We Can All Be Barbers

I keep waiting for a link which will lead me down a forking path to the Internet of Tlön and Uqbar.

I have tired of the present Internet and its insistence upon repeating ad nauseam the infinitely reflected images of a world grown tired and cynical. I yearn for the tales of the great heresiarchs and their battles; I yearn to hear of the female imams of Xinjiang and Henan province and the female priests of southern Chimayo.

I wish to hear of the great meditations of fire, like those of Catherine of Siena. I want the Pope to be a carpenter's son or a fisherman.

I want sports to be forever memorable, and opera to be unending.

All of us are Figaros, barbers of Seville; not merely cutters of hair, but Factotum della città !

Factotum of the City !

 

 Peter Mattei, Joyce di Donato, and Juan Diego Florez   MET Opera  2006

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