MDMD(11): Ear

[John Bailey]

>From: Dave Monroe <davidmmonroe at yahoo.com>
>Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 02:50:37 -0800 (PST)
>
>"'Now whisper Ear your Wish, your fondest Wish,-- join
>all those Sailors and Whores and Company Writers
>without number who've found their way down here,
>who've cried their own desires into the Great
>Insatiable.  Upon my Solicitor's Advice, I must also
>remind you at this Point, that Ear only listens to
>wishes,-- she doesn't grant 'em.'

Wong Kar-Wai's film In The Mood For Love (Hua yang nian hua) features a 
story which I think was based on a famous Chinese legend, but I can't 
exactly recall. It concerns a man who held a very pressing secret, and the 
only way he could be relieved was to speak it very softly into a hole in the 
side of a tree, which he then stopped up with grass. By doing so, the secret 
left him and he could get on with things. Very poignant moment in the film.

There's also an old story I remember from when I was younger, though I can't 
remember the context. Could have been a fable. Someone has a dark secret 
which they can't stand keeping to themselves, so they yell it into a hole in 
the ground, then plug it up. The secret then seeps into the surrounding 
landscape and, occasionally, trees and rocks pass it on to people wandering 
by. Eventually the whole town knows his secret. Scary little story, I always 
thought.

And finally...the Ear seems to play the pastoral/confessor role very well. 
This is a period of secularisation. The Ear seems to fill that space between 
the declining position of the clergy and the not-yet-formed position of 
secular psychiatric doctor/therapist. Give it a few centuries and it could 
have been a little pickled Oprah in a jar. So why does the Ear broadcast 
Mason's secret wishes to Dixon? Seems a tad rude. Then again, a tad useful 
as well.

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