First times

Every moment is a first time

You never know when you may be faced with a revelation. A revelation is something you don’t know you didn’t know. I’m not talking about quantum physics or how to calculate the trajectory of a rocket (I know I don’t know these things) but rather something that when you finally read it or hear it you think, “That’s right, that’s what it is. I never thought about it but it is like that.”

It happened to me at a photography exhibition. At the back of a bare room there was a small television on which the video of an interview made with ordinary people was running continuously. They were being told words or little phrases and they had to say the first thing that came to their minds. Like “Fear” and they would say what they were thinking. “Future” and on and on.

At one point a Japanese lady was offered these few words, “First time?” and she replied, “Every moment.” And in that bare room with only one small television on a wall, my brain exploded that day.

Okay, not literally: my head didn’t explode and nobody got hurt, least of all me.

What I mean is that sometimes you hear four words and you realize you are facing something unexpected and important. A revelation, indeed. A revelation hides, disguises itself as something else, you don’t recognize it right away. I could have heard…