Virtual Masks

Forever seeking...

2012-01-19T22:02:00.003+01:00

"I'm just a carousel in a vanity fair. I don't stand out, I run at low light. My existence is a whrilwind of perfect circles. Every spin sets out as a perfect spin, but it turns out as a reduction. My bruised circles let me know of the other carousels. They are all dragged towards the center of the fair, some even push themselves towards it. I'm stalling. You see, us carousels, always catch glimpses of the outside, but we never get a chance to see all the tiny pieces that make us spin. We want the center of the fair, that bright make-believe, while we ellude our one chance to authenticity...ourselves."

Instead of New Year Resolutions

2012-01-09T18:16:00.000+01:00

I've never made any new year resolutions. Maybe that would explain why I have never really had any great achievements in life so far. Particularly of late, it has been quite difficult for me to distinguish what achievement actually means. I am at a continuous loss, at a never ending borderline that separates the person I am from the person I know I can be. It is much more comfortable to lie motionless beneath your self fabricated shell and operate the rest of the world with a minimum output, while whatever is left underneath remains but a promise for the indefinite future.

I taught myself along time that overexposure is the equivalent of self-destruction, of an unrequited and often unauthenticated display of the self which ultimately finds no translation with the rest of the world. However, irrespective of what I excuses I may find for my failure to set some clear, traditional goals at the beginning of each year which is also linked, I may add, with my overstated awkwardness at drawing conclusions of whichever sort, nothing has left me more unprepared for the task of setting resolutions than the horrendous whirlwind of the present. Indeed, the present, which represents the rise and fall of value which comes as a consequence of values being mistaken for labels. The present day individual is at his best spreading minimal descriptions to entities, facts, and then reinterpreting these labels turning them into something related to the value of that particular entity or fact. But then again, labels are merely sketches, drafts which vary from instant to instant, value is permanent, at all times unaltered, it defines and damns at the same time.

The context we find ourselves in today possesses the antidote of authentic values by simply promoting the fake, I shall call it philosophy, of finding values everywhere. Value does not reside everywhere, this is the reason why value is so utterly cherished. The value that states itself to be so is a pitiful illusion of make belief. Value is a weapon in the hands of time, it lies silently in the undeserved mud not waiting to be exposed, but waiting to redeem the mud it was given.

I've never made new year resolutions, I don't have the strength to acknowledge the little value I posses and transfer from one passing year to the next, ergo adapting the words of Dickens to my present situation:

"Speak comfort to me 2012!"

"I've none to give."

The unchanged me

Alas de octubre

2011-10-09T23:28:00.004+02:00

Por encima de mí no hay nada más que el viento...

Me ahogo en la carne de las hojas

sin saber que aun hay sol.

Olvido que puedo olvidar,

Y agarro los pensamientos con un miedo antiguo

que habia olvidado en los tiempos en las que

aun sabia olvidar.

Me acuerdo de todo.

Sé quién eres.

Tu montaña rusa me atrapa cada vez

Es el mas alla de mí

Y eres el mas alla...

No te puedo escapar

y te odio por mas que te amo.

Pretendo escaparme en el mar,

el mar de antes,

el mar del sol, el mar del agua,

el mar de mi vacío

que tu ya llenas...

Le llenas con tigo

Le llenas con migo

¿Quién soy?

¿Quién eres?

Yo te conosco octubre!

Tienes alas de silencio.

Vuelves para acordarme que

ya fui, que ya soy passado

Vuelves para definirme y dejarme atraz

Pero yo te conosco octubre!

Te conosco como a una manana con sol

Como a una tormenta repentina que ha perdido su camino

Te conosco octubre, triste, viejo octubre

El de cada año,

te conosco octubre porque tu eres yo!

Min vegg ... det er jeg

2011-09-18T23:53:00.000+02:00

Jeg har alltid hatt følelsen at det finnes en stor vegg mellom meg og resten av verden, mellom meg og de andre. Om det er en vegg jeg bygger selv eller om veggen bare finnes der, det vet jeg ikke, men veggen er der og det er umulig å unngå den. Egentlig har veggen alltid vært der. Første gang jeg vet at jeg følte veggen måtte vært i barndommen. Det var nesten Jul og jeg var som sagt lykkelig. Jeg visste ikke akkurat hvorfor jeg var det, men lykken var en selvfølge hvert år på den tiden. Jeg satt rett foran vinduet med lykken i tanken og plutselig fikk jeg bildet av et rom fult av mennesker. Jeg tenkte det kunne vært hundre mennesker der på rommet. Nå var rommet fult og jeg syntes, i mine barnslige tanker, at det var så gøy at alle de menneskene på rommet ville aldri frykte det å være alene.

Jeg hadde alltid hatet tanken av å være alene, å være hjemme uten at noen var der, men ikke fordi jeg hatet ensomheten, nei, ensomheten var i seg selv ikke fryktelig, men stillheten, jeg hatet stillheten i et tomt rom. Stillheten var alltid truende. Stillheten var pinlig å høre på, stillheten virket som min uhyre i skapet. Så var jeg alene hjemme, måtte stillheten tauses.

På dette rommet i tankene mine var de alle fri av frykten av å bli alene midt i den stillheten. Så forestilte jeg meg at jeg også måtte bli med. Det ville bli et rom hvor jeg kunne være lykkelig for alltid. Idet jeg tenkte akkurat den taken, rommet mitt ble ikke lenger et rom fult av mennesker. Rommet ble et rom fult av hundre mennesker og jeg. Alle de menneskene som fylte det deilige rommet var sammen, men jeg, som også var med på samme fellesskapet, jeg var bare fortsatt meg. Det virket som om alle de hundre menneskene var ikke tilstede, alle deres stemmer og fortellinger og lykke kunne ikke erstatte meg og min stillhet, denne fryktelige stillheten som har alltid vært en del av meg.

Jeg skjønte ikke hva jeg hadde oppdaget på det tidspunktet før Jul i min barndom. Nå kaller jeg DET for min vegg. Jeg har den med hele tiden, den følger meg og det er umulig å slettes. Jeg tror at hele mitt liv har jeg lettet etter noen som kunne få veggen til å forsvinne. Jeg tror det finnes en eneste nøkkel, men når denne nøkkelen er borte så blir veggen like som for.

Bak min usynlige vegg ser jeg hvordan mennesker prøver å nærme seg og det går fint opp til et punkt hvor de stopper brått og går videre. Men min vegg, det er JEG! Noen ganger tror jeg at veggen selv er mer meg enn selve meg. Å forsøke å gå videre betyr å ikke være den ekte meg, den som jeg bør være, den som jeg frykter mest i stillheten. Så jeg må bare vente bak veggen min, vente på å se løpende ansikter som stirrer bak eller blir borte. I det siste har jeg hatt inntrykket av at jeg ikke venter på noen i det hele tatt, jeg bare gjemmer meg bak veggen som forteller meg om rom med mennesker som aldri frykter å være alene.

Pieces of Me in Pieces of You

2011-09-10T14:03:00.001+02:00

Have you ever thought of how a mirror is not quite enough to reflect you completely? That when you look at yourself in any mirror there's just a tiny glimpse of your shape that you see which may also differ from mirror to mirror and from reflection to reflection? Have you ever longed for a complete image of yourself that could be as invariable as a definition, no subjectivity, no appearances, just you in your utmost essence? A body and mind continuum which would finally represent you without the slightest variation: the absolute demon or the absolute angel, no in-betweens, no hybrids. A dignifying choice for a single label that would inexorably represent YOU and YOU alone.

It might seem cruel to limit human existence and thought to a single raw representation of something, whatever it would be, excluding relativity all together in exchange for one pure impersonation of each of us. It is all utopian if you thing about all the differences that need to be categorized and set into various labels defining particularities which then would embody personalities and further on refer to particular individuals. Such a process would at least put an end to the hypocrisy of the label, for even though the common day philosophy acknowledges that each and every single one of us is unique, there's always a label available for each of our unique selves.

I've often fantesized about seeing myself through someone else's eyes. Leaving my old self behind for a while, taking the shape of someone else in order to observe myself from the exterior, having a three dimensional perspective over who I am. If this were possible, I probably wouldn't be up to it, for fear I would detest myself to a higher degree already. Keeping it at the mere level of a possible world, gives me, however, the necessary degree of impersonality in order to be able to picture it without becoming completely tinged with it. The outer me would have the upper hand over the actual me, since it would be aware of the depersonalization game and at the same time the outer me would also hold every piece of representative information about the actual me. Any interpretation the outer me would make about the actual me would be based on both inner retrospection and outer observance.

It is as if I were under a gigantic magnifying glass generated by me to focus on a different me which is the actual me. I would maybe find that the translation of my thoughts and actions into another person would differ from the thoughts and actions which are harbored solely inside my own world. It would then appear that my own mechanisms for releasing valuable output for the world around me are internally flawed and I would have to develop a totally new device to report myself to the exterior codes. If we could, thus, fabricate the correct codes of access to each and every single one of us, from scientists to politicians, to the different peoples (read peoples not people) all over the world, to the seemingly least important person in the street, maybe then will we have reached the time of world peace. It's not necessarily a matter of language, but rather a matter of acknowledgement that we are not unique on our own, but rather unique together.

Creating Pandora's Box

2011-09-01T16:14:00.000+02:00

Creation is not characteristic for mankind. Adhering to the belief that we ourselves resulted from the creative attempt of a higher authority, it would only be just to acknowledge that everything we believe to have created is a replica of what had previously been inserted into our existence and our contribution is that of discovering it.

Still, having been given the gift of life, we engage in the grand make-believe game that we ourselves are creators. In this way most of our existence is quite illusive, for creation is immanently connected with life and though we may "create" objects, ergo tangible and visible things, life, which is in fact the sole result of creation, has never been part of the human attributes. With creation in its fullest meaning, we are in the least mediators, but we never bear the "authorship" of life.

We are immitators of the greatest kind. We ceaselessly hunt the codes of life as if in the look for some secret password which will grant us full access to the motherboard or shall I say "fatherboard" of existence. And time and time again we find that we are merely adamant scouts on their greatest endeavor at the end of which the only golden star available is the supreme keylogger for the ultimate system of life. The only thing we have been able to do so far is hack into disparate life codes with the help of what we believe is our advanced science, while in fact we are merely taking baby steps into a universe we can't even begin to define.

And yet creation is all around us, we are part of it, but it seems impossible to interiorize it, to make it our own, to include it into our system of attributions. This creates a sense of lack, a feebleness, an anxiety of being trapped inside a bubble with a primitive navigation system. What we fear the most is the moment when the bubble breaks and we are thrown into what we imagine is the impalpable. But we are already trapped within the impalpable, why would the world outside the bubble be any different?

And so in between these coordinates of "bubble" and "outer bubble" we reinvent the image of creation, but not as a response to the demands of our human condition, but rather as a distressed habit meant to lead us to meaning. We have been trapped in Pandora's box for centuries, so all we are left with is the hope that we could recreate the life of the gods inside the curse of our box. The life of the gods is endless, the orbit of our hope is the path that leads to Olympus.

"Jeg" er borte!

2011-08-31T00:57:00.001+02:00

I dag kommer jeg ikke hjem til meg. Jeg har bestemt meg på å flytte fra meg, å flytte langt borte, noe sted der ingen kjenner meg igjen, noe sted hvor det finnes ingen minner om meg, hvor verden finnes uten å ha fått meg. Der er jeg ikke jeg. Der skal jeg si "jeg" og jeg skal ikke lenger bety jeg. Men det betyr egentlig at hvis jeg flytter til et helt annet sted skal jeg fortsatt være "jeg". Men jeg vil ikke være jeg, det er derfor jeg flytter.

Jeg har bestemt at ordet jeg skal ikke finnes der jeg flytter. For jeg vil jo ikke være meg. Hvis jeg ikke kan være meg, får jeg velge mellom alle de andre mulighetene hvem akkurat jeg vil være. Og jeg skal være "deg". Det spiller ingen rolle hvilken "deg" jeg blir, så lenge jeg ikke lenger eksisterer. At jeg blir man eller kvinne er heller ikke viktig så lenge "jeg" forsvinner.

Jeg har tenkt på alle mulighetene. Jeg skal til byen som vanlig uten å si noe til noen og når det er på tid at jeg skulle være hjemme, ingen skal komme. I denne stillheten blir "jeg" hjemme alene og venter på meg. Men jeg kommer ikke tilbake for jeg er ikke "jeg" og jeg kan ikke komme tilbake til et sted hvor jeg ikke lenger finnes.

Så skal "jeg" bli "deg". Ikke lenger som meg, skal det bli mye lettere å finne andre som har også flyttet fra deres egne "jeg" og da skal det ikke være jeg og deg, for da skal vi, begge to, bli deg. Det ville vært så lett om alt hadde vært slikt helt fra begynnelsen. Jeg behøvdes ikke være meg, fordi jeg egentlig var deg helt fra begynnelsen. Det var deg som fikk meg til å flytte fra meg, og da jeg hadde ankommet til det ytterligste stedet der jeg var lengst borte fra meg, så skjønte jeg at jeg hadde gått verden rundt for å finne det jeg hadde flyktet fra. Og dit jeg hadde ankommet "deg" og "jeg" ble det ikke noe av fordi vi kunne bli til uten å være jeg eller deg. Det var bare to navnløse ansikter som ville flytte til en verden uten navn.

Art and Other Demons

2011-08-29T14:32:00.003+02:00

Art is painful. In times when words are plentiful to express all there is to express and quite more than that, art takes the shape of an unsurpassable, quiet essence for which expression has no meaning. We are on the verge of an identity crisis. We have designed egos and alter-egos which speak for themselves, irrespective of their true self, of their true nature, of their true ego, and we have learned to believe the realities that they create while making them part of our world.

We live monadically, in separate, distant units which are not meant to reveal any inner truth, but are rather meant to fabricate surface truths for a surface structure which will eventually collapse into the structural emptiness below. It is like being given a valuable original which is then put away, and in order to justify its absence, remote copies are being fabricated and strategically exhibited in an attempt to recreate a new original which wasn't there to begin with. The original is not required, the truth it holds is a lie, authenticity does not invite you to sit comfortably and enjoy the ride, authenticity is problematic, its distant translation, the surface truth, is much cozier, it always touches the right cords, it sells more than it tells.

Art is redundant within this "neo-marketing" of identity. It mixes and overlaps sequence after sequence until it annihilates any sense of structure and stability. The dignifying whirl of art reveals our "unicorns" to be "identity" modified ponies, genetically altered together with their cotton candy proof world. Art is cathartically silent, a molting machine emaciating language and rendering the truth beyond it. This is why we are never fully prepared for art, we fear it more than we admire it or we admire it in fear contemplating it like a bad, indispensable omen. Our times are not programmed to withstand entities which remain true to themselves as art does. Our times are programmed to format entities whenever they are no longer satisfactory enough to live up to the pony and cotton candy proof standards. Our times sell animated corpses with the promised land on their lips at the simple cost of value. This is why value is an endangered species, because we trade it for ponies, when we should be looking for unicorns.

The silence of art is redeeming. So quiet down, art is speaking and it is painfully silent!

Some Insights into Writing

2011-08-26T15:02:00.003+02:00

My writing fairy tale is of a clear postmodern type. This is indeed a most peculiar situation since there is after all nothing too clear about postmodernism. We all seem to be floating in the same limbo of vivid incertitude, but we all seem to enjoy it, this is the century of a lifetime. However, this is also the century of nothingness.

Why do I feel that my little threads of thought are postmodern? The answer is quite simple: because I don't like it. It's a chronic disease. It has been following me since my very young years. It has always prevented me from reading any type of paper or essay before handing it in. Even now I don't ever re-read any of my most important papers. It translates into this quite simple issue: I'd rather be publicly humiliated than stand up to the horrid feeling of disgust at reading my own lines.

The story line is thus fairly uncomplicated. I hate writing. There's no question about that. It's not because I wouldn't have anything to say, but because the sight of my thoughts materialized into words is abominable. They just don't fit together these two images engaged into some sort of sisterhood whose sole existence is to show me the disastrous discrepancy between my very own ideas and their translation into language. It feels as if I were using a primitive, insufficient code which doesn't have enough signs to represent the images in my mind. Is language truly leaving me or am I not faithful enough to language?

Alas, despite this colossal clot, as I like to call it, which prevents me from engaging into any type of relationship with my writings, the darn printing machine in my head just won't let me be. Someone must have forgotten the on-button going and saved themselves while there was still time, abandoning me to the misery of matching thoughts to words. It'a an incurable disease that forces you to live with it, postponing the moment of release to the very, last minute possible, torturing you to your last, shaky letter.

I'm currently looking for a cure. My diagnosis is ruthless and I was wondering if any on you out there are struggling with the same syndrome?!

Signs,

The writer outside me

Me Uninterrupted

2011-08-25T14:06:00.005+02:00

Just when you thought socializing was difficult... there is just so much estrangement in this century of overall communication. It gets painful to watch sometimes.

It was one of those peculiarly grim fall mornings when there was no tune to go with the obnoxious rhythm of the oppressive urban decorum. Any musical attempt would start tumultuously and then abruptly cease to welcome the shifting colors of some traffic light or some elderly lady in her tormenting or maybe tormented pilgrimage towards the market.

Surprisingly nothing in the air struck as merely belonging to any narrative of whatever kind. Quite like in a cheap best seller, thoughts came and went leaving room for the cliché story to unfold its predictable paths to a most probably female reader expecting to cover the disparaged casual expectations in a fairytale coating.

The narrative material slides on only in the midst of a room full of strangers. There is plenty of room for the inner narrator to start broadcasting the morning program in those strangely personal moments of solitude when it would be far easier to socialize with a sheet of paper and poor down endless pieces of thought than to interact with the much more animated fellows in the nearest proximity. Following this already obsessive pattern, a tiny voice takes the place of a receiver of some sort and funny enough the talking is done by this newly formed voice which keeps on babbling while the rest of you obediently follows.

Then it becomes so easy to get detached from your own cocoon and relate to the world from a more isolated perspective similar to viewing the world from above, indulging in a self declared objectivity, analyzing all the animated fellows, physiognomy, behavior, personality, mimics in the ravaging search for a trace of kindness and humanity. At this stage everyone present takes the form of a classified folder. Not having the right password automatically renders the impossibility of accessing their world, not to mention understanding this world’s language.

Rambling ceaselessly in its perpetuum, the voice finds that these animated fellows will gather in distinct groups whose members either natively or merely by association detain the access “password”. The voice mixes in threads of thought taken from different dimensions, as in a dream, and ultimately wonders if the animated fellows are universally predisposed to acquire these access passwords, just like universal remote controls, they can access any type of world they might wish to. Confronted by this presupposition the voice boomerangs and there you are in the middle of the room full of strangers who by now have taken notice of your presence and politely ignore you.

Accusingly the voice begins again this time moving on towards the inquisitive: is it me or is it you? It’s the battle for normality, the contrast between lack and abundance. The voice has obviously identified a lack in you and a form of abundance in “fellow animated”. The lack in you makes you abnormal, while the abundance in the others makes them polyvalent. You are Neanderthal and they are Homo Sapiens.

Then the voice, which by the way is endowed with personal memory, rebuilds the wall. Here you are in this room full of “fellow animated” and yet again there is this transparent wall in between you and voice on the one side and them on the other side. To the exasperation of the blunt statistics you and voice have simply never been able to go beyond the wall just like that, there is no door, no “password”. “Fellow animated” doesn’t seem to have this issue.

The wall does not completely stop communication from happening. It’s like in the zoo, you wave they wave, you smile, they smile, but the gap is visible when you go beyond the wall. Then, everything around freezes encompassing this action in an aura of painful timelessness. In a momentum of replay movements the awkwardness becomes a character in itself. Here, on the other side of the wall the old rules don’t apply anymore, here if you wave they don’t wave back, if you smile, they don’t smile back. You are stuck in a culture shock you can’t bounce out of the immediate symptom of which is invisibility. Repentant you retire behind the wall where the voice awaits in that annoying “I told you so” tone. Miraculously the zoo environment applies again tempting you to venture outside, but that raw taste of overexposure is stuck to your limbs up to their deepest substance and so voice and you keep floating in this bubble all above the room in a gesture of poetic justice.

These masks are so interchangeable. You have always had voice, voice made wall…wall made zoo. It’s that simple. Interchanging masks so common and easy for “fellow animated” turned out to be anything but easy. It’s not the very acceptance of a different mask than your own which is punished, but rather the passage towards this mask for in between two masks there is always room enough for face and face always exposes voice. “Fellow animated” is never ready for voice for it renders you at your utmost exposure.

“Isn’t it funny how we don’t speak the language of love…?”

(Me Uninterrupted, September 2010)

THE BEGINNING

2011-08-25T12:35:00.003+02:00

This is not me. Any virtual rambling about to be published here is written under the courtesy of my very own virtual mask. It's just as much a form of dishonesty as it is a form of sheer sincerity and it is brought about by my very own right to expression. I've finally decided to make good use of it.

I have decided to use this virtual environment as a mask. Whenever I think about virtual spaces, blogs or Facebook or any other for that matter, I keep getting a single, boneheaded image that just won't leave my head, the image of that green headed cartoon character we all know: THE MASK. This guy had the power to be his inner, true self and a bit more :) with the "help" of this peculiar green, apparently harmless mask. Well, this is exactly how virtual spaces work for me as well. I have been given the power to be whoever I want to be, while still maintaining something of who I actually am. It's a game of identity and recreation.

I want this blog to be a worthy conversation with myself, against myself and with the whole world I can simply rebel against with no apparent consequences. And thus I raise my "happy mask" and hit the gong three times: the stage is full, the audience is absent, but the show does go on!

Signs,