Then someone else assumed God was inside us or that we were God, and that’s how the problem turned into how to build a tower inside ourselves to reach ourselves.
The issue of physical building was given up for that of psychological building.
Putting aside bricks and mortar, cases of wine appeared and there was a party! (social building). Everybody danced alone, talked alone, smiled alone, until somebody shouted: “We’re lonely!”. Widespread embarrassment overcome by coughing fits and brief thoughts about the human condition of “loneliness” of which all of us by now had become aware. The waiters served some more wine and the party started up again, then someone else shouted: “We’re lovely”. Widespread embarrassment, never overcome even by endless bronchitis and endless thoughts about the human condition of “loveliness” of which very few of us by now have become aware.
The Tower of Babel is the exciting and international process I’ve always lived in. Years ago restoration began to preserve whatever physical is left of the tower, between one party and another, climbing up, climbing down stairs and wandering through endless halls I carry my anxieties about, an endless amount of “others” along with me, crossing one another we smile at our lonelinesses. Today I went out on one of the many terraces of the tower and I met someone who like me is here for a breath of air and whose eyes like mine today are red. I don’t remember if it’s because we had cried or if it’s because there was too much smoke at the party last night. We climbed to the top of the tower together going through parties with contrasting themes, together with our eyes red, we observed that after all the tower has reached a good point, a certain point, or better said, an uncertain point. Together and with our eyes red we decided not to jump into the void, it’s something we were told you should do alone. Together and with our eyes red we skipped our way downstairs until we came to another party. George Michael was singing: “The first time I ever saw your face”, a slow, romantic song. Together and with our eyes red we started to dance. Those red eyes facing mine reminded me of the heart, maybe because I once heard someone shout that the heart is red, and since I don’t have much personality, I believed it. The fact is that dancing together with red eyes and thinking about the heart, loneliness was slipping away; were we maybe slipping into “loveliness”?
Marco Ferraris
