Miró and Saturn

I'm running. I'm late, as usual, but only a few minutes, so I hope they'll still let me in. When I arrive at the theatre building, there's nobody at the entrance to check my ticket. The door is open, and I enter the front hall of the building. It is unusually dark, and there are many people sitting and standing around.

It's hard to determine whether the show has already started, or not yet. Clearly, this is not a regular theatre performance, as it doesn't take place on the main stage. In stead, there are many short performances going on simultaneously in the front hall, on the stairs, and in different rooms backstage.

I leave the front hall, as it is too full of people, and go to the room on the right. There are a number of big cubes scattered around, on which people are sitting. I find a place on one of them. Next to me is an old friend. We were in the same theatre group when we were teenagers, but I'm not sure whether she remembers me. She is wearing some sort of uniform, and it occurs to me that she might actually be one of the actors who is doing this performance.

As she doesn't talk, I figure that the performance hasn't started yet, and I ask her how long the show will continue. She smiles vaguely, and says 'late at night'. I ask her when the interval is, as I didn't have time to go to the toilet before the show, and she says that it's up to me. I don't understand what she means, and I want to ask her, but she looks the other way. The performance seems to have started.

She talks with some other girls, who were in the same theatre group as we. They don't look much older than they did back then. All of them wear uniforms, some are standing on the cubes. I have no idea what they're talking about, but I may be the only one - some other people in the audience are very much involved, and participate by loudly giving their opinion. Maybe they're part of the performance too, who knows. It's so dark that I can hardly see their faces.

Nobody seems to know tonight's program, the visitors nor the actors. At least, that's what they pretend. But perhaps there really isn't any, and I should just accept. I figure that as it's impossible to see everything anyway, I might as well just walk around and see what's going on in some of the other rooms. So I walk around the building, which is filled with intriguing contemporary artworks, whose meaning I don't understand, and sudden outbursts of incomprehensible theatre performances. Overall, the place is pretty dark, but the lighting in some rooms is mysteriously beautiful.

Gradually, the boundaries between art and reality, and those between actors and visitors, get blurred. For some time, I'm walking around with another old friend, but then he suddenly disappears when he has found the room where he is supposed to give a performance - or so I guess. Or was it me who disappeared? I feel like I'm the only one who doesn't really understand what's going on here, the only one who doesn't know their part, the only real outsider in the building. Fortunately, nobody notices, and nobody pays much attention to me.

I continue walking around alone, admiring the artworks, most of which I don't understand - and most certainly will not remember this morning, when I wake up. One exception is the small room where a female artist is making pencil drawings. All her drawings have teddybears on them, but they're not really teddybears, as they're actually made up of other things. I don't get too close, so I can't see what it is the teddybears are made up of. Actually, I don't want to find out, as the drawings strike me as very violent, even though the artist seems normal enough.

I continue my journey through the building, and come across an amazing painting. It could have been made by Miró, if only it wasn't almost completely black. It's a painting of a bed, in which a couple is sleeping. Their eyes are open, yet they sleep. One of them has a white face, the other one a black face. They seem happy, despite the fact that there is very little colour on the painting: just some tiny patches of yellow and blue near the edges. They could have been us.

In the next room, I see a magically colourful painting of a planet, seen from an unusual angle. It has shades of purple and green in it. The artist, who is present in the room, tells me he is inspired by the findings of astronomy and science, which he turns into more abstract, dreamlike images. He shows me satellite images of a spaceship landing on Saturn, saying this is the original footage of the moment humans first set foot on the planet. Only then do I realise that I must be in a faraway future.

I wake up.