The horror of what you don't see

We sit in the shelter listening to the sounds beyond the closed door. Sometimes even just moving a chair sounds like an interception or a fall and a tremor passes through all the neighbors. When we hear launches, there is a momentary silence. We try to identify by the sound a direction or a piece of information. The door that closes us together inside the shelter to protect us is the door that opens in the imagination and pours in everything that cannot be seen. And what cannot be seen is always more. The messenger arrives, panting, he tells us that the disaster has occurred. Outside, a tragedy has occurred, a horror has unfolded, blood has been shed.

דניאל כהן לוי , צילום: אורי אוריין

The acts of violence do not take place on stage in the Greek theater, the messenger or the chorus who come from outside deliver the news, report on the events beyond the door. They describe what happened, the screams of the children, the hanging body, the pins that pierced the eyeballs. And the words are like a key, and when released, the imagination sets sail.

The power of the stage lies in its ability to mobilize. A line is a wall. A turn is time. A knife is an end. From the moment I arrive, my imagination is also invited to take part and within a moment I am involved. An indispensable partner in completing the picture. And so is the body. Everything takes part to tell the story together. And the more accurate the image, the more I see and do not see at the same time. And what I do not see is always more.

Maybe that's why what I do see turns me dark, wears me down. An endless sequence of terrifyingly real events is streamed straight into the palm of my hand. And the more I see, the more I no longer see. The endless multiplicity darkens the senses. The shock fades. The images take on a dimension of alienation. Of whose body. Of whose blood. Of whose lifted goddess. I've seen worse. I can't see any more. I move on to the next image, and then the next, and the next.

But the baby in "The Funeral," the one I didn't see, the one the mother couldn't wake up after the water was spilled on him, I can't get over. And my tears that came down with her were completely real. Because words are also like a pin, etching an image into the eyeball and bringing down a tear that will always remain. And another moment of breathing. Because just as the stage can send us to visit the spaces of horror and grief, it is also the one that returns us to ourselves. It gives us a bunch of keys to open doors to compassion and hope. Because in this space where we sit in the dark or in the light and are invited to imagine together, only there, after we have also cried, can we perhaps also imagine a future. Because now the door has opened.

צילום: דניאל כהן לו

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