cutting eachother up

A fair and beautiful scene. Up on the deck they cut open the whale, while we cut each other up in the wedding room.

There is no sign of pain on your faces. Everything is very calm.

It’s a poetic transformation, more likely in a fairy tale. And in addition to that you hear gentle Noh chanting. There are always creatures from other worlds in the Noh theatre, humans turn into spiders ; and the core of every play is how to get into another world. From this point of view, the mutilation has nothing gross to it, it’s part of the redeeming metamorphosis. When we cut each other, the cut open flesh is already not human anymore. It’s white, like a whale’s. The legs fall off, we grow fetus-like tails, then we turn into whales and swim towards Antarctica. You’ll do that too one day, when you wake up as a whale. (laughs and hums to herself a bit)

SZ magazine, 1 july 2005