When I was a child, seven or eight years old, a family friend took me fishing, handed me the rod to pull in a monster catfish. I struggled to get it to shore in alternating fits of excitement and exhaustion. To my horror and amazement this person removed a knife from his belt and cleaned the catfish right before my eyes, making me an accessory to the act in real time. He pointed to a large mass in the guts, identified it as the stomach and deftly sliced it open to reveal a fully formed bluegill inside. I watched stunned as he proceeded to gut the bluegill as well, delicately removing a partially digested minnow from its stomach in turn.
There is something here about violence, the illusion of edges, the truth of interconnectedness and suffering, the mystery of beginnings and endings, how water holds everything, even the power of authoritarians, how we all perform all the time, as we love, consume and wait to be consumed. For me, intentional play and absurdity are the only honest paths forward for making work, for human solidarity.