Who am I, or Who I am?

Who am I?

Who the heck am I?

Who in hell am I?

 

Who dat?

It’s a pretty typical question, and one that everyone, at some point in their lives, has asked themselves. Identity is an integral part of human nature. Even as kids, we focus soul-hard on the idea, trying to figure out who we are, where we stand, and what we’re doing on this crazy and colorful planet. Philosophers have spent entire lifetimes trying to divine an answer to this question, each pulling out his or her own personal conclusion—Plato had his Cave, Aristotle, his logic, and Freud, his mother.  Curie had her science, Dickinson, her prose, and Earhart, her courage. These philosophers and innovators were perceptive, but they were also artists, and their work emerged by virtue of one very important element: a novel impression of life. 

POP QUIZ!!

How can we embrace this view of life, and moreover, how can we see it the way that these philosophers did?

 

TIMES UP!

And the answer is…

These people show us that what they are capable of, we are capable of, however we will never see what they saw exactly the way they saw it. 

Hold on now, don't go getting bummed. 

This is actually a very good thing, because it means that each of us is unique. No one will ever see what we see exactly the way we see it, either. It's perspective, or what I call the “Artist’s Eye”. While there are times in life that we connect and experience collective epiphany, how that epiphany plays out, how it manifests, will ultimately be a balance of two very particular view points - ours and theirs. Perception is tied to identity, that deep, inner awareness that forges life up to a certain point. Who is that person, exactly? There are many names and faces, many different molds and casts, many lenses and exposures. Who we are is not singular. Who we are is infinite. It is forever changing and evolving.  Yet, at our core, who we are is Creator. 

We are all Creators. We make life, we make experience, and we make self. All of it is based on our Artist’s Eye, on the way we perceive our experiences. These perceptions are conceived with us and they die with us, but evidence of their existence remains. It beats through the veins of those who shared our lives. It lives on in recipes, paintings, letters, emails, and even in the briefest smile flashed at a stranger on their gloomiest day. It thrives in those we have hurt, etching a groove so deep that their hearts are shot through with scar tissue, its web-like design a remarkable picture of our likeness.

  

ART of YESTERYEAR

As a writer, I have come to the realization that the Art of Today (that be what I create now) is intricately bound to who I was yesterday. This is the Art of Yesteryear and quite literally the foundation on which I build my life. The Art of Yesteryear imbues every choice we ever make up to the present moment. It is a stunning account of joy, sadness, anger, and fear, written in tears, smiles, and furious expressions. To some, it may not seem beautiful, more a battered and bloody canvas that was stitched and re-stitched, duck taped, and in some places, lost all together. The Art of Yesteryear contains our past and while it may boil over with pain, the fact that we were able to overcome what lies inside it is a straight freakin' miracle. Indeed, our choices now are simply yesteryear re-purposed, like a pair of Fishbowl Platforms working a modern-day catwalk. We take what we were, bash the crap out of it until it's a giant lump, and then we re-make ourselves.

The important thing to remember is that the material we use to re-make our identity is still one big wad of former choices, no matter how you slice it. Thin, thick, ripped to shit - it doesn't make a difference, because our past is our past. It happened. We can't get rid of it. But we can reconcile it, and that's where a novel impression of life rears its head.

Super Awesome Satori Time:

"To forgo the past is to forgo the self."

All right everyone, gather round. I have a Satori, er, I mean, a story I'd like to relay. I recently read an article about a certain famous person who created a fake history to help fan the “fame flame”. This particular individual sparked a huge uproar once fans figured out what was really going on, especially where it concerns identity. It begged the question: Is who we are fixed, or merely a constant experiment in "creation”?

To me, everything is Creation. We are all tied up in an infinite Godspark, fueled by the need to forge new realities and new ways of living. However, a vital element in making new worlds is recognizing our starting line. Can people continually re-make and re-invent themselves? Hell yes! But we have to know what we're working with in order to create. You can’t evolve if there is no self-awareness. Saying otherwise is ludicrous because, even if some alleged outside circumstance "makes" us evolve, we're still choosing how evolution will occur. It is how we interpret said outside circumstance that sparks the evolutionary process, which is precisely why some people conform and some DON'T. It's the Artist's Eye. How we perceive the world comes from past life experience, and past life experience comes from how we perceive ourselves. It's a chicken and egg kinda complex, but I believe that every choice exists within our own consciousness. Each is an intricate brick in a colossal pyramid, and if you look to eliminate one, the whole thing will come crashing down. Yet, if you reconcile a former choice and bring new purpose and understanding to why it was made, that novel perspective rolls over onto every choice that came after that one and our entire being is solidified. Validated. Memorialized.  

Fake histories are fruitless because they forge a reality based on lies. They also sabotage the person we've become by dogging the choices we made in the past. Sometimes an artist may choose to create a character based on a part of who they are, an abstract personality that physically demonstrates their cause (think David Bowie or Marilyn Manson). Perhaps that character lives a different life, but this "alter-ego" does not deviate from who that artist is at their core. It actually intensifies their identity through the creative process! All people are artists. It's just that some of us are more inclined to let our authenticity out of its cage. We incorporate who we really are into our work, into our lives, and we seal it with blood, sweat, tears, and Hawaiian Punch. 

Producing work based on our individual interpretations is the bee's knees. Producing work in an attempt to lull people into submission is neither clean nor authentic. It's manipulation, and as the main character in my novel White Daughter once said, "Isn't manipulation just a pretty word for bondage?"

Be the gorgeous Creator you are, no matter what.