Text extracted from NOTES FOR POSSIBLE AT ONCE- AT ONCE is a Solo by Deborah Hay, adapted by Mariana Tengner Barros. Photos of me and my mother, by my father. Memories that come at the same time to the same place, exploding joy and sorrow simultaneously.
She walks slowly, in a contained manner, carefully placing her feet that go inside her soft shoes, in the cold floor of a winter. As she stops in front of a chair by the wall she notices that she had come from that exact place she is facing now. She is surprised by an old voice that pays her a visit. Her body softly waves inperceptibly as the voice explains things that only she can get. She turns. The turn feels like a cut, a release, an opening. Everything is now more than she thought. An immense Joy invades her being and as she realises this her face almost organises a smile. It’s too much. She cannot take so much, so a huge sorrow glides through her skin, making it impossible for Joy to totally manifest in her outsides. The outside of her, the lines and shapes that she can see and that others can see even better, her outside now looks like a morphing face on a restrained body. Joy and Sorrow dance inside this look. The dance is what she looks like. The dance comes from what she sees and what she cannot take at once. A song arises from the depths that she didn’t even remember existed. Her all, her from then, now.
She’s a crier, a regular believer, a hopeful, a judge, a player, a singer, a faker, a jogger, a joker, a bullshitter, an illusion lover, a party crasher, a soap watcher, a magnifier, a pacifier, a money spender, a time passer.
