THE FUROR ONE NIGHT BEFORE THE PERFORMANCE

ding an sich was anything at all if you could call her shy ... she couldn't help but express herself ... but like a fire ... and like a fire she required a screen to protect her audience ... a screen made of anything handy ... wire glass canvas paper nerve-cells tradition ... and like any performer in front of any natural audience no one could see her entirely inside and out but got just a tiny slice of her time and space ... and always through the screen ... but some it seemed would get a better shot of ding and what she was doing than others as it were in the back row who got to see next to nothing ... but it wasn't these two groups at odds with each other or the performance ... that discontent kept boiling up in two or three rows not far from the front ... it was they who accused the theater of fraud ... they who so boisterously pushed themselves forward one evening before the performance ... pulled down the curtain and then cried revelation when they found nothing behind it ... and it was they who sold pieces of the torn fabric saying to the people this this is the real ding an sich