Our Masks

Last Friday night I saw The Scissor Sisters play Wembley Arena; a venue that had been cleaned up considerably since I was last there. Even if you didn’t feel like dancin’ you probably were at the end of the evening. I wish I had Jake’s boundless energy but sadly I am sitting here thinking about sleep.

Ana Matronic came across as a much more dynamic force than she does when listening to the music or watching their television appearances. Apart from the constant repetition of ‘we’re your Scissor Sisters’ she made the links between the music much more interesting than many artists I’ve been to see over the years. Truthfully, I like it when they talk a little bit. I think that makes me old. Why can’t they just turn the music down and talk? Anyway, Ms Matronic encouraged the audience to remove the metaphorical masks we wear. She wanted us to dance.

This got me thinking about masks and not in a Jim Carrey/Stanley Ipkiss kind of way. Just the masks we wear each day in everything we do. What we say and who we are is often nothing but a show for the people we are with. The rules of our social groups mean that our mask may not be uncommon but is it who we really are? As Ana told Lynn Barber in last weekend’s Observer newspaper, ‘Even in everyday life, people use clothing to express something about themselves’ and that’s just part of the mask. Are the socks you pull from the drawer in the dark mornings you or how you want to be represented?

It was with these thoughts of masks that I read Dave’s post, ‘You Want Honesty‘, yesterday evening. Interestingly, I referenced his original discussion of what to (and what not to) blog last Friday – the very day Ana was encouraging me to throw of the masks.

What frustrated me most was the very thought that ‘You Want Honesty’ had to be written. We are all mask wearers. We all present a part of ourselves to other people each day. We are rarely the same person with everybody we know. I don’t see the problem with any of this. A personal site like this is nothing more than a snapshot of my world just as Soliloqueer is another view of the world.

But even if you don’t believe in the sock/mask metaphor that I am using there is another aspect to ‘You Want Honesty‘ that got me thinking: why does nobody value privacy any more? We all want to know everything about each other. We want to know what Brad & Angelina are doing all day. Why? I think Soliloqueer should be allowed a little privacy don’t you? Wanting a little bit of privacy does not make you a self-loathing closet case, does it?

Remember, everything is really smoke and mirrors.

On this day…