Originally I started this entry as a way to kill time while struggling with insomnia–I’d like to think of it as a kind of a bedtime story I am telling myself. Time to write myself into the conclusion of an accomplished and satisfied sleep. Like taking my dog-brain for a walk to tire it out, I’m journaling before bed and just choosing to make it public. There’s a lot of meandering and we might not really get anywhere, but here we go.
I’m definitely not the first to have observed the romance of populating late and sleepless nights with projects and ideas. I also love this liberated (liberating?) time of night where even the sun has left us alone to our own devices. I am especially pleased to be tapping away at my computer in my new bedroom in my new apartment, with my new window wide open and welcoming in that cusp-of-autumn breeze and the sounds of crickets. It is cozyyyy.
I love the sound of crickets at night. Their chirps are especially nostalgic for me in a way that makes every room with access to their symphony feel like a home to me. Having moved around every 2 to 3 years with my parents, I never really became attached to a single house or a single bedroom. Rather, even if I did become attached, there was no point dwelling on that attachment or letting myself feel hurt or longing for that home space. They come and they go. Someone else lives there now, and it’s their home. It’s a little surprising how someone else can just as easily make memories in a space that was significant to you. You could have lived all your life in a room, had so many new experiences there, and just as quickly someone else could move in and start living their life too. And whether you think they’re hateful for it or less deserving or whatever else, there’s no arguing that they certainly are living their life, and you can’t really fake that, even if it seems to lack something in quality or integrity. There’s no comparing the authenticity of two lives, after all, and somehow no matter how many billions of universes exist in the hearts and minds of people, the world has space for it all: no scarcity of “depth” even if there a scarcity of space; no scarcity of “experience” even if there is a scarcity of resources. So, most of the time, our memories have to be enough for us. I think this can be hard for the human mind, which often requires some kind of external validation or legitimation to trust our experiences and feelings are valid and real, but that’s just the way it goes.
It’s hard to entertain an abstract conversation like this and not think about the way such emotions about deservingness affect real conversations about perceived scarcities: who deserves the housing, the jobs, the government funds? And then of course, in arts spaces: who deserves to be shown here? To be given a platform? Who should be prioritized as an audience? In my own personal life: Who gets to take over my old studio? Build expensive condos in my hometown? Where do I put my time and dedication, or to whom? There’s a conversation about ROI here for sure, but I’m more interested in chasing the conversation about authenticity and value.
Authenticity so quickly becomes a marker of quality. When I mentioned the authenticity of two lives being incomparable, to be clear, I don’t mean authenticity as something like being true to yourself. It’s true some people are better at that than others. But even if someone lives their life in suppression, denial, or some other contortion of the self, they’re still living that life. Could someone with a well-developed sense of ethics claim that such a life is less worth preserving in a state of comparable quality relative to an individual who is more “free” in their self-expression? Such a calculus appears often in political spaces: Who are the people who matter? Suddenly a host of qualities appear which define someone as more or less human (who does or does not qualify as a constituency).
My personal feelings aside, I am wondering what authenticity can mean, and what it is often appropriated to stand in for. Starting at the individual level, in his book on The Individual vs. Society, Japanese psychoanalyst Takeo Doi pushes back on what he calls Western concepts of authenticity and selfhood. There is a constant stripping of the self, he suggests, that Americans (for example) demand to evade the “fake”. We push and push to unearth and unmask, trying to find the most naked and unadulterated - unfiltered version of something, and this desire for purity is easily capitalized upon, commodified, and exploited.
We see it in America’s virginal obsession, with our simultaneous desire to experience the authentic and to preserve it from influence. But it is not possible to exist in the world constantly naked, and that is natural and normal in a world so full of motion and stimulation; like metal that oxidizes and cake that dries and hardens and all the crusts and skins which form on the outer edges of things, we all need something to protect ourselves and at the very least serve as some membrane to distinguish interior from exterior, or else it becomes impossible to develop a center. Ok, don’t mind me, just engaging in extended metaphor on my personal blog.
Point being, once again, it is impossible to exist in a purely vulnerable and unfiltered state at all times, like an infant or a toddler does. It’s exceptional to experience unfamiliar or wondrous things: an overwhelming or confusion of the senses can be exciting, but it can also be obstructive, frightening, and taxing. We create layers of selves to protect our ability to process and move throughout the world, but this is not necessarily an obstruction of the self; rather it is an accumulation of our choices, a deliberate interaction with the world around us. The product of reason, experience, intuition, and desire together form the external persona (the omote, according to Doi) which works in congress with our internal persona (the ura) to create the complete self. In this way, I guess I might be suggesting that to write off certain expressions of ourselves as more or less authentic is an abdication of personal responsibility.
Anyways, if the structure I’m describing sounds familiar, it could be because this layered construction of the self somewhat resembles of Freud’s deconstruction of the Id, Ego, and Superego. Doi suggests, however, that rather than one constituent of consciousness controlling or mediating the other, they mutually constitute one another. Of course, it’s not as if we always have complete control and awareness and are able to approach every experience as a deliberate decision; Doi qualifies that there are times we may be completely unaware of a deeper motive/inner feeling, or honne. Doi is clear about removing moral or value-based judgement from considerations of omote and ura. Instead, he seems preoccupied with a performance-based angle for considering the face as an expression of the mind, the mask as a representation of the essence of the persona:
”The face conceals the mind even while expressing it, expresses the mind even while concealing it—so as not to reveal it completely. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that this simultaneous expression/concealment of the mind by the face is the work of the mind. Thus, the relationship between the face and the mind is not a constant, and it is an unmistakable fact that they are in a dyadic relationship.”
(dyadic: something consisting of two parts; two halves which make a whole)
In this excerpt, I interpret Doi as trying to challenge a hierarchical construction of the mind/body duality. If the mind is the essence, the body is the articulation. They mutually compliment each other, one providing substance and one both reflecting and influencing it. They cannot exist in full articulation without each other. I think that Leo Fox does a simple but beautiful job in portraying the dyadic relationship of the mind and body in his book “My Body Unspooling” which, by the way, is also beautifully illustrated:
These are just excerpts from a gorgeous comic (which you can buy here to support the wonderful artist!!)
So, if we consider the body as a consummation of the mind (giving it definite boundary, simultaneously allowing realization while limiting amorphous possibility) then we can understand why Doi so heavily leans on metaphors of performance to describe this mutualism:
“Seen in this light, it is highly interesting that the English word ‘person’ derives from the Latin word persona, which means ‘an actors mask.’ Why do actors wear masks in the first place? Because the mask expresses the actor’s role even more directly than an elaborate costume or skillfully contrived makeup. It is for this reason that the list of characters in a play (not the actors) is still called the dramatis personae. In this way, persona, the actor’s mask, came to mean ‘a role in a play’ and then, in English, became a ‘person.’ a human being.”
Our performance of a more intelligible character is a tool of communication; we use our personae to indicate to others who we are meant to be in a space. It is difficult, some would say impossible, to capture the nuance of an ever-changing person completely in a limited context. Just like a 3-Dimensional shape can only be described from one point of view at a time in a 2-Dimensional space, we can only take snapshots of circumstantial expressions, combining them into a more nuanced vision. And even then, people are liable to constantly change and grow. I keep coming back to themes of communication in these essays, probably because at a certain point I feel like communication is all we have against a backdrop of cosmic and or existential isolation.
If one subscribes to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (unfortunately over-referenced on Hinge in Brooklyn last time I checked), then one truly believes that “Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression in their society” (Sapir) and “every language is a vast pattern-system, different from others, in which are culturally ordained the forms and categories by which the personality not only communicates, but also analyzes nature, notices or neglects types of relationship and phenomena, channels his reasoning, and builds the house of his consciousness.” (Whorf)
The language which gives shape to the abstraction of thought both carries it and molds it: we gain the freedom of communication and lose the nuance of that which cannot be expressed in words. I think I’ve written about this before, but, anyways. The tools we use to process, sort, and communicate information are ultimately just that: tools. And tools are not without biases themselves. I know Imogen and I have had many conversations about this, but I think no matter how much we discuss it, I always find it interesting to think about.
To come back to what I said earlier about how the body is a consummation of the mind, this next pargraph is going to be kind of abstract so if it is dumb and weird just say “nerd” and skip it. My proposition is that if the mind or the spirit contains limitless possibility in its formlessness and undefined nature, then the “mask” is something concrete and definite by contrast. If formlessness = unlimited possibility, then that possibility is also inherently impotent because of its inability to actually consummate into existence. On the other hand, to express a single possibility is a miracle in that it turns possibility into reality (let’s not get into discussions of subjective reality…) but this miracle occurs at the cost of every other possibility which could have simultaneously existed in its stead. (I know for almost certain that no one who is subscribed to my Substack has played Umineko No Naku Koro Ni, but if you had, you’d totally be like damn have you been playing Umineko lately? Aaaanyways…) Basically, I’m describing opportunity cost.
In this way, the expression of the self provides unparalleled freedom by allowing for action. One could also argue it limits freedom by demanding choice, which is the price of action. So we are both freed and shackled by our bodies, and that is why I am taking us right back to square one to say, they mutually constitute and necessitate each other. What I mean by intelligibility, by the way, is the potential of a “possibility” to exist with consequence - that is, to be communicable to or perceivable by any entity other than the mind (to a degree, this includes the body!) So I guess the calculus that you might want to do is, does “freedom” look like infinite possibility (Schrödinger’s Cat) or the ability to affect the world around you (opening the box)? I’m willing to guess that some of you will have different answers re: opening the box or not. The point of this paragraph, ultimately, is to assert the importance of the performance!!! It is the transformation of subtext into text, of impotence into action, etc. etc. Performance moves the narrative forward. And we depend on stories to help us understand the world around us.
For my fellow Judith Butler fans, you are most likely familiar with Gender Trouble’s premise of gender as performance. For those who are not, the most basic summary is that gender is a construct that is loosely correlated to reproductive roles and secondary sex characteristics, but not an inherent experience. Therefore, gender as we know it is a performance of a social role that has been prescribed to us via social institutions. Most familiar to us would be the dichotomy created by Western patriarchy. If you haven’t read Gender Trouble I do of course recommend reading it; it is not a perfect text but I think still incredibly useful and relevant. Take for example, this excerpt about questioning the very premise of gender analysis:
”…What conditions the domain of appearance for gender itself? We may be tempted to make the following distinction: a descriptive account of gender includes considerations of what makes gender intelligible, an inquiry into its conditions of possibility, whereas a normative account seeks to answer the question of which expressions of gender are acceptable, and which are not, supplying persuasive reasons to distinguish between such expressions in this way. The question, however, of what qualifies as “gender” is itself already a question that attests to a pervasively normative operation of power, a fugitive operation of “what will be the case” under the rubric of “what is the case.” (Butler, Preface 1999)
I’m certainly not writing this substack with the intention of changing any minds across the aisle; I’ll make no pretense that this is a personal meditation and echo chamber for my own thoughts (although any challenges, addendums, or questions are welcome in the comments).
I do think that there are some elements of reality that “gender” attempts to describe, that exist. I don’t think that “gender” as a conceptual tool exists as a socio-biological reality. I am motivated to keep writing about gender because I am mad that since birth I have been put into a box that I have spent my entire life since trying to climb out of. When I read Stone Butch Blues I thought, it’s not that I’ve been selfishly demanding some kind of fantasy, that I alone want to be exempt from the categories and rules that bind the rest of society, it’s that our society’s construction and enforcement of gender has stripped from all of us so much nuance, complexity, and richness, that trying to take back that freedom and self-actualization conversely seems fantastical and entitled. I don’t know if anyone else will relate to that, which is ok, but maybe you will. I don’t know how much the term “non-binary” really does for me, either, but that’s a conversation for another time. For now it’s enough that it just signifies a kind of “opting out”, I suppose.
And not to make everything about gender; I think plenty of other identity markers are also subject to conversations about performance, perception, and internal authenticity. (Sidenote, a ladybug is stuck in my room and has been loudly bouncing off the walls for like 20 minutes now. How does that not hurt? I feel bad for it!) In my own life, for example, I have had many an internal and external conversation about race, culture, and community. How do I present, for example, as someone who is 1/4 Korean but looks completely white (or specifically Ashkenazi, to the trained eye—looking at you, Chabad dudes who lurk around WSP). Versus, how do I feel or perceive myself in relation to my community? How does my community perceive me in relation to them? All of these things matter, and it’s hard for me to assemble them into any kind of hierarchy when it comes to the formation of identity. External factors are less stable and arguably somewhat less important, but from a community-oriented perspective it is extremely important whether others consider me as part of their group or not.
Much like sexual or gender identity, there is an inherent quality to cultural identity which exists alongside a “practiced” element - that is, by default I think that we assume a lot of these identities are something which exist, at least partially, through being performed in a specific environment. E.g.: for me to be queer means having sex/going on dates with women or other queer people, for me to be Jewish means observing the holidays and being part of the community (or achieving some kind of literacy/proficiency in a certain language); for me to be nonbinary means to present to others as not cis, whatever that means to them. Obviously some of you might say, but hey, all of these identities also hold internal qualities, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks: you’re gay regardless of who you do or don’t date/sleep with, and any blood test or tradition would qualify you as Jewish/Korean/whatever, and if you identify as nonbinary then of course you are that, regardless of how you present. Once again I would say yes, that’s true too, but qualification is different from fulfilment, and to this extent I am arguing that any facet of the self needs to be fleshed out through practice and performance to exist in a way that feels real, because perhaps culture and sexuality and even race are just as amorphous and subjective as gender, except that when amorphous things become tied to political dynamics and subsequently subject to state violence, it becomes a whole lot more important to determine who is what: therefore, the authenticity conversation becomes more salient.
If we are to think of various categories of identity as the personae which constitute communities, it makes sense that social consensus around identity allows coherent communities to form. By demanding the creation of boundaries, the institution supports the construction of the identity, and vice versa. Doi argues that the tatemae, the outer manifestation of the self, the face, the mask, the “consensus” as it were, as the gestalt of its constituent parts, therefore describes its components. He compares this gestalt to the institutions which structure our civil society, even referencing the U.S. Constitution. He quotes American sociologist Charles Horton Cooley as describing the concept of institutions thus:
“Language, government, the church, laws and customs of property and of the family, systems of industry and education, are institutions because they are the working out of permanent needs of human nature.”
I don’t think it would be a stretch to draw parallels between the construction of a human being and the construction of institutions, especially given the rather famous precedent of Hobbes’ extended Leviathan metaphor. But it’s not just that government, for example, is a body politic. Our legal system, for example: our laws are supposed to be a codification of our society’s values and norms, a reflection of the moral, ethical, and aesthetic substance of our society. That means a consensus, for both purposes of intelligibility and democracy. The construct of our laws influences and regulates the body it governs, but it also necessarily must reflect the changing needs of that constituent body. A law that fails to do this creeps into obsolescence at best and tyranny at worst. (Just my humble opinion). This relationship, I think, parallels the mutual construction of the inner and outer selves which Doi suggests.
I continue to wonder why I am so fixated on these deconstructions of boundaries, of selfhood, and of authenticity and objectivity. I think these deconstructions are meant to enable a simultaneous reconstruction, and I think it is meant to be in pursuit of some greater freedom. When I consider my approach to the arts against some of my peers, I see myself being obsessed with breaking out of something, somehow, where other people are interested in the various ways they can play with and observe the world around them. It feels like I am stuck wriggling out of some chrysalis, all curled and squashed against some set of walls, and I’m scratching and straining to bust out of them. Why such intense self-focus? I was listening in to a conversation including a former professor of mine, when she started describing painting as something akin to dress-up for her. You put things on and try them out, exploring other people’s things for yourself. It’s an act of exploration, even celebration, although sometimes it is also reflection or invocation. I also would like to engage in play; why does my engagement with the arts feel so desperate to me? The need for self-expression doesn’t necessarily conflict with art as an intellectual exploration or even as an act of play, but it feels like some needs take precedent over others.
My former professor (Gaby Collins-Fernandez, check out her work!) mentioned that part of what drew her into art is that just like language, art is a process of communication that is created collectively, through mutually and gradually determined meaning; however, art required more immediate authenticity from her than writing. Being “too good” at words made it too easy for her to deceive herself with words. It’s “too easy to bullshit” to come up with meaning that sounds good, or makes sense to other people. It doesn’t have to really reflect how you feel, what is really going on. With visual art she lacked that feeling of ease: “If I’m confused, my paintings look confused. I can’t fake it.” As opposed to being confused but coming up with something to say that sounds clever and put together, she had to let her paintings communicate and honest psychological state. If paintings are a way to access some kind of authenticity, something that reflects the reality of at least one person’s world, maybe we see what Gaby means when she says “paintings at their best are a way to not be alone.”
Maybe this is what separates the fake from the real, or the replica from the original. Is it the “aura” as Walter Benjamin describes, which makes individual works of art so unique and valuable? If so, maybe we can create a hierarchy of artistry based not on formal characteristics alone, but the thought and feeling put into a work. In that case, we are not just comparing objects, but the spirits and very lives of two artists (or, of the artist and the copycat). It is not just the formal qualities of the work, but genuinely, additionally, the feelings that have gone into that communication. Even in such a case, though, do we then consider reproductions to have less value, as if a novel printed over and over again has less impact than the original manuscript? What is the nature of a reproduction—does it matter whether it is done by hand or by machine? Perhaps it depends on the subject matter?
There are obviously some nuances to Benjamin’s concept of aura, which is part of a specific analysis of “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” as his essay is so aptly titled. (I do recommend reading it, by the way). In this essay, Benjamin actually contrasts the social roles of painting (as an ultimate example of traditional art) with modern media of the mechanical age, such as the film, by looking at the circumstances of their production AND reception. He writes, “Painting simply is in no position to present an object for simultaneous collective experience, as it was possible for architecture at all times, for the epic poem in the past, and for the movie today.” Whereas the film is meant to produce a relatively equal and digestible experience to large groups of people at a time, the painting is meant for an intimate digestion, or at least presentation with some amount of ceremony and choreography. So — if Gaby says that paintings are a way to not be alone, but they are not meant for simultaneous collective experience, then perhaps the painting demands a dyadic, simultaneous, and reciprocal relationship.
I think the painting offers a kind of authenticity which is frozen in time - it never has to form a protective skin, but offers a kind of permanent unveiling. In this way, the painting is more than a mirror — or rather, it cannot be a mirror — because it is a stagnant communication, ultimately.
What do you think? Does the painting respond to us? Does it love us back? Could it, should it? Does it depend on the work? Think about these questions as applied to other art forms, as well. Communication can include as many or as few polarities as we want, and sometimes when we write to others we are also writing to ourselves. Sometimes when we write for ourselves we are imagining writing to another. Maybe the versions of other people which we keep in our heart are just reflections of ourselves! I don’t know that that’s a bad thing, but this insurmountable divide between perception and reality can be frustrating at times. It is so easy to project and manufacture an image according to our own fantasies or biases, and while I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong about that, I continue to try to challenge these constructions. I do want to see people for who they are — or at least, for who they want to be understood as. I guess the only way to do that is to build it together. Of course, a fixed work of art like a painting can’t do that, so it’s easy to project onto. Maybe in some occasions, that’s also its role — to inspire fantasy.
In any case, the rain has begun to fall pretty insistently outside of my window and is all the more audible against the tarps we’ve covered our outdoor furniture in. I’m always grateful for the rain during late nights like this because it breaks up the monotonous pressure I feel to fall asleep. Somehow in a silent room I feel that rush to fall asleep as soon as I can: quickly, before the quiet night slips away. When it’s raining outside it feels like the sound and the water are keeping me company, and will do me the favor of distracting me from my own thoughts until I fall asleep.
On that note, I hope you are all enjoying the beginnings of Autumn. It’s been a busy month, and I’m missing the forests right about now. At least I have this huge cat that hangs out in our backyard.
Lots of love as always, see you all around.