At the show 'Shrimpstories' made by Hotel Modern I saw grown-ups - 3 of them - playing with dead shrimps. We saw a shrimp playing the drums, a shrimp pair making love, a French shrimp writing a loveletter, during the French revolution, to his mistress, and, what hit me the most: a schrimptramp which tried to sell roses to other shrimps at a restaurant. As hard as he tried, noshrimp bought one.
Later he was standing, alone and tranquil, in a disco, under a discoglobe on a very busy & tremulous danceflour between cheerful stamping prawns. He looked sad. It seems as if I could make out an emotion in his glassy shrimpeyes. With a hanging head he went away and we found him, in the next scene, dead on the street. Murdered with scissors, the dried out flowers laying next to him, scattered on the pavement. I heard myself saying, out loud, 'aaaaah'. Apparently I'm able to project emotions on a dead fish. My thought emotions, because, as is written, the shrimp was dead, and, above all and between U & me, it would never occur to me - untill now that is - to bestow emotions upon a prawn, which I normally find on my plate, covered with parsley and garlic.
To my dog - yes, to my food - no.
People project peoplethings on animals, and, yes, I can even do it on dead animals. I see the enormous vulnerability of a coldblooded creature that I label as 'lonely' between a crowd of other dead fish.
People project their own things on other people, but, can one open up towards the projected vulnerability?
I wonder.
