Many times I find myself asking myself “What is the title of this?”, as if that professional reflex (identifying what should be communicated about any issue) formats the way I read reality, relationships, processes.
The craft is not just a know-how;
It modulates what we are and seems to sneak into our gaze
, into the images we use to explain what happens and what we feel.
“They are criminals,” a lawyer friend jokingly says of his young children when they commit
extra large
mischief .
Others of us would call them vermin or earthquakes, but we wouldn't bring the penal code into the conversation.
A psychologist I frequented sometimes talked about
the difficulties of certain people in “inhabiting” situations
, where it would have been more natural to say manage or take charge.
The imagery of the trade colors perceptions
.
Will it happen to painters to come across people who feel like they come from a painting by Hopper or Goya?
Or identify the crossroads as cold or warm, according to the color palette that their effects awaken in them?
And what about the musicians: will they live their days sometimes like a milonga, other times like a trap and on some occasions like a sonata
, according to the bars and rhythm that come with them?
At street level and in everyday slang, will the waiters at our favorite cafes see us as tears, Cortados or
caramel macchiatos
?
The height of the cases that I know of
the imprint of the profession in the after-office
is that of a dental assistant considering a dental irrigator (an absolute novelty to release food trapped between the teeth) as a possible gift for Valentine's Day.
“It comes with two nozzles,” she stressed, trying to convince me, “so everyone can use their own.”
I imagine there are few things less romantic than that shared hygienist crusade, for the sake of the Kolynos smile, but for her the option was unbeatable.
In order to dismantle the excesses of professional deformation,
we could try changing jobs and explore the world from that new identity.
What would you like to be today?
Doctor, top model, rocker, athlete?
Be novelists for a while, I would invite the Nobel Prize winner Ohran Pamuk, and you will be able to try everything
.
For the author from
Istanbul,
his art consists, precisely, in “talking about ourselves as if we were another person and about others as if we were in their skin.”