I As Another

About

Identity by nature is malleable. It is an idea and an invention. We fluctuate between our authentic and artificial selves. We are what we imagine but also what we cannot fathom, we are the masks we wear, the everyday performances we act out, both in solitude and to the world.

We turn to fiction and invention for comfort and refuge from reality. It is a tool for self-exploration, for ‘the existence of our submerged desires, mysterious pleasures and ungovernable thoughts that fill the interior world with dreams, nightmares, calculations and visions.’*  We are illusions of ourselves. We become a speculation of what we project and others consume. 

-You’re a flake- a droplet in the big overwhelming universe that makes up your body and your soul with all your hair, legs, fragments, wrinkles, eyeballs, tongue, love, jealousy, hurt and your confusion-

Identity is dually fragmented - the basis for this idea being that first and foremost we are split into a body and a soul. One can’t exist without the other creating internal and external selves. We are what we think and what comes without thinking; the ‘authentic’ flows into our consciousness. ‘Everyone is a whole world of representations, which are buried in the night of ‘I.'

Our memories provide continuity to our individual selves. We come as semi blank slates and become who and what we are because of the life we have lived. Unsatisfied, we make our own realities – crafting future selves, dream visions on possibilities that could live on, that help us live on.

Identity is contradictory because there exists constant paradox between the inner and the outer. It is conflicting because it is affected by our past, present and future selves – the split perceptions of the self; however, it exists only as ‘whole’ in the present moment. The falsifying and perfecting of our identities occurs both in a present time and in a future where our fragments lie, autonomous – acting out despite our efforts; simultaneously an essential part of who we are.