TWEEDLEDUM & TWEEDLEDEE. The real story of opposites.

What is the reason if, of all the freaks existing in “Alice in wonderland” –and Alice is the first one-, those who scare us the most are Tweedledum and Tweedledee? The Mad Hatter could have scared us with the irrational consequences of his mercury vapours inhaling. The Queen of Hearts threatens us pointing directly to what really makes us what we are: our head. The White Rabbit get us loose (and lost) in paths we don’t know and we follow him blinded by our curiosity. Despite all these major threats to our integrity, despite all these embodiments of our fears and degeneration, those two malicious twins are those who scare us.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee decided to engage in a fight one another and never fought it. What is this if not our worst fear? We are double. These twins are what we are: complementary opposites who should fight one another and never do. Their names are nothing but onomatopoeic sounds coming from our deep inside; our fears, squeaking from inside, sneaking out like weak sound that at first make us laugh but then… Oh God, what a mess they do when they are together! Same old story, my friends: black and white, ying and yang, Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Here it goes: it sounds like an old rhyme, always actual, always true. We are double, no kidding. Everybody knows it. We try to be one thing at one moment and the moment after we’re the opposite. And it’s not we change. We are always double. We are always complicated. And we complicate things even more when we think about it, when we acknowledge that we should engage in that fight and one of the twins, in a sort of biblical destiny, has to perish by the hand of the other. The scary thing about Tweedledee and Tweedledum is that we never start that fight and none dies. We’re doomed to be twins forever. Maybe the Gemini sign is the only one that can really tell something true about who we are. And it is funny, if you think about it: you might be born any day of the year but Twins are inside you anyway.

I refused to think that my scariest part could be represented by two fat schoolboys and not because I have something against fat schoolboys. On the contrary, such a figure communicates me peace and tranquillity. No neurosis. And instead, the twins are those who scare us the most. Because it is not them, it’s us. We’re Tweedledee and Tweedledum, we play with our other side. None loses, none wins. We avoid the battle. And when we have told our story, as they did to Alice, we’re so absorbed by our dangerous duality we don’t even realize our spectator has left its place and is not listening anymore. Three is a crowd and in our life we’re already two, we don’t need a third. Sad destiny of twin-hood: in being twins, we end up alone.