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[self_non_self]

Lately I've been in a terrible sort of malaise, the kind that stubbornly persists despite a full consciousness of its own ridiculousness. I feel a bit like Elisabet Vogler in Persona, when she stops herself mid-sentence on stage, and a strange expression comes over her face, as if she's just had an epiphany of some sort, a mystical insight into the

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[self_non_self]

The hopeless dream of being - not seeming, but being. At every waking moment, alert. The gulf between what you are with others and what you are alone. The vertigo and the constant hunger to be exposed, to be seen through, perhaps even wiped out. Every inflection and every gesture a lie, every smile a grimace. Suicide? No, too vulgar. But you can refuse to move, refuse to talk, so that you don't have to lie. You can shut yourself in. Then you needn't play any parts or make wrong gestures - Or so you thought. But reality is diabolical. Your hiding place isn't watertight. Life trickles in from the outside, and you're forced to react. No one asks if it is true or false, if you're genuine or just a sham. Such things matter only in the theatre, and hardly there either. I understand why you don't speak, why you don't move, why you've created a part for yourself out of apathy. I understand. I admire. You should go on with this part until it is played out, until it loses interest for you. Then you can leave it, just as you've left your other parts one by one.

Have you ever seen Cassavetes' A Woman Under the Influence? Along with Persona, I think it belongs on the shortlist of every psych major. Although it's a tricky film to watch, because in order to take it seriously you have to be able to look directly at Peter Falk and not think of him as Detective Columbo... :)