September 8, 2014

September 8, 2014

“There is no me.  I do not exist… There used to be a me, but I had it surgically removed.” It isn’t I can’t stand myself, but I’m on the surface extremely dull.  There is no spice in my DNA to make me special.  What I can do is re-invent myself to a better version of me.  Or just start from scratch and make a totally new “me.” I tried to do my best to blend in with the crowd that I came to be accustomed to, but clearly they never took me seriously.   All of them feel that I’m a performer, but for the heck out of them, they can’t remember one film or theater piece I have done.  They know that I exist, but in what degree is totally beyond them.

As a card-carrying pataphysician, I have consistently been mistaken for Peter Sellers.  The interesting fact is that we don’t look like each other at all.  But still, I’m consistently reminded of him, due to what people think he or I looks like.  A day doesn’t go by, where someone doesn’t comment on the resemblance of the dead late comic actor.  If he was alive, I wonder if people would still make the comparisons between me and him.  “The dead… are more real than the living because they are complete.” I suspect if I was dead, then I would get my own identity back.  Again, even with that, my lack of uniqueness would be very difficult for someone to pin me down.  Even my face is not mine, but a remembrance of someone else’s face or appearance.

To live in one’s shadow, is a traveler wandering in a neighborhood where he’s not invited, but accepted with closed arms.  I have often appeared in front of an audience, but they expecting something else, or even someone else.  It takes approximately ten minutes into my performance where the audience realizes that they are at the wrong show.  After awhile, I believe “that the applause of silence is the only kind that counts.” Everyday I try to re-think myself in a new position where I find that I need to think what ‘my character’ would do in a certain or specific incident or plan.  It is rarely that I consider “what I would do” but mostly ‘what would he or she does. ” And that is pretty much how I see the world.   A fellow pataphysician has commented that “the theater, bringing impersonal masks to life, is only for those who are virile enough to create new life: either as a conflict of passions subtler than those we already know, or as a complete new character."

I was reading Siegried Sassoon’s poetry and I came upon a statement by him that touched me: “The fact is that five years ago I was, as near as possible, a different person to what I am tonight.  I, as I am now, didn’t exist at all.  Will the same thing happen in the next five years?  I hope so.” The only occupation that I’m suitable for is acting.  Sadly I can’t remember a written line if my very life been dependent on it.  What I do is improvised anytime I find myself in a conversation with someone.  I never know where or when the conversation ends, but I pretend that I do know, and I think the other person will just gently follow my lead - in a sense it is like dancing the waltz, where one leads the other.

I wrote a play, that had one performance, so I guess one can call it a total failure.  Nevertheless, the lead character stayed with me, and I adopted his language as my own.  For instance I never say the wind or it's windy, instead I would say “that which blows.” Slowly but surely I built up a character that became comfortable to wear.  But I was always aware that the things I said or do was based on another character - sometimes a fictional character.  In the future (if there is a future) the play “will not be performed in full until the author (the royal we) has acquired enough experience to savor all it beauties.” I tend to see the world as a theater piece, and sadly, I’m the only one in the audience.