L'Aveuglement

Lyrics

You told me to watch the screen.
A small room at Cornell. Or maybe Harvard.
The year is a number I am not supposed to notice.
My only task is the counting.

Just the passes.
The white shirts to the white shirts.
Ignore the black shirts, ignore the noise.
The world shrinks to a basketball, a grain of leather in the air.
One.
Two.
The squeak of shoes on a gym floor in 1979.
Three. Four.
My eyes are locked. My attention is a sharp, clean knife.
I will not miss a single one.
I am a perfect instrument of observation.

And I was looking right at it.
But I did not see it.
The brain is a faithful servant
to a very foolish master.
It shows you the ball, the pass, the number…
and it hides the rest of the world.
L'aveuglement. The blindness of the focused eye.

The film stops. The light in the room comes up.
“Did you see the woman with the umbrella?”
“No.” A confident, simple no.
“Did you see the gorilla?”
A quiet laugh. Of course not.
You rewind the tape.
And there she is.
Walking right through the game, dark umbrella held high.
And there he is.
Nineteen ninety-nine, shaggy and black, thumping his chest in the center of the frame.
A ghost on the film I swore I was watching.
An ape in the middle of my sight.

And I was looking right at it.
But I did not see it.
The brain is a faithful servant
to a very foolish master.
It shows you the ball, the pass, the number…
and it hides the rest of the world.
L'aveuglement. The blindness of the focused eye.

How many passes have I counted in my life?
The invoices, the deadlines, the cracks in the ceiling.
The precise words in the argument, tallied and scored.
So focused on winning the point,
I didn't see you walk out the door.
So focused on the rhythm of your breathing as you slept,
I didn't see the sadness taking root behind your eyes.
The world is full of gorillas
for those of us who are busy counting.

The screen is white now.
The counting is done.
And I am just sitting here.
In the quiet room.
Looking.
But what am I not seeing?
What am I not seeing now?