After class with Natalie Allen, the warm-down discussion of the day was dance workshops recently attended. Natalie described how in one of them, one of the tasks was to take something from someone that you wanted.
She described how a fellow participant took her wedding ring, and her emotional response; how she had to tell herself that this was a task, and she would eventually get it back.
The human state of being vulnerable to have something taken from you, being vulnerable to give is laid bare here. The difference between giving and stealing here is made clear - it is a matter of consent. When someone takes something from you, when it is consensual, it is a gift. When someone takes something from you when it is non-consensual, it is stolen.
When someone takes something from you during a task where you are instructed to allow it, is that really consensual? Is the consent inherent by consenting to the context? In the context of attending a dance workshop, perhaps yes. But did she really know what she was getting into before that? As a larger reflection on our human condition, do we really consent to the environment we are in? Do we know what we are getting ourselves into? I recently found out that in certain cultural contexts, if you expressed admiration of something someone else had, they were obliged to give it to you.
Out of all belongings, taking someone's wedding ring is loaded.
Superficially, the ring is of value - it beautiful, or precious. The object of desire. Its value reflects our deeply-rooted cultural understanding and valuation of marriage. The impulse of taking that from someone else perhaps reveals our biological drive for a mate, and the ongoing narrative of competition that is involved in the process of mate selection. Or at a metaphysical level, the desire for deep and meaningful connection with someone else.
The tradition of the wedding ring, something to be worn at all times rather than kept away, opens itself to the vulnerability of theft. The symbol of the wedding ring, as a public declaration of the married state, should theoretically shield you from unwanted advances. Yet, human nature being what it will, opens up a reverse psychological driver.
That right there. Performance art.
A chronicle of nose growth
'...changing the form of one's mission's almost as difficult as changing the shape of one's nose:
they are, each, in the middle of one's face and one's character - one has to begin too far back.'
― Henry James. The Portrait of a Lady.
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