Our companion is the one with whom we share our bread

Translating back to English from a book of R.D.Laing written in Hungarian: “Only two or three of them were brave enough to taste a preparation baked by a chronically schizophrenic woman. This little incident convinced me of something. Who is more foolish? The staff or the patients? The exclusion affects people deeply. Our companion, in the strict sense of the word, is the one with whom we share our bread. There was no connection between the staff and the patients. Psychiatrists were afraid of catching schizophrenia. Who knows ? It may be contagious, like herpes…

Belly and fire

Andrea d’Amore – Ventre e fuoco
convivium performance, Traffic Festival
San Lorenzo in Campo (PU), 2019

“However, an inclination exists, far from style, that passes from the body and its awareness of being able to receive. The inclination to sabotage the code and disobey the solitary advantage. In this sense, food and the practice of cooking, intended as care for the feast, is able to include and undertake the possibility of the gift, which is typical of a feminine dimension of cooking, more attentive to abundance for all than accumulation for the few.”