The Factory of Pain

On Wednesday, May 27th, I had the privilege of giving the opening talk at the 22nd Congress of the Spanish Pain Society (Sociedad Española del Dolor), in Vitoria-Gasteiz. An actor, director and playwright opening a congress of physicians who specialize in pain. On paper, it made no sense. And that's exactly why the invitation interested me so much.

The talk was titled "The Factory of Pain," and it grew out of an analogy I've been turning over for years without daring to say it out loud in front of medical professionals. Screenwriters, actors and directors build our stories out of our characters' pain. No narrative holds an audience if its protagonist doesn't suffer, doesn't lose, doesn't break inside. Pain is our raw material.

And there was the bridge to the room in front of me: physicians seek to heal their patients by relieving their pain; those of us who tell stories seek to heal our audience by showing them their own. We work the same material from opposite ends. They fight it so it disappears. We construct it so the viewer recognizes it and, in recognizing it, stops feeling alone with it.

Speaking about creative craft before people who spend their days treating real pain —physical, clinical, sometimes irreversible— demands humility. I didn't go to lecture anyone. I went to run a wire between two worlds that rarely look at each other and yet share the same center of gravity.

Thank you to Rocío and Quique for taking the risk of opening a medical congress with an intervention like this one. It takes courage to begin that way, and I'm genuinely grateful.

#sedolor26