Sitting down to listen to what the city silences in noises

I could say that there is only one thing in common in the entire Abasto neighborhood and that only thing is, precisely, that there is nothing in common. I could also say that the Supply is the myth of origin of the cultural life of the City of Buenos Aires, and that since its origin, my city has always been one and the other, never the same, never just one. And I could also say, perhaps because we have finally admitted that the common does not exist, that this is a city full of theaters. Because a theater, my theater or any theater, is the way in which I, you, and each one of us, manage to invent a space for that very diverse and strange fraction of ourselves. Because theaters are, and always could be, the only places where people meet to rehearse acts or invent fictions with their thousand differences. It should also be said that theaters are the places where many completely unknown and completely unknown people meet, perhaps for the first and only time, and may encounter their thousand strangeness, their thousand broken and uncertain bits of themselves. And perhaps precisely because I have a theater, today I can say that the stages of my city are places where people learn to practice their desires. Or better yet, learn to indulge in the irrepressible desire to do extraordinary things, because “What do I love for, I wonder, if not to do something extraordinary and unknown?”

“People move every day” (“People move every day,” says the chorus of a song written by a chabón from Abasto). “People move every day… Do you know why they leave?” (“Do you know why you are going?”). “Do you know why they are going?” (“Do you know why you are moving?”). Sometimes I dream. Sometimes I dream that my city is like a theater. No, rather, I dream that I am walking around the city doing the same thing that I do in a theater. And I dream that I have the time that I never have to sit down and chat with each of the strangers that I come across every day. And we chat. We chat a ball until neither of us feels more invisible or more alone. Other times, while running to go somewhere, because in my city nobody walks, everyone always runs, I imagine things, because doing theater teaches you to imagine too many things, so I imagine that the incessant noise of the city turns into music, and that a song is capable of covering the stridency of the traffic in the busiest neighborhood, at any time of the day. And a single song, not even a great song, just any song, is capable of stopping everything. And thanks to that song, I can stop, stop running for a minute from one place to another and sit down to listen. In my dream I can finally sit down to listen to any song at any time of the day in the middle of the incessant noise of the big city.

But obviously I wake up later. I wake up and realize there is never time for this. I wake up and think that I have to get money to survive. Madam, sir, we are trying to stop the world for a moment, can we? Can a theater, or rather, a play, in the name of pure fiction, stop time for a little while? “My poetic vein whisper to me.” How much is this time without time? Or rather, how much does it cost to have a little more time? Today, and just for today, I really don’t want anyone in the world to feel invisible. Today I wish I could look at everyone.

Some of all this, in some way, or another, or another, is, or would like to be, Cinematique Abasto.

*Director, playwright and teacher.

Cinematique Abasto takes place on Saturdays at 4:00 p.m. at Roseti, Gallo 760, Abasto. The reservation is made by Alternative. As it is a show open to the neighborhood, the entrance is a collaboration.