Mercy!

Twenty four colour self-portraits stand out from the crowd sketched in the background; each face plays out the spectacle of a different personality. The first of these is of someone totally crushed, who cannot bear to look at the ‘something’, someone experiencing a personal tragedy. The second person is absent, hidden behind hair and quite uninterested in anything. Person three has her head in her hands. She is too frightened and helpless to have an opinion about what it is that she is seeing. Person four is one of life’s tourists, a detached observer who avoids voicing personal opinions and makes do with satiating her curiosity. Person five is ‘sussed’; she knows the game is not for real and that there is no point in having any emotional involvement in the game. At the same time, she finds something amusing; perhaps the ‘something’ is intelligently constructed. Person six is a bundle of nerves; she understands nothing and is terrified. Her signalling to some supernatural force seems to be her only way out. Person seven pretends to be involved; she conjures up some artificial emotions on her face, but these are no more than the grimaces of a sick soul. Person eight is a country bumpkin, a mysterious one, at that; hard to say what she is really thinking or what she might stand up for. Person nine is a negative opportunist; to her, everybody is in the wrong, but it is beneath her to comment on the situation. Person ten seems painfully split between three different responses: should I be frightened, should I be against, or should I be in favour? Person eleven is fanatically ‘against’ or fanatically ‘for’, both responses usually appearing the same. Person twelve, in her astonishment, has fallen into total disorientation. Person thirteen is embarrassed in a negative way and does not understand her own feelings. Person fourteen is an animalistic consumer of curiosity. Person fifteen cannot bear the sight of what she is looking at, her hands acting as ‘perception wipers’. Person sixteen has had an epiphany. Person seventeen can see what is happening but has put her face in her hands, not wanting to join in with the crowd with her reactions. Person eighteen loves to the point of adoration and demonstrates her full devotion. Person nineteen has come across something that leaves her unable to react; she has acquired the Melancholy Planet Syndrome. Person twenty is in physical rapture over something she has seen. Person twenty one thinks for herself and for others, and she clearly has some advice for the ‘something’ that she can see. Person twenty two is labile; she will follow anything that takes her fancy. Person twenty three is in the grip of a power struggle between the ideology in which she believes and what she can see. Person twenty four still does not know what to think; perhaps she must ask her husband first.