‘Stand in your truth.’ ‘Be your authentic self.’ Platitudes like these ring as false to me today as ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ has done since I first read it on an overpriced decorative wall plaque. Underneath the saccharine calls to unencumbered selfhood, I do think there’s something beautiful about the idea of an identity grounded in self-definition. That suggested sense of truth and purpose is alluring. It would be nice to believe it was that simple.
“Who is the self I show to others? Who is the self I am when I’m alone? Can we ever know who we are? Is it even possible?” A friend posed these questions to me the other day, not in tones of anxiety but of calm resignation. Perhaps we are unknowable, even to ourselves. Perhaps authenticity is only an approximation of a self that we feel, in some measure, is safe enough to show to others.
With the elusiveness of selfhood on my mind, I ran across this interview with poet Kaveh Akbar (more of his work below) and his wonderfully articulate perspective on self-directed skepticism:
I once heard the critic Parul Sehgal use the phrase “a productive distrust of the self” in a talk and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I think, as an English language artist, that distrust has become central to my practice. When Brian Eno describes the crack in a blues singer’s voice on record as the sound of “an emotional event too momentous for the medium assigned to record it,” that’s what I’m after. Cracking the poem along the axis of my (hopefully!) productive skepticism of the language. And of myself.
This insistence on impossibility sits well with me. Selfhood cracks open. The tools we employ - recording, language, identity - make various valiant attempts at containment, but it’s all too momentous.
Unsolicited Recommendations
A knockout (audio-only) spooky short story by one of my favourites, Maggie Devlin. Don’t listen to this before bed, like I did, unless you’re prepared to 1. get back out of bed to check that the front door is properly locked, and 2. find something else to do/watch/read before you actually try to fall asleep.
This Joan Didion essay on self-respect - certain outdated language and cultural references aside, she muses about intrinsic worth as a “separate peace, a private reconciliation,” writing: “…people with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things.”
Granted, I’m the already-converted, but Kaveh Akbar’s poetry is like an altar call. Listen to Pádraig Ó Tuama on Akbar’s poem, “How Prayer Works.”
This album of Liszt solo piano works, recorded by Hungarian pianist Jenő Jandó. Liebestraume No. 3: Nocturne in Ab Major in inexpert hands can sound overdrawn and belaboured; here, it’s elastic, incandescent, and impassioned. All of the performances on the album are imbued with voice and clarity.
Questions to Ask yourself about masks.