the places where people are

So I got thinking about the fable of Xua-Xua the other day, as one does. It's the story of the prehuman woman who discovered theater. Here's a summary stolen from A Fest In Deed:

Xua-Xua was attracted to a pre-human male, Li-Peng. They did all the things a pre-human can do together. Xua-Xua felt herself change physically as her belly grew and became conscious of herself and distanced herself with Li-Peng, who always considered her the best in their horde. Soon the ever swelling belly of Xua-Xua popped a part of her body out of her (what we humans now term as birth of a child, this one’s called Lig-Lig-Lee). Xua-Xua was convinced that this little body was part of her, that they were both one. Li-Peng, like a good member of the audience, watched silently from a distance. Lig-Lig-Lee, like any child, started becoming naughty and even disobeying Xua-Xua, which started confusing her, as if a part of her body would not move in a manner she is directing it to. Eventually, while she was asleep, Li-Peng took Lig-Lig Lee away and taught him things that Xua-Xua hadn’t. From the onset Li-Peng knew that they were two bodies and NOT one.

When Xua-Xua finally found them together, she demanded Lig-Lig-Lee to accompany her back, but he refused and wished to stay with Li-Peng. At that moment Xua-Xua realized that he was actually somebody else, with his own needs and desires; it made her aware that they were not one. This recognition forced her to identify herself. This moment when Xua-Xua gave up trying to recover her baby and keep him all for herself and instead accepted that he was somebody else, and looked at herself, she was at one and the same time, Actor and Spectator; she was Spect-Actor. In this moment, theatre was discovered, and in its discovering, the being became human. This is theatre; it is the art of looking at ourselves.

If I could I'd get this whole freaking story tattooed across my body because it so represents everything I think/feel/believe about theater- about being both actor and spectator, producer and consumer-and about life in general of acknowledging that there exist other people that are separate from us and that by that fact alone we're a community and a society.

This also leads me to a thing I've been thinking a lot about lately, namely that there doesn't seem to be a good deal of acknowledgement that there are in fact other people in the world. and it seems to have done away with any sort of inclination to be nice to each other. We've become such an informal (modern) society that unless we're told to we don't see a point to stick our necks out for other people. I don't want to get preachy about it, lord knows I'm not leading the brigade to save the world, but there's a lot of stupid shit out there and more often than not I encounter people looking out for themselves and who just don't seem to care about other people. Bummer, really.

Enough of that. Here's a thing that's good.