The Kingdom of Infinite Space by Raymond Tallis

Author:Raymond Tallis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books Ltd

The eyes can be used in very subtle and complicated ways as instruments of deliberate communication. I can dilate my eyes – more strictly my orbital fissure, put into upper case by my eyebrows – as a silent warning of someone’s presence, that something is behind you, that you are being tactless. I can raise the font of my gaze by turning it into an otherwise unexplained intense stare. By this means, I communicate something to you without betraying the fact that I am communicating it. Alternatively I may use my eyes as a pointer: I look in a certain direction and, as with literal pointing, you are instructed to look in that direction so that you will see the thing I am seeing which I may, for all sorts of reasons, wish you to know about. The gaze, in short, is a signal of itself.

In view of the intense significance of the gaze, it may seem extraordinary that we can withstand the gaze of so many when we give a lecture, or address a crowd. Perhaps we can handle it because the crowd is agglutinated into a single gaze and each contributing gaze is diminished by all the others, or we pick out one or two faces from the crowd, who can be addressed as individuals. (Middle of the third row the experts tell us.) Indeed, we can turn the tables, as teachers do, by singling out individuals to answer questions. Then it is those others who feel outnumbered, as all gazes are upon them.

Let me end with a toast: the Viking ‘Skol’, uttered as the warriors raise the empty skulls of their enemies from which they drink wine. As they do so, each has to make eye contact with all the others, to test them for duplicity. The skull is a good reminder of the end of gazing, when the living daylights go out and the looker can return no more looks.

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