No, I don't believe there's a rehearsal.
But then again I don't think there's really a difference: practice makes _______.
I don't even mean in a metaphysical sense. Everything we do is performative, is contrived, is artifice in some sense. We can internalize and make truth-claims all we want, but when it comes down to it all the things we've ever learned to do or say come from:
watching
imitating
improvising
That doesn't make who we are any less real, mind you. But as someone who's spent most of his life watching, imitating, and improvising in an attempt to fit into a new community ever four or five years, you begin to feel less genuine every time you wear a different hat. But the feeling fades, and eventually the fidelity of the thing - it's faithfulness to your persona - becomes natural.
But how does that process work? What is it that finally convinces us that the hat we wear belongs on our head? How do we ever get over the imposter syndrome that follows us to every new job, on first dates, into competition, or whatever?
I'd postulate that it has a lot do with community. Everything about our language, our dress, our mannerisms comes from our community. We watch the way people act, we imitate them in their roles as we strive to fulfill our own, and we improvise within (or outside) the aspect of our characters. Usually we do it subconsciously...
Did you think you were in control? Maybe you did. Maybe you are. But not of everything, not by a long shot.
I'm trying to get a little more control over my performance as well, and I'm coming to realise that there are some core aspects of my performance technique that really get in the way. A significant part of my motis operandi is, I like to think, a healthy amount of personal generosity. In short, I give a lot away. A lot of time, a lot of talk, a lot of thought, a lot, a lot, a lot. Heretofore I've believed that I have an infinite supply of these things; "the love you make is equal to the love you take," kind of thing (not that John Lennon was really any wiser than you or me).
So, I've had a long-standing policy of being very, very generous with love. Downright amorous at times. Not just with the ladies, but with my friends both newly got and long lost. I love people, even the ones I really don't like. I've chosen to see everyone's redeeming qualities as the things that define them. Now, I know I can't be everyone's best friend, but there are times I feel like that's what I'm trying to do.
As a result, I have an enormous community around me, that I've gathered over the last twenty years or so. I have been surrounded with people of incredible value and spent no small amount of time and energy perfecting a performance of myself that is flexible enough to connect deeply with some very different personalities.
The trouble is that it's all too often on their terms. Which means the time and energy I spend on some people is lost. Gone for good. And I'm okay with that, because that's part of who I am. But I only believe that because I've spent so much bloody time and energy improvising personal generosity that I've nearly forgotten how to be for myself. If I was for myself, I would abhor all that wasted time and effort on people who didn't notice, didn't care, and didn't reciprocate; and I'd be done with it forever because I would know that I don't have time to play a bit part in anyone's life.
So from here on out, I won't.
...but this still nags at me:
Cynicism is about distrust. It's about believing that all people are motivated by self-interest. I'm not nearly as cynical as I make out to be. I can't be because I believe in things like decency and compassion; and because cynicism just isn't a very productive way to look at the world. It's apathetic and indifferent and miserable and just as selfish as that which it distrusts. Cynicism needs to be innovated so that it isn't just more of the same black-hearted, me-first, I'll-choose-my-side-and-shut-up-alright ideology that is the method of performance for people who are afraid to measure their lives against the hardest metric of all: the genuine acceptance of others, not for one's utility or worth but for the qualities of human empathy.
2 other voices:
It's about balance isn't it. I am working from the end back to the beginning of your blog.
There is the notion that you give and give an never get back, which is entirely true with some folks. I have always called them "leaches". They are parasitic and only exist to take from others and never give back to anyone. These are really rare though. I like that to think that the people who come into my life and take of me then return something, or pass it on to others. Benefit sometimes cannot be given me. For some, I will always be the one that gives, but see something important in the investment of that giving.
As for performance... We are players, yes. I have many defined roles as likely you do. Pretty much every aspect of things that we find natural to us, or essential to us are highly groomed practices. Judith Butler had quite the theory on this one with regards to gender, but her work has people questioning essentialism to a large degree. Does that mean that we are only the culmination of other's traits? That we are strictly a product of our environment? Well... we did have to make choices along the way, and there is some biology that predetermines some things.
I guess I am also like you in that I have been on the move for 15 years - the greater part of my adulthood. This is the longest I have been anywhere, for a paltry sum of 3.5 years now in Kitchener. I still wear too many hats, but then I think a part of my identity is to be as mutable as a cloud atlas.
Terre: thank you for the thoughtful comment.
anonymous gfy: thank you for being the first to tell me to go eff myself for something I wrote (ps - I know who you are, and I know you knew I would, which makes me respect you all the more).
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