Depersonalization

La Voz de Galicia – 10 de marzo, 2023 →

Cristina PatoI was walking around midtown, and I suddenly felt as if I were at an airport: the same clothing and shoe stores, the same luxury products, the same cafeterias; the same way of suggesting to folks what they should buy and where, the same way of calling one’s attention. And even though I walked around a specific city, it could as well have been a city in any part of the world, just as it could have been any airport in any part of the world. They all diffuse the same music, the same fragrances, the same images…

And then I thought about how fast this transformation was because, for me, this commercial gentrification was not so evident twenty years ago, especially in small cities. Perhaps in the decade between 2009 and 2019 (my last professional years on stage), I became aware that each city that I visited for work gave me a series of standards I became used to, and that made my life on the road somewhat less complex (how many Starbucks did I go to in China, Korea, Australia, or the Arab Emirates simply because I knew that they had the oatmeal I wanted for breakfast?) But I had never felt a depersonalization as strong as the one I have been feeling for some time. I don’t know if it is because I have embraced another kind of life, and I am still getting used to it, but now more than ever, I feel displaced in that city center that always contributed so much to my life, and I avoid walking in it to avoid feeling as an accomplice (even though I might be) of that way of life where I no longer recognize myself…

In some way, today’s city centers are no more than mirrors for today’s way of life, and I suppose that there is no turning back because we are all accomplices and victims of this little Truman Show that we create for ourselves…

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