If Reason Panders Will

Have you never witnessed an en­ter­tain­ment acted out upon a stage, across a screen or within a box that so captivated you that you gasped aloud, covering the mouth before you could halt the sound or the hand?

When the story refuses to pander, the pleasing shape and space provide remove, where's There and then's Now, having drawn you out of you, having dissevered you at your faults, apportioned into its players.

We break ourselves apart thus for the purpose of turning back to examine our other fractions from a distance: more than a mirror, less than necropsy. So exceptional those moments today, haply to avoid lardering discomfort in the heart of a paying spectator, but more likely more simply that salt is the easier seasoning.

To remove ourselves from ourselves whole, not to participate, not to dismantle or disassemble, but to simply to narcotize, our entertainments racing towards extremes, surpassing to surpassed. We are stolen away to distance unmarked: we are escaped.

Choose instead to stay and be our own examiners.

I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions