THE FIVE SENSES FUNERAL ~ An Experimental Sensory Revolution
Les Subsistances, Lyon
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ARCHITECTURE
Pre-Show: Audiences divided into 5 groups, each assigned one sense to "lose" via restriction (blindfolds, earplugs, nose clips, gloves, bland crackers to numb taste).
Space: Five stations, each dedicated to proving one sense alone can generate complete joy.
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ACT ONE: The Diagnosis
Central space. All performers on stage with various sensory aids/restrictions.
AGNUS (55, neuroscientist, wearing all sense restrictors simultaneously):
I studied joy for thirty years with all my senses.
Today I buried four of them.
Kept only touch.
Yesterday, this fabric felt like fabric.
Today, it feels like the entire history of silkworms.
Removes glove, touches silk. Visible ecstasy.
OMAR (40, former sommelier, nose clipped, ears plugged):
I rated wines for Michelin restaurants.
Now I only see liquid.
But watch—
Holds wine to light
The color gradient tells me everything.
Tannins look purple. Age looks amber.
Joy looks like light through rubies.
STEPHAN (28, DJ, blindfolded):
I used to need light shows, visuals, lasers.
Now I understand: humans are mostly water.
Water resonates at specific frequencies.
Plays single bass note
Your organs are vibrating.
That's not metaphor. That's physics.
CATHERINE (35, chef, wearing thick gloves and blindfold):
I cooked by taste for fifteen years.
Now I cook by sound.
Cracks egg
Perfect egg sounds like tiny thunder.
Overcooked pasta sounds depressed.
Joy sounds like butter hitting hot pan.
SIMRAN (22, lost smell in COVID):
Everyone says "I'm sorry" about my nose.
But I discovered something:
Memory lives in absent senses.
I smell phantom roses that are more rose than roses.
My brain invents smells better than nature.
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ACT TWO: The Sense Stations
Audience rotates through stations, experiencing single-sense joy
Station 1: Touch Only (AGNUS)
Room filled with textures
AGNUS:
Close your eyes. Hands only.
Guides hands through: ice, velvet, tree bark, another person's pulse
Your fingers have 3,000 touch receptors per square inch.
You've been ignoring 2,999 of them.
Station 2: Sight Only (OMAR)
Silent room with changing lights
OMAR:
No sound. No touch. Just watch.
Single pixel changes color on screen
Someone will cry. Someone always cries.
Color alone can break you open.
Station 3: Sound Only (STEPHAN)
Pitch black room
STEPHAN:
I'm going to play the THX sound.
Your skeleton will remember movie theaters.
Your bones will feel nostalgic.
Plays it. Audience physically resonates
Station 4: Taste Only (CATHERINE)
Blindfolded, silent tasting
CATHERINE:
One grain of salt.
Let it dissolve.
Your tongue is mapping its crystal structure.
That's geometry you can taste.
Station 5: Smell Only (SIMRAN)
Dark, soundproof booth
SIMRAN:
Fresh bread. Nothing else.
No eating. Just breathing.
Your hippocampus is time-traveling.
Every grandmother who ever baked is in this room.
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ACT THREE: The Mundane Symphony
All performers demonstrate extraordinary joy from ordinary objects
AGNUS (washing one spoon for five minutes):
Minute one: It's a spoon.
Minute two: It's metal that remembers being earth.
Minute three: It's conducting my body heat.
Minute four: It's teaching me about curves.
Minute five: We're friends now.
OMAR (staring at tap water):
This water was dinosaur pee.
Then cloud.
Then rain.
Then filtered through limestone.
Now it's about to be me.
Drinks with religious intensity
STEPHAN (listening to refrigerator hum):
50 Hertz in Europe. 60 in America.
Your refrigerator sings your country's anthem.
All day. All night.
You live inside a song.
CATHERINE (eating single grain of rice):
This grain fed someone else first.
The plant that made it.
Photosynthesis is just eating sun.
I'm eating stored sunlight.
Chews for full minute
SIMRAN (smelling blank paper):
Trees. Chemicals. Time.
Every book smells like its year.
1950 smells different than 2020.
I'm breathing bibliography.
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ACT FOUR: The French Song Experiment
All performers sing Édith Piaf's "Non, je ne regrette rien" with different senses blocked
AGNUS (deaf, feeling vibrations through floor):
I feel French through my feet!
OMAR (reading lips):
Mouth shapes are making my face happy!
STEPHAN (blind, swaying):
The melody is moving my spine!
CATHERINE (can't smell or taste):
My tongue is confused and delighted!
SIMRAN (full senses for first time):
Wait... more senses isn't more joy...
It's just... different joy...
Begins removing senses one by one
Each subtraction is also addition.
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FINALE: The Choice
ALL:
You can have your restricted senses back.
Or keep the limitations and the discoveries.
80% keep restrictions
AGNUS:
One sense fully alive beats five senses sleepwalking.
OMAR:
Your rainforest is beautiful.
But I found infinity in tap water.
STEPHAN:
Every refrigerator is an orchestra.
Every skeleton is a tuning fork.
CATHERINE:
Every grain of rice is a sun battery.
Every egg crack is thunder.
SIMRAN:
Every missing sense is a door to imagination.
Every limitation is a liberation.
Final moment: Entire audience washes spoons in silence for two minutes. Profound attention. Unexpected transcendence.
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INTERNATIONAL DESTINATION ELEMENTS
The Sensory Passport
- Audiences receive passport stamped for each sense isolated
- Complete all five: receive "Sensory Revolutionary" certificate
- Annual reunion for those who found joy in spoon-washing
The Lyon Protocol
- Scientific study: "Single-sense joy exceeds multi-sense"
- Published in Nature Neuroscience
- Medical tourism: "Sensory restriction therapy"
Celebrity Sense Ambassadors
- Famous chefs cooking blindfolded
- Musicians performing deaf
- Artists painting by touch only
The Spoon Museum
- Every audience member's spoon displayed
- 10,000 spoons, each washed with total attention
- Becomes pilgrimage site for mundane joy seekers
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IMAGISTIC AMPLIFICATIONS
The Touch Cortex Cathedral
Your somatosensory cortex maps your entire body in your brain - the "homunculus." Your hands and lips are gigantic in this map, your back is tiny. When washing a spoon, your brain-hands are the size of continents exploring a metal universe.
The Frequency Body
Every organ resonates at a different frequency. Heart: 1-2 Hz. Brain: 8-12 Hz (alpha waves). When you hear the THX sound, your bones vibrate at 1000 Hz, temporarily becoming a musical instrument.
The Molecule Orchestra
Smell molecules fit into receptors like keys in locks. But your brain has 400 types of smell receptors creating trillions of combinations. When you smell bread, you're running a molecular combination lock that opens memory vaults.
The Photon Digestion
Your retina consumes light - literally. Photons cause chemical changes in rhodopsin molecules. Seeing is eating light. When that pixel changes color, you're digesting different wavelengths.
The Taste Topology
Your tongue isn't divided into zones (that's a myth) but is a landscape of 10,000 taste buds, each a tiny mountain with 50-100 receptor cells. A grain of salt is Mount Everest to these cellular mountaineers.
The revolution: joy doesn't need all five senses. It needs one sense plus complete attention. Your body already knows this. Lyon proves it. The world discovers it.
