Sense and sensitivity

My friend and I saw Electra/Persona at the National Theatre. Cate Blanchett was in it - and to see her on stage was quite something. She played the roles of Electra and Elizabeth. Both halves of the production, which was staged on a minimal set, suggested toward a merging of identity between the two female characters... how we see or fail to see others and ourselves... and how our emotions beat their wings so ineffectually against the facticity of the world.

In the second half, Blanchett's face was shown in big close-up on a large screen. She did not speak but her face spoke. And what a face. Sculptural. A kind of stark beauty. An eloquent stone of a face... It was strange how... disquieting it was to see a face so close for so long. And the narration said something like "being seen forces a person into existence". And I thought of the burden of that: the look of the other, in a sense, demands your presence when you may wish not to concentrate yourself into that moment of being. Such a profound realisation. The violence of a gaze. And when the face does not respond to your look.... to be made to acknowledge that you may be, in a way, utterly irrelevant.

After the play, we walked along the Thames. Saw the Golden Hinde - who is being refitted with storm-felled oaks.

Then we went into Borough Market: Stalls upon stalls of food... exotic and local and artisan and speciality. People. So many. I felt overwhelmed but part of the feeling was that really I wanted to look at everything rather carefully. Not to walk through but to linger and explore. And I was aware that my friend, I could feel this emanating from her, wanted to leave. She, it turns out, has a sensitive nose and it was not the people or the noise or that multitude of things that impacted her, but the confusion of scent.

Interesting how different things impact us. Noise bothers me, perhaps, more than most. Smell for her.