A liver: What?
A pancreas: People are taught, basically from day one in primary school, that it’s a race.
A liver: A “rat race?”
A pancreas: Yes, they teach us that we should live like…
A liver: …furry, filthy, fierce rodents?
A pancreas: Basically, yes! I mean, rats are as vicious as tigers or snakes, if not worse!
A liver: But “rats,” you say… Instead of what?
A pancreas: I don’t know! Higher primates, perhaps?
A liver: How much “higher?”
A pancreas: As high as Homo sapiens is capable of: Certainly more than bloody rats!
A liver: And so?
A pancreas: “And so?” Isn’t it obvious?
A liver: No, not really. Not to me, now, here, at the very least!
A pancreas: “And so” we don’t build human… humane societies, where cooperation thrives.
A liver: Can you give me an example?
A pancreas: Well, just by following the very word I’ve used, so to speak…
A liver: Uh?
A pancreas: …they’ve destroyed almost all “cooperatives” around the globe, have they not?
A liver: Hm, they have indeed, they have... Especially after the end of the Cold War.
A pancreas: “Businesses,” seek “profit” at all costs, “shareholder value” …All that “win” talk!
A liver: Instead of…
A pancreas: “Cooperate?” “Stakeholder value?” … “Life value?”
A liver: “Life?”
A pancreas: Yes! Make the world healthier, fix the climate, limit consumption, share…
A liver: What are you, a revolutionary communist now?
A pancreas: I’m a Christian, for Christ’s sake!
A liver: Alright, alright… Don’t get mad!
A pancreas: Ach, it’s just that they throw about labels to deride and destroy people or ideas…
A liver: Hm…
A pancreas: …in such a dishonest and cruel manner: “Socialist,” “Marxism,” and so on!
A liver: Wolves?
A pancreas: Where?
A liver: Those who “throw about” these… condemnatory terms: Aren’t they… Predators?
A pancreas: Aye, I guess they are “wolves.” Or the aliens in Schwarzenegger’s flick!
A liver: Those animals, and flying as well as flaying aliens, that people find “fascinating?”
A pancreas: Yes, the way they’re fascinated by… Zombies, Dracula, or Norman Bates!
A liver: Because they would like to… Be them? Or emulate them? Is that the… Key?
A pancreas: Some people would do that very much, I suspect.
A liver: And the others?
A pancreas: Well, “the others” might well know that there’s a part of them wishing it…
A liver: Uh-uh?
A pancreas: …but also that it’s unhealthy, immoral, dangerous… Even foolish, in fact!
A liver: So… They don’t try to morph into… Arnie’s nemesis? Sigourney Weaver’s?
A pancreas: They “don’t” become “wolves,” nor “snakes” or… Other nasty creatures!
A liver: Why… Watching or reading about them, then? Or playing… On stage; on the PS5?
A pancreas: To get to know, monitor, keep their demons at bay…
A liver: Oh?
A pancreas: …and feed or satisfy their fond noir à contenter, which all have, in some form.
A liver: The “fascinosum” of cruelty in its myriad guises: Active, passive, mental, physical?
A pancreas: Precisely! The same way we explore and… expel tragedy, heartbreak… Angst!
A liver: An aesthetic form of… Therapy? Something that might be, au fond, ethically good?
A pancreas: You could argue that. The Arts have performed their cathartic task for millennia!
A liver: It’s interesting—though empirical psychologists would attack you on “catharsis!”
A pancreas: Aye, like a hungry pack baying for blood, almost as excitedly as “wolves?”
A liver: Ha-ha! Yes! Or… Donkeys!
A pancreas: Why “donkeys?” I know they can be bloody stubborn, but bloodthirsty…
A liver: I’m being ironic, mate. I’m just thinking of all those self-important eggheads…
A pancreas: Uh?
A liver: …writing about the ethics of artistic life and production, moralising aesthetics…
A pancreas: Yes?
A liver: …and having such simplistic models of the human mind… in mind!
A pancreas: The soul?
A liver: They don’t use that word anymore: Anathema! Heresy! Blasphemy!
A pancreas: No?
A liver: Oh no, not at all! It’s far too… Too religious, too anachronistic, too… superstitious!
A pancreas: And so…?
A liver: …they fail to grasp the wisdom that was so blatant to, say, Plotinus or Aquinas.
A pancreas: Centuries of “wisdom” gone… missing? Is that what you imply?
A liver: Lost, for the most part. Like… Tears in rain!
A pancreas: Why?
A liver: The hope of sounding more “scientific.”
A pancreas: Uh?
A liver: A typical case of penis envy among insecure intellectuals.
A pancreas: How many are there?
A liver: As many as the… Sheep!
A pancreas: More beasts?
A liver: Appropriately so, I’d dare reckon, my friend!
A pancreas: Why “sheep?”
A liver: Because that’s what the bulk of people dreaming of “wolves” are.
A pancreas: Living out a tiny fragment of lupinitas?
A liver: If we do have a “soul” along the older, richer grasp of our ancestors…
A pancreas: Yes?
A liver: …or of modern psychoanalysts, for that matter…
A pancreas: Ah-ah?
A liver: …then, “yes,” certainly.
A pancreas: A healthy thing to do?
A liver: Of course!
A pancreas: Why “of course?”
A liver: Because if those who dream of “wolves” became them, then the Arts would have been banned long ago—well beyond the most censorial dreams of… Jerry Falwell or the Taliban!
A pancreas: But they haven’t “banned” them…
A liver: Precisely!
A pancreas: Then…
A liver: …dreaming of “wolves,” living out some “lupinitas,” is, all in all, safer…
A pancreas: Than what?
A liver: …than repression; than faking perfection; than keeping a straight face all the time!
A pancreas: So, depicting… horrors, immoralities, eccentricities… And foibles at large…
A liver: …is good, instrumentally.
A pancreas: Not… inherently?
A liver: I can’t gauge that.
A pancreas: Is that why…
A liver: What?
A pancreas: Well, say, if you enter a Catholic church…
A liver: Yes?
A pancreas: …you come across all classes of gory, shocking imagery…
A liver: Ah-ah?
A pancreas: …and if you read Catholic authors like Hrosvith, Dante, Boccaccio, and Rabelais…
A liver: Yes?
A pancreas: …no punches are spared: Sin is there, before you, not least in tempting or even funny versions!
A liver: The way you find it depicted in Dostoyevsky’s novels or Pasolini’s movies?
A pancreas: Some of them, sure!
A liver: Well, Catholics, more than anyone else, seem to be… catholic.
A pancreas: What?
A liver: ‘Universal,’ ‘comprehensive,’ or even… Candid, in a way, about our nature.
A pancreas: Whose “nature?”
A liver: Human nature. The human… condition. The human “soul!”
A pancreas: And by depicting all that…
A liver: …both creators and recipients can let their shadow breathe, and live to fight on.
A pancreas: “Fight on?”
A liver: Temptation lasts as long as life, I believe they… believe. 'Cos they assume we're all imperfect.
A pancreas: Right…
A liver: But I think that even they can be excessively… censorial, restrictive. They have their own imperfection, in short!
A pancreas: How so?
A liver: By declaring certain notions “dangerous,” for one.
A pancreas: Aren’t there “dangerous” ideas?
A liver: Not really. It’s all a matter of interpretation and… action.
A pancreas: In which way?
A liver: In the way whereby an idea, which is little more than a phantom, a figment, an abstract and disembodied entity inside someone’s head, is interpreted to have a certain form and direction—“dangerous” ones, in fact; that is to say, harmful, destructive—and so acted upon.
A pancreas: Can’t artistic creation be one such… “dangerous” actions?
A liver: I guess it can, even if…
A pancreas: What?
A liver: …it takes a lot of hard work to do harm by means of a paintbrush or a pen…
A pancreas: Yes?
A liver: …when you can use a Kalashnikov or an investment portfolio!
A pancreas: Is that why the media talk so much about variously “degenerate” art…
A liver: Uh?
A pancreas: …instead of the arms trade, or vulture funds?
A liver: Ha, fascinating!
A pancreas: So?
A liver: Well, the powers that are do prefer avoiding any form of close scrutiny.
A pancreas: Hm.
A liver: Still…
A pancreas: What?
A liver: …I think it’s impossible for artists not to harm anyone in any shape or form.
A pancreas: Why?
A liver: Because our society’s based on destruction, at least as much as construction.
A pancreas: How come?
A liver: The chemical processes with which painting materials and inks are made…
A pancreas: Oh?
A liver: …the killer gasoline used by most means of transportation…
A pancreas: I see…
A liver: …the exploitation built into all varieties of wage labour…
A pancreas: Right!
A liver: …to say nothing of those types of cruelty that would exist even in a new “system.”
A pancreas: A utopia?
A liver: Yeah: Even there!
A pancreas: Such as?
A liver: Gossip, distortions, scorn, envy, backtalk, hyperreactions, pride, backstabbing…
A pancreas: Worms then, rather than “wolves!”
Curtain.
Picture: Jacob van Maerlant, Lupus (ca. 1340), miniature from folio 062r from Der naturen bloeme, KB Nationale Bibliotheek (ref. KW KA 16), public domain (via Wikimedia Commons).