VDAY

VDAY 2011

There is more than what the eye can see.

You don't need to be blind to see ... With your hands.

A gun - the hand pulls the trigger. The fist strikes. Hard. The fingers strangle. The fingers with the nails sinking into  the skin. They strangle. A stick hurts the body, makes bruises, may crack a rib. That can heal. But the hand ruptures the soul. 

It's also what the mime uses to paint the wall to hide, to protect. Come inside. Wave your hand. No, not like that - not like the Pope. Like an Italian.  Don't you feel it? Don't you feel Italian! 

Enjoy your hand: let it melt the chocolate, let it collect the raindrops, and let them dry with the sun, let it make love.

And now the other hand [if you are lucky].

It's more brain than the rest of the body.

It's how the child picks flowers.  

It's a hello. And a goodbye.

It's how we hide laughter and how we wipe tears.

It's antenna for prayer.

It's the cup we make around the face in surprise.

It's how it's sweetest to eat. And most erotic to feed. Almost.

It's the tool for exploration: start at the hair, trace the eyebrows, close the eyelids, gently tap the tip of the nose, bewitch the lips. And then go down. And downer. And downer... To the hands... Fuck - there is a wedding ring. So what?!

I put down the wall. I put the white gloves on the night stand. 

I embrace you with my hands, the part that stays at least half-conscious. I hold the air in your lungs and yet it still escapes, so I kiss you to keep it in. I tease. I take the strawberries. And the ice. I go over the skin. A millimeter away. I feel the warmth, though not touching. My hand slips down - to your navel, the outer side of the G-spot. Your skin is a magnet attracting my hand, guiding it further south where its warm, and warmer, and warmer... My hands are everywhere. In and around. Where was the brain again?

We wake up. Luckily we still know the grammar. 

We protect.

We are building walls. Now-together. We share the white gloves.

We put the hands together. 

And you stand up and look in between, through your fingers if anyone is watching. You want to open your hands, open your arms and embrace this life, embrace this wonderful planet called Earth.

"I am a little spot in the universe, but at the same time I have a whole universe inside of me. I want to feel it, take it, touch it, and let it go. I want to feel - my hand in your hand. I want to feel the comfort that you give to me. FEEL IT. Take the hand. Take it - come on, don't be shy. Feel its years, feel its wisdom, feel its beauty, feel its sexual orientation; now feel its stress level, its leadership skills, its GLOBAL leadership skills, its GPA. Feel its vulnerability, its curiosity, its shyness, its comfort, are you feeling it? It helps if you close your eyes.

"Remain expectant." 

VDAY 2010

It has been 6 years since I saw the Vagina Monologues for the first time. Each performance, infused with enthusiasm, realism and growth, has been different from the one before and after. Classic monologues are classic for a reason – they are interpreted again and again and again – but this interpretation makes them different every time. I had a teacher in high school who kept re-reading “War and Peace” over and over and over again claiming that she discovers new treasures in it every time – because every new reading is interpreted through the eyes of an already shaped past. These repetitions are no longer repetitions – they have become an affirmation. Or even better – they are a code – that code that they talked about in “The Secret” (don’t quote me on this – it is not that simple).

Three years down the road, guys were allowed to take part and new monologues were written to satisfy this gap. And off I jumped and haven’t looked back. Third year in a row, tomorrow the adventure starts anew. The past few weeks I listened to each of the monologues over and over trying to decipher the code, to get to the bottom of it, to boil the message down to a minimum and to synthesize it – in a single frame on a digital sensor. This would not have been possible if the women who posed did not actually feel the monologues in their souls: they channelled their emotions, their channelled every woman’s emotion, they channelled every human beings emotion, they channelled the emotion of the human race. I bring them to you here – frame by frame, a gamut of passion, a frame of human history.