Mirror, Mirror... The mirror is something I like to think about quite a lot. I suppose I've been infatuated with mirrors since early childhood. I recall watching a home video in which I stole my little sister's Snow White toy mirror, claiming that she was going to "run out the batteries." I then proceeded to play with the toy myself, as if my magic touch would not hurt the life of the batteries whatsoever. But no, it was not my desire to save those batteries' lives that led me to rip that mirror out of her hands--it was simply my mirror-infatuation that drove me to steal in such a way--from my own family!!
In retrospect, I can recall several occasions in my childhood that could only have reinforced my love for reflections. I remember a forth grade theatrical production in which I played the role of Narcissus. Stupid Narcissus, never able to love another, such vanity! He rejected the nymph
Echo, was doomed to find his reflection in a pool in the woods, whereupon he would stay,
gazing in amazement at his mirrored self, forever, until he died. And from his grave grew the flower we now call the "Narcissus."
Such an elegant story warns of the consequences of vanity. And how ironic it was that this role in the forth grade made the crowd unleash a torrent of laughs (in response to my performance, of course), boosting my youthful self-confidence, my innocent ego, and suggesting to my supple mind that such vanity was means for a successful jest, and that to retain my mirror-love would mean great popularity.
And then I grew
older, just enough older for the effects of vanity to make themselves prevalent. I became a teenager, a boy concerned with pop and reputation.
This story is a common one, I am sure. To grow up in a materialistic society, be it good or bad, and to find one's self in a state of high school paranoia--worried about what each little clique is saying or thinking about you. Sure, this is all good and fine. But thank the gods that I, Narcissus himself, was able to question such vanity and self-consciousness.
To question is human as well, so I suppose that the act of questioning such youthful torment is natural--or at least unnaturally normal (if such is the way of the Political [or social, or whatever you want to call it] Animal that we humans are). But nevertheless, I at some point in my younger years (I write with tone of an experienced man, only for Narcissistic fun/play) began to question and invoke skepticism towards the world of the material--the societal or perhaps corporate constructs that cause us to feel some sort of need for aesthetics and fashion. I began to doubt such things, believing them "stupid," or "not real."
So I wound up focusing on the counter-aesthetic. The world of Rock and Roll--the world of the counter-culture (a world that is just as "stupid" and "not real," I suppose, as any other--I'll get to this, I think) became so glorious! It's a place where doing what you want is... cool? A place where breaking the rules is the only rule! So exciting to the youthful lad...
Anyways, I also got into philosophy around the same time, because like any cool, nerdy dude knows, rock music and a good handle on Nietzsche go hand-in-hand. So, to fast forward a bit, I thought for a couple years on the human condition (still a mystery) and on musical culture, and tied them together to create some sort of understanding about the worlds of "perception," and the ideas surrounding them. Essentially, I was able to realize at some point through questioning the objective of Mirrors, moreover of vanity itself, that perception is all relative, yada yada yada. SO! I got pretty into the idea of LSD.
I didn't experiment with the stuff upon discovering its so-called "potential to alter perception." But rather, I accepted LSD, and the entire hallucinogenic genre of drugs, as perceptive-modifiers. And of course they are--one can't argue with that. They alter receptors in your brain, so information is processed differently, etc, etc, so you can "hear colors." Whatever. I don't like talking about hard drugs any more. The subject bores me.
Why does it bore me? Because I've now experimented with an array of hallucinogens, and in hindsight I don't regret it a single bit. But if I were to sum up all of my experiences into one sentence in order to portray them to a reader, then I would fail. It's all too personal, and thus I don't like discussing it (even though I guess I am right now).
My point here is that there is one thing that somebody once told me about hallucinogenic drugs that has been engrained into my consciousness ever since. Whomever it was told me "Dude, if you're tripping out, don't look in a mirror. It'll freak you out and it's not cool!"
Don't open the box, Pandora! Don't do it!! Oh, you did it. Great. How was I to resist the mirror in a state of drug-induced perception alteration? By all means I couldn't. I can now say comfortably that I've gazed for long periods of time into mirrors under the influence of certain substances and have never experienced anything bad--moreover, it's probably increased my infatuation for mirrors at least ten-fold.
And it's because our desire to see ourselves is so STRONG! We political animals float through our days looking forward, witnessing our surroundings, planning, philosophizing, working! But how often do we get to reflect back upon the self in its most literal sense? It's simply so pleasing to look at your self in the mirror--because it's you! Or at least it's a flipped/mirrored version of you, which is the closest you're going to get. That's great.
The entire point of this blog post, which will tie into my next one (in order to make a better point) is that everything in life has to do with yourself. You can't escape it, so inevitably it's delicious to get a taste of witnessing the way you look. Life is a series of smelling yourself, hearing yourself, tasting yourself, dare I say feeling yourself, and sensing all these things once more in your surrounding context. But we don't get to see ourselves--or our faces, which seem to characterize us most--in any natural manner. The only method is the mirror, the only method of witnessing the physicality of our character.
-CS
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