Monday, December 01, 2003

Atrios Revealed!

Someone just wrote in asking what the hell the name "Atrios" means. It doesn't actually mean anything. At some point while reading political message boards I had to come up with a nickname to register, so I pulled one from memory. The name I meant to use was actually "Antrios," who was an unseen character in the play Art, by Yasmina Reza. The central set piece of the play, which drives the plot, is a featureless all-white painting. Antrios was the name of the artist who painted it. But, I remembered the name incorrectly, so I is Atrios.

But, what is Atrios? In Spanish, it means "vestibules." It's also the name of a planet from Dr. Who.

Otherwise, Atrios is me.

The last lines of Art (delivered by, in the performance I saw, Stacey Keach):

Under the white clouds, the snow is falling. You can't see the white clouds, or the snow. Or the cold, or the white glow of the earth. A solitary man glides downhill on his skis. The snow is falling. It falls until the man disappears back into the landscape. My friend Serge, who's one of my oldest friends, has bought a painting. It's a canvas about five foot by four. It represents a man who moves across a space and disappears.