The space is fully lit. Chairs are arranged in a semicircle for the audience. At the center, on a 20-centimeter-high platform, another chair of the same type is placed facing the audience.
The performance space also serves as the foyer. Prior to the start of the show, the performer greets audience members one by one and helps them choose their seats. She encourages them to make themselves at home, place their stuff on the chairs, and come and go as they wish. As their host, the performer’s job is to make the audience feel that the performance is a continuation of the earlier interaction.
When the performer stands at the center of the semi-circle, facing the audience, the stage becomes a big belly that has engulfed the audience. The space is the performer’s body, pregnant with this performative interaction.
At the start of the performance, the performer stands on the platform behind the chair and points to the empty chair during her speech. She stands erect, speaks in a clear tone and makes eye contact with the audience.
Hello.
I’m going to to talk to you for about thirty minutes.
I’m going to to sit myself down on this chair and discuss heredity and procreation.
I’m going to to refer to myself as an example.
This example is not selected through a statistical process. Rather, any social animal with a developed brain could serve as an example, as long as I have permission and access to their unique genetic makeup and behavior.
Beyond scientific facts, I’m going to share with you a series of the subject’s personal stories and unique qualities so that you can see her more accurately.
The person who will be on exhibit on this chair is a stage actor.
Her job is to be watched.
Those who choose this job are hypersensitive to being watched.
She has been trained to make thoughtful choices about what she exhibits on stage. This would certainly imply that she hides certain things.
For example, she would try not to show her stage fright.
Whenever she is nervous, she blunders, speaks loud, and inevitably turns red. If you pay close attention, you’ll notice that her eyelids are trembling. She would raise her eyebrows to stop the trembling of her eyelids – so you don’t realize how frightened she is of what she’s doing.
Pause.
She is of medium weight and height with black hair. Like most people, she is typical in everything:
Like most people she has heterosexual parents; like most people her parents are also her biological parents; like most people she has had access to her parents during most of her life; like most people her mother was her primary caregiver; consequently, she has spent most of her childhood with her mother.
From an early age she adopted a motherly attitude towards everything: first her dolls, then gradually, through a process of repetition of child’s play and hardened behavior, towards everyone else.
In adulthood, she has become one of those people who quickly turn into a mother, even of their own parents.
Almost from the time she can remember, even her own mom and dad were like two kids that she was raising. She felt responsible for their needs, she made every effort to make time for them, to let them know they were loved, to judge them fairly when they would fight, and…
Her parents and many others welcomed this behavior and little by little, as she became an adult, others became more childlike. Before she knew it, her motherly attitude spread from her main family relations to other aspects of her life.
This is most likely related to the following:
Like other evolved humans, the most critical and ancient neural pathways in her brain were developed, registered, and gradually hardened during the earlier years of her life, her childhood.
Similar to our muscles, the brain’s neural pathways become more established every time we use them.
They’re one pathway.
Like the path water takes through earth.
Through repetition, a stream creates a path in the earth, and a new stream flows through the same path. It doesn’t create a new path, but makes the existing path more established, increasing the probability of it being used by the next stream. Our neural pathways work the same way. Using established pathways strengthened through repeated use is more efficient for our brain, it uses less energy. Establishing new pathways takes energy and one of our brain’s most important functions is to manage energy expenditure. The brain calculates the amount of energy the body needs, then decides how to allocate it to each organ and where to conserve.
From this perspective you could think of the brain as the body’s political organ, since it decides how much energy to allocate to what. For example, if one day we don’t sleep well or get enough food to eat, our brain’s energy budget will be smaller. In this case, our brain will recognize, for example, that using the same old paths and patterns is more cost-effective – from an energy utilization standpoint – than putting effort into building new paths or coming up with new solutions to problems. To accomplish this, the brain filters through a bunch of information received from neural receptors, selecting the most familiar and manageable among the collection, and eliminates the rest.
This means that, most probably, each time she falls in love or feels threatened or afraid, whenever she is embarrassed or feels proud, when she reacts to affirmation or to punishment, the way she responds to a stronger force or feels dominated, her brain – by choosing to save energy – ends up using the oldest patterns to understand the situation.
Pause.
From the time she was a child, she felt that she was everyone’s mother and over time she lost control of the list of her children – and so the creatures that provoked a sense of responsibility in her were from any old place, wherever she went, whatever age, race, form of existence…
The neighbors’ children, friends, classmates, the trees in the school yard, the stray dog in the neighborhood, many of her boyfriends later on, all of her flower pots, home appliances, the old man across the street, the alleyway, the kid who fell off her bike in the alley and that kid’s mom who ran out a few minutes later…
Many times she has failed to understand that not all relationships work in this way, not all people need help – and she is not necessarily bigger and stronger than all the creatures around her.
This behavior has been very beneficial for her and for others.
This behavior has also been very irritating for her and those same others.
To constantly remind herself that she is not as responsible as she thinks – and that this is simply a pattern that her brain is used to – takes a lot of energy from her and, frankly, she is tired most of the time.
Pause.
In addition:
She is prone to overeating and hereditary diabetes;
Prone to physical exercise and, simultaneously, prone to laziness;
Very much into socializing and also very reclusive;
At certain times, very commanding, and at other times completely inept;
A slave to society’s approval and in constant battle with the norms of that same society.
She has inherited all of the traits that I’m listing, probably half from her mother and half from her father. About a quarter came from each grandfather and grandmother, an eighth from their parents, and so on, with a variety of doses from other humans that exist in this human’s genome and develop the traits I mentioned. She shares at least six percent of her genome with the most random person on the other side of the globe.
The person who is supposed to sit on this chair is a combination of other humans. In her genome, in every cell of her body, pieces of other humans exist. These pieces store various aspects of those people: their lives, their bodies, a certain amount of joy and pain, failure, courage, power and weakness, hopes, actions, desire, and fear…
She inherits all this from other humans. Certain genes become active under certain living conditions and other genes become inactive. This means that, in various situations, evidence of various humans can be found in her, some who embarrass her and some who make her proud.
Half of the successes and failures that she has had in her life or will have in the future are from her mother and the other half are from her father.
She possibly inherited her need for safety from one parent and her desire for freedom from the other.
She has the failures of one – right next to the desire for victory of the other.
She is a combination of these humans but is not necessarily similar to any of them.
Her heritage is not limited to her parents. One could say that she is the result of numerous procreations.
The word procreation is more accurate than reproduction. To reproduce means to copy and multiply, to re-produce. But humans pro-create. In the process of procreation, humans create someone similar to themselves, rather than an identical copy of themselves. Each parent passes on half, not all, of their genes to their child. What I’m referring to here as procreation more accurately describes the phrase “the process of creating someone similar to ourselves”, which, of course, is not necessarily only genetic.
She is also similar to her teacher, the people she approves of, the artists she likes, similar to people she dislikes, a little like people she’s lost, a little like anyone she is resisting…
She inherits something from each and every one of them and leaves something behind for others to inherit.
Her child is anyone who is similar to her, with a greater chance of survival, anyone who carries a part of this heritage and continues on.
Pause.
Procreation is often motivated by a concern for survival, both on an individual and societal level. When societies fear annihilation due to war or natural disaster – such as flood or earthquake, or any other condition where their survival may be threatened – they immediately procreate.
The sheer numbers in her generation are evidence of concerns regarding survival at a given period in time in her society. In their paternalistic role, and faced with a threat, government or tribal leaders may at times ask their people to procreate. This would be issued as an order, a request, or an incentive. With the goal of reproducing power and compliant forces, with the goal of reproducing individuals like himself, which is what I am referring to here as procreation. And sometimes, in response, the society, in its maternal role, actually engages in procreation. The streets are filled with children and pregnant women. The new generation that is created is the result of the procreation of this father and mother, the result of a romantic agreement between a government and its people.
Biology recognizes the love between two heterosexuals as a kind of corporal investment for the purpose of survival – and for the transfer of genetic material. In other words, love means that I’m choosing who to combine my genes with.
It’s as if, instead of saying I love you, one says: I’d like my child to be like you; or it would be interesting if a combination of you and me has another chance to be born; or I would like more people like you and me to have a chance to carry on….
It’s like saying, I’ll vote for you. I think you should carry on a little longer.
Pause.
She sits on the chair. Stares at the audience. Her voice becomes weaker and her words disjointed. She hunches forward, intermittently looking away from the audience. During the remainder of her performance, she points to the empty space behind the chair where she had been standing.
I’m going to talk to you for about ten minutes.
I’m going to sit on this chair and talk about myself.
I always feel like somebody’s watching me – that feeling of being watched. Not only now that I’m doing it as my job, but always. Even when I’m alone and, say, buying something important or making a weighty decision or meeting someone. The sense that this gaze is watching everything and what it’s thinking about, this is all a constant and active presence in my head.
What I’m describing is different from when somebody is actually staring at me. I mean, there is an external gaze, and another internal one inside my head.
When somebody is staring at me on the outside, it’s like I have more control over the situation and as a result more agency. For example, I try to avoid showing whatever it is that I assume they want to see, or pretend I’m not aware that they’re watching me, or else I just try not to think about it.
Another example: when I pass a cop, I try to not seem too law-abiding. But when there are no cops around, I often subconsciously correct my behavior without realizing I’ve done it. In my head, the cops are always watching me. Or, for example, as an act of resistance to my mom’s view on beauty, I never put on makeup when I’m with her – only because she really wants me to. Whereas other people usually see me with makeup on.
Sometimes I imagine that I can choose how much to allow their internal gazes to dwell inside me. But at other times, when I unexpectedly detect their behavior in myself, I realize that I can’t. This behavior isn’t my choice at all.
Pause.
I never fall asleep in a moving vehicle. I’m too aware of my surroundings to want to sleep. Once on an airplane I noticed somebody watching me from a few rows back. I pretended to casually glance back a few times, and each time I noticed that he was still watching me. I got up and walked to the bathroom and back, noticing that I still had my observer. Then I sat back down in my seat and thought, it’s OK, I’ll let him watch me. I didn’t know anything about that man except for the two eyes that were on me. I had no particular feelings toward him. But there, for the first time in my life, I slept like a baby.
Since then, whenever I see those CCTV cameras, I wonder who’s in control of this whole activity; is the camera watching me or am I letting it watch me? Are they observing me or am I allowing them to be observers? Are you watching me or am I doing something to be watched? Which side is more active than the other?
Pause.
Most of the time I feel comfortable on stage. But sometimes, all of a sudden, I feel anxious without knowing why. Or, even though I know those cameras have been installed for safety reasons, I suddenly feel threatened when I see them. There’s a thin line between these two moments, the moment when being watched switches from a position of power to a threatening situation, or the opposite: to the moment when one side of this agreement dominates the other.
Imagine a parent dragging her child in a public place while the child is flailing her arms and screaming. Which side is dominating this scene? The parent whose insides are crumpling, in full public view, or the child – who is stuck in a situation and can’t find a way out? The parent, who is using physical force to control the child, or the child, who is taking advantage of being watched to get what it wants?
Parents often feel naked in the presence of what they’ve produced; it’s a feeling of being utterly exposed. If the child is well-behaved, it’s as if the parent has been good, but if the child is mischievous, it’s as if she’s revealing a whole set of things the parent has been trying to hide. Everyone knows a child’s behavior is not her own but is inherited, inevitably.
Whenever I go somewhere with my parents, I constantly worry that they might do something to embarrass me; the same thing happens when my favorite personality is speaking somewhere; and also when I read about my country in other countries’ news; the same thing when the politician I voted for is giving a speech. It’s as if their action is also mine.
Pause.
In the building where I live, from one of the units we constantly hear the noise of a child screaming and crying. It’s so loud you can hear it everywhere in the building. When those neighbors who have children see me in the elevator, they immediately explain “That crying noise is not from our unit at all, it’s unit number eighteen.”
They feel compelled to clarify that they’re not the ones marked by this disgrace, that their child is manageable and civilized. When the screams fill the building, completing ordinary tasks becomes impossible for a few seconds. Anyone who hears the noise pauses for a moment. Listens. Then they decide there is nothing they can do about it, so they try to ignore it and go on with their lives.
We, the residents, have become experts at this. At not hearing and avoiding things that make us feel incapable and ineffective. We’re better at dismissing terrible news or events because we practice it daily.
Every day we practice living a life with quality in the presence of screaming noises that fill our building.
Pause.
She stands. Begins to exit. Returns and stands behind the chair and places her hands on the back of the seat.
There is a rare disease called Munchausen Syndrome by proxy, which is known by several different names and is not well understood. It’s a difficult disease to diagnose and impossible to collect accurate data on, since presumably many people are afflicted with a mild form. In fact, the disease can only be diagnosed when physical harm has occurred. It’s a condition which causes the primary caregiver, frequently the mother, to harm the child in order to care for it – to be able to present the image of a self-sacrificing mother, an image that is among the most treasured in our society. This condition is only recognizable in the most extreme cases, when it results in the child’s death or severe illness. In such extreme cases, the parent poisons the child and each day the child becomes weaker and weaker, and the parent more selfless and tormented. In ten percent of the diagnosed cases, the child dies and the parent is able to embody the ultimate role, that of the bereaved parent.
Pause.
Those suffering from this syndrome are in search of sympathy, of social standing. Consequently, they are very interested in re-enacting their role and discussing it with others. They go on about their past trauma and often exaggerate. They are hypersensitive to being watched. Their personality is very different when they are being watched versus when they are not. In the presence of an observer, they display a close and protective relationship towards the child, but when they are not being observed, a different aspect of the relationship emerges. The impact of this syndrome on the child may be the desire to harm others. In cases where the child survives, one of the most common effects of this disease on the child is the development of a self-protective psychological disorder.
In such cases, the individual becomes extremely weak and their self-image fades – to the extent that they can no longer conceive of an independent existence for themselves. They do not recognize interpersonal boundaries and, when disagreeing with another, they attack themselves. The only way to reject the domination of another is to attack the fifty percent that they carry from their parent, the portion of the parent that has been passed down to them. And to accomplish this, they attempt self-destruction.
Pause.
This performance will end in another minute.
She exits. The audience is left alone with the chair that is like theirs.
There is no curtain call. The performer has left the space before the end of the performance.