Taken from Second Edition: The Performance Studies Reader, edited by Henry Bial, these two references within a chapter titled "Performances: Belief in the part one is playing" interested me because of this idea that what people really are, are just a bunch of actors walking around in life's stage or film production. The idea that we are constantly performing, and the real truth, and question, is when do we ever stop performing, or if we do? Do we perform for ourselves then? When you're in your room all by yourself sitting on your couch in a pair of sweatpants and old band t-shirt, are you actually entertaining the observer within you? Are you saying "Look at me, I'm relaxing in these clothes, because they make me feel like I deserve a break and don't have to care about my appearance to anyone else but myself right now." ? The reader took these references from Robert Ezra Park's, Race and Culture and also Ibid. (I am not sure what Ibid. actually means, so if there's anyway of letting me know, thanks).
“It is probably no mere historical accident that the word person in its first meaning, is a mask. It is rather a recognition of the fact that everyone is always and everywhere, more or less consciously, playing a role…it is in these roles that we know each other; it is in these roles that we know ourselves.” ( 62)
“In a sense, and in so far as this mask represents the conception we have formed of ourselves – the role we are striving to live up to – this mask is our truer self, the self we would like to be. In the end, our conception of our role becomes second nature and an integral part of our personality. We come into the world as individuals, achieve character, and become persons.” ( 62)
This is a constant interest for me, this idea of performing and what a performance means. Those people who you act differently in front of because you are floored by their own character qualities, are putting on an act of their own even if it isn't immediately apparent. Performance and identity is one thing that truly interests me, because to put it simply, I believe that all human beings have multiple personalities. The clinical term Dissociative Identity Disorder for multiple personality disorder is one that is embedded in every single human being on this earth. The degree of DID that people have is what varies, and creative people are those who are most closely in touch with the DID, but still in control of it.
In a separate tangent, though one that will be touched upon at a later time, is one about the T.A.Z. The temporary autonomous zone, the zone in which utopias happen and cannot be captured and made mainstream, for they would no longer be what they exist as. Something purely happy and purely enjoyable is what a T.A.Z is. When you find yourself in a moment of a T.A.Z, you find yourself as you really are, it is a T.A.Z moment of true identity that must be left alone in it's moment. Moments like these will rise up and happen periodically, so notice them and enjoy them when they do.
