self/other

It is hard for me to decide on an entree on a menu, I always want to try something new, I never buy the same mustard twice, I have not tried lavender honey mustard yet, I say to myself, the perfect consumer of difference, that I am. At the same time let's examine how I embrace change to create stability? What do I loose in constantly changing, adapting, where my mutability is now, a default. It takes some individuals years to change, or they may never, for me, I change in a second. What is my identity? If I constantly deflect, slip, mutate, and where is that coming from, a desire not to stand still? Most of you know I question my own need to question, but now I accept mutability. I actually think I dance with pondering, the question mark is a symbol of infinity, an image I trust, it's a partner that is always vibrating. I think of the self as an aggregate of other selves, flows, histories, narratives, and stories. I always say I am never the same person twice, and I say the sky is free, so if nature is constantly changing, and the sky is never the same twice, then shouldn't I? I ask myself to be as graceful as clouds changing colors, sometimes it happens and other times, it's the shift in our voice, when we say something that is a dig, and it unearths something, we feel our voice shatter, it's maybe not as graceful, but it's authentic being, awkwardness, failure can be beautiful.

This is the place I from which I look and speak from, the shattered mirror. I like broken things, I can trust them, they have already won, they tried and failed and broke, I know they could break more, and then turn into dust, like all living things, I trust this entropy. I like looking at broken things, I see the facets of everything else reflected in it. Sometimes I meet someone, and I look in their eyes, and I can see all the selves they represent, sometimes it's so powerful that I wonder how we can ever even keep a gaze. They say there is a kingdom in Indra where there sits a strand of pearls so arranged, you can see all other reflected in it. So I love this kind of reflected self, or diffracted meaning, or living fractal. I made a series of videos about my identity this week, but my videos also represent my struggle with self and other. There have been these struggles in my personal life, what a funny phrase, I consider everything personal. But I saw the way I had mutated for a great love, while I usually contemplate loss and intimacy, I found myself stuck on repeat for the last couple years, who was I now?

Who was I, when I felt completed by this great love, would I still carry that honor of another body, around with me of it, would that memory transform, as I futilely, try to hold it in my hands? At the same time, it was a story I constantly had to re-tell, re write, it became a pathology,a dn many works in my practice where made to address this very simple ask, which was who am I now? If I only saw the tragedy, loss and pain, of the not a happy ending, tragic break, in this relationship then I would suffer enjoy pain, and play my pain tapes on repeat. I would cover my walls with these wounds, which I did, but I still couldn't press play? I loved rewinding, and fast forwarding, and of course recording, 348 videos on youtube stand for this daily practice with my loss and intimacy. The other option was I had to re write the narrative, to keep from sinking further into a widows dance, I had to find the lesson I the event, I had to see the gift in the parting. I looked at the way the lyrics of a song said "you look like me" to a lover, then said "and I look like no one else" it was profound to me, to think of how I had seen parts of my self in this other lover, so much so, that the conversation of a love assemblage, or a break really became a desire to examine my own consciousness, my own being/being raised in this other. In other words it was my "self" or selves, I desired to know, love, honor, adore, why did I use a person to find this out? To find the "i'm the one, I am looking for" part of it all, to know when I hold my body at night in my bed the way I used to reach for that other body, that I am complete. Sure there at times I shudder and ask what happened, but I get to keep this embrace of my body, and find new ways to exercise this new loving dimension of my being, most of all I am learning to press play, maybe I will find myself just sticking with gray poupon for a few years, I like the way I have segued from self-flexivity and mustard, and perhaps why my choice of yellow wigs signifies mustard, or the fact that I have covered my body in mustard, (it stings) for a performance all these ideas< I will examine later