Imagining selves
I am trying to do the whole imagining yourself in someone else's body. I am very disappointed with the person I am working on at present. I know nothing about them except a few gleaned details here and there. The problem is firstly one of embodiment: what is it firstly to imagine oneself in a different body -- to have a different relation towards gravity, to wear different shoes, to see with eyes that are a different colour? What is it to have more muscle, to be heavier, to feel clothes on your body that don't swamp you (I am swamped by material. At times there is as much material as there is body) but that surround you with less of a warm presence? What is it to have a deeper voice? To wear thicker jumpers? To have ears that aren't pierced. To have lips that feel differently to your own when they slide into a smile. Secondly, there is the problem with association and memory. There is so much we think about when we're in the company of someone else that we simply do not voice, or that are never heard; we have memories that form a general mental background. Sometimes my experience with them is immediate in a conversation -- at other points -- I am thinking of something completely unrelated. An anxiety. A memory. An association a cup might evoke. The problem of writing, especially when trying to imagine oneself into the body of another, is that attentions are often projected outwards. It ends up being descriptive: 'I saw him walk through the door. I moved to my usual place. He said, 'Hi...' I said, 'fine. You?' This is nonsense. This is not how we act. We don't even see the other in purely physiological terms either: impressions of mood strike us first and that effects the way we feel about them looking at us with that expression. But then how does one capture that expression without describing the physical or just stating, blandly, what impression they are giving you. Do you say: he's nervous. Do you say: he looks nervous. Do you say: his silence gave me the impression that he was nervous. Do you say: a blazing aura of uncertainty emanates from his quick entrance; a dash of nerves here, an accusing stare there. I have to practice. The more I practice, hopefully the better I'll get, the closer I'll get, hopefully...to imaginatively engaging with another...
To imagine oneself into an inanimate object is to imagine oneself into a symbol. To imagine oneself into another person is to try and reconstruct subjective experience and with it an immediate connection with the world.