Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Expressing Myself, Representing Myself

A brief rant.

I feel sick right now. I feel tired.

No good.

I don't really even know if I can write anything tonight. I doubt it. A low key recovery night hopefully.

But one issue is on my mind these days: expressing myself versus representing myself.

When I represent myself I take certain steps to make sure that people perceive me in certain ways. I craft my image through the things that I say and do.

But sometimes when I'm alone in my room and I write things I'm simply expressing myself. I can just be writing nonsense and I'd be expressing myself.

Am I expressing myself right now?

I might be.

Am I representing myself? Doesn't feel like it. But maybe.

I am writing to a blog so the issue is complicated a bit more. But when I write in my notebooks by hand I am definitely expressing myself. No one reads those things. Unless I'm representing myself to myself. Which I doubt.

Representation is something that takes other people's awareness.

I just wonder if it is possible to have a fruitful and exciting social life simply through expression. Is representation necessary in some ways? Do I have to craft my image? In what ways do I need to represent myself?

The answer is obviously yes. Representation is obviously an important part of social life. I don't really know how though.

I don't know how this fits in with my larger ideas about making life into an art form, which would mean that life would revolve primarily around expression and not representation.

Perhaps a balancing act between expression and representation.

Perhaps I'm too tired to think about this stuff right now.

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