monologue robert in guest appearance in a performance of Renee Copraij and David Linton, called Passade du desir in the tunnel of love/ a live cinema performance/ premiere october 2008, de Melkweg, Amsterdam

I can’t stand a lot of things/ I can’t stand rain/ i can’t stand snow/ i can’t stand the high tones of crying babies, yelling children, shouting angry mothers/ But most of all I can’t stand life/how it is with its constant threat of violence/ I am totally aware that one single virus can become a devastating bomb in my body/ I experienced a lot of times that one short moment of awkard silence can generate a crossfire of thoughts in my mind to go on for days/ But most of all I fear death/ I know death is never far away, it will spit in my face at a moment i won’t expect it/ Death is as a stranger i don’t want to meet personally in my life/ although i feel its presence all the time in my proximity/ How to trust this stranger who i don’t dare to look into the eye.

Never depend on the kindness of strangers/ they said it so often to me/ Stay anonymous, autonomous/ But how can I / making my living in the theatre, I am totally depended on you, dear public, strangers in the dark, whose eyes I can’t see / I am totally depended if you accept what i do or nor, that’s my existence / Perhaps it seems that I am the one in power here/ I know stars are easily born here, but as easily they can be neglected, forgotten/ I make myself no illusions about my destiny here.

But don’t you think we are all in the same situations/ we all behave like promising actors in a play called life / without knowing where and when it ends/ we all need public to make our act worth living/ in the play called life there is no happiness without sorrow, i am sorry, these are the laws of dramtaurgy, i studied for this.

My trick to survive this all is to see life merely as an intoxicating foreplay towards death, a turmoil of glamorous illusions which can’t remain for ever/ the problem is we never know when this will end, when death will knock at our door/ but i know i will immediately notice when it will happen, because at that moment death will wipe away everything i believed in, in a second/ death will destroy everything which made my life so comfortable, everything except this one little thing called love/ love is the only thing that doesn’t lose its power facing death. the guru said to me, over and over.

That’s why I am addicted to looking for love and intimacy/ I am looking for love, desperately, because don’t you feel it, time is running out, death is in the air.