Performing Life
The performer confronting disaster is a recurring theme: the wardrobe malfunction, the band plays on as the ship sinks or as the Fascists seize power. The proximity of danger, even death, elevates the performer's implicit sacrifice to art, as tuberculosis rarified the life of Romantic poets. The acts that make the risk explicit are "death defying." And yet the smile that the acrobat wears is not the grim rictus of fear but represents the joy that the performer shares with the audience, that the audience experiences by identifying with the performer knowing that the performance reveals what we all know but try to hide from ourselves, that disaster is ever as close as our jugular, and yet we defy death. Though we know death takes the last trick, we have the last laugh, He may take our life but He can't take our joy unless we willfully surrender it. And so we choose to laugh while the pandemic rises again amd again, threatening our livelihoods and our lives, while the b...