ELSA KORNETI
The Ministry of Loneliness The furious amassing of information and data devours life, thinning out the world. Only a good weeding can get the world growing. There is a widespread sense that soon, a new form of life will take hold when the machines have dominated the last human cell. But since the phenomenon “man all alone” took on gigantic proportions, the newly established Ministry of Loneliness stands tenderly and responsibly at the side of loners, reaching out a “helping hand”.
It’s her own hand, which was chosen to be copied, to assist, responsibly and tenderly, keeping thousands of people company. It was chosen to be modeled and made into a mold for a hand of companionship and psychological support, the rescuing hand which, according to the ad copy, will be beside you, will support you, will perhaps even save you from countless psychological pitfalls.
She would recognize it anywhere, that slender Renaissance shape with the somewhat uncommonly long, bony fingers. It is her hand, the hand of a virtuoso violinist who has played for and thrilled lovers of classical music on every great musical stage in the world. “When you play a violin piece, you are a storyteller,” so said a great poet and it’s a fact she knows it better than anyone - that that hand has told many stories; perhaps that’s the reason that they chose it out of so many others.
The Ministry of Loneliness’s surprise Christmas gift for pensioners, the old, the older, and the very, very old, the lonely and the solitary, and all those who are, according to its judgment, companionless, unattached, deserted, and alone by fate or by choice, - a new achievement from the indefatigable field of Compassionate Robotics comes to stand beside man, for man, when the statistics alert us yet again that during the Holiday Season baneful loneliness increases and is magnified. A waxen, flawless hand free from liver spots, veins, freckles, and wrinkles, a hand with a human texture, ageless, unmarred, timeless and scentless, with a built-in thermostat and an internal heating element that keeps the activated device warmed to body temperature; it will be the perfect helping hand for the emotionally insecure, for all who need it, - a hand, as if chopped off at the wrist, a palm with fingers, that came out of a mold with the imprint of our famous national violinist, a gift to hold your hand, warmly and tenderly, in the lonesome days and nights of these strange holidays, and beyond. © Elsa Korneti
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