Holding Breath
Waiting and waiting to find out the truth about her lover Cupid, Psyche is eventually persuaded that she must risk a light to discover the identity of of her unknown nocturnal visitor. As Cupid sleeps, she lights a lamp or candle, but a drop of oil or wax falls from the light, wakening him and setting in motion calamitous events.
Holding Breath dramatises the intense curiousity and longing to find out about the loved one. It is a curiosity born of hope and desire, but one that can sometimes bring less welcome things than illumination.
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The shifting tense of the text here attempts to capture the moment of change, the crux of the events. This crux is visually figured here as a pinhole that throws everything into focus, but also as an hourglass’ waist, separating what has been from what must now inevitably been. That moment is also shown visually as Shiva’s drum , whose shape recalls the hourglass, and whose sound accompanies destruction and creation. Throwing light upon the world is always accompanied by the sound of this drum.
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