Embarrassment
The Caught
Social exposure with no moral weight. The self caught mid-error, in front of someone, where nothing wrong was done and something was still revealed. Embarrassment is the only self-conscious state that needs an audience. Remove the observers and it stops.
The word
From French embarrasser, to hamper, usually traced through Spanish and Portuguese to baraço, a cord or halter: to embarrass was to entangle, to block. The financial sense, embarrassed meaning short of funds, keeps the old obstruction. The feeling took the word over only in the modern era.
The feeling
Sudden heat in the face, and the immediate wish to be smaller. Time goes granular; the room's attention feels like a physical pressure even when no one is actually looking. Nothing wrong was done, which the mind knows and the blush ignores. It burns hot and short, and an hour later it is usually material for a story.
Against its neighbours
Shame concerns what one is and can last for years; embarrassment concerns a moment of exposure and rarely survives the week. Guilt requires a wrong; embarrassment needs only a witness.
In the work
The moment is wrong, not the act. A posture is caught that was never meant to be held, and the frame arrives before the body has finished arranging itself.
No work carries Embarrassment yet. The element is named and the table is not finished.