We are not yet properly in carnival, but as now the festivities extend beyond what was their definition and traditional dates, we already enjoy a carnival that, what things are, we inaugurated without the masks, except for pharmacies, centers nursing homes and nursing homes...
It must be recognized that many people had abandoned the use of masks on public transport for some time. And the same thing happened in cinemas or theaters, no matter how many coughs were heard in the room. So we returned to a normality only slightly –or not so slightly– altered by these three years of pandemic, getting rid of that reverse mask that, for hygienic reasons, covered our nose and mouth (by the way, a sarcastic round of applause to all those who they have spent the pandemic with their noses outside the mask; I don't want to guess how they wear their underwear...).
Mask is a curious word, of relatively uncertain origin. It is usually accepted that it comes to us from the Italian, maschera. Coromines believes that it went from Italian to Catalan and from there to Spanish. And its probable distant origin would be Arabic, where mashara (or madness, if we get fancy) would refer to both the jester, the clown, and the mask with which that same character was covered. And since the words and the etymologies fit together like cherries in a basket, I cannot help but tell you that, if we continue with the Arabic language, sahir is to make fun of something or someone and that, therefore, sakhira means ridiculous. Eye! Not to be confused with Shakira, which is what the singer is called and which comes to mean both grateful and full of thanks. Sorry for having gone through the hills of Colombia and I'm back to the masks.
The ancient Greeks –always at the origin of almost everything– used masks in the theater to highlight the moods or other characteristics of the characters. That mask, prósopon (literally, in front of the face), defined and protected the actor. And it made him someone more expressive than just the naked face of a stranger. Much of the magic was in the mask. And from the Greek word derived personare and person in Latin. So every person is a mask. Or several, obviously.
In the legal world, and even in philosophy, the person came to be understood as differentiated from things and animals, so it is not risky to say that we become our own mask. Said without abusing the prosopopeia, which also comes from that affected declaiming typical of the Greek masked actors.
The different masks that one adopts in different facets or moments of life define us and allow us to be a social being that does not have to be our intimate essence. Freud was clear. As he was clear about Eros and Thanatos as the basic instincts of the human being, that he must find his balance between the pleasure principle and the recently invoked reality principle.
Out masks! That seems to be the order they have given us after three years of masking. At carnival, no less. And in a double electoral year. So now it's time to wake up and discover what less obvious masks our fellow citizens and our distinguished leaders hide. For a while we all said to each other: Look me in the eye! And we discovered that it was easier to guess a lie with your face covered than when the liar was acting with their face uncovered. The comedy is finite!
