I went to see TheatreWorks's latest production Balance yesterday afternoon. Tan Shzr Ee's review in Life is miles above whatever drivel I churn out. Unfortunately there's no online copy (Her unfavourable review of The Wedding Banquet on the same print page gets the web treatment though. Eh.). Also why not drop by Justin's blog to see what he thinks? Watched the play with him.

I wish I could've taken home one of the moving flowers. Creepy and surreal.

The performance reminded me of a scene from The Hours, where Meryl Streep's character recounts the moment when she realises what happiness is. That scene showed the fragility of the/a/some "moment" -- that ephemeral confluence of emotion, action and environment that cannot be adequately defined outside of the liminality it inhabits. Words are insufficient -- how can they be when experience is insufficient to reproduce the "moment"?

One can, I believe, develop an appreciation for the "moment". To recognise it, but also to mourn it. Reading Heian-era Japanese Literature, effused with aware is one way, for instance. In fact, part of the appreciation is the ability to mourn the passing of the "moment".

The problem, I suppose, comes when the mourning is too great; when one can't let go and let the "moment" pass. Instead, there is a chase and a quest to relive it that leaves many dissatisfied and frustrated.

Was this an element of the "imbalance" in the male actor? Perhaps I am mining my experiences and the last lines of the production for too much meaning:

We will not stay like this forever. We will unclasp, and let some meaning in. Until then though, it is enough to let the forgetting take its course. We will know when it is done. It is not so easy to relinquish the things that make us kind.