Who are YOU?
Since the passing of my bandmate Dr Conker recently i have been giving a lot of thought to the person i present to the world. Is this really me?
Dr Conker was a crazy dancer who didn’t give a fuck, the ultimate party animal who cared less than anybody else in the world. He pushed the limits of letting go, and no one could challenge it. But in real life, Alan was a librarian. He ran a book shop from home and was a quiet reserved man. He smoked rollies and hardly spoke. He was well read and had lots of opinions on politics and spirituality, but never forced his views on anyone. Why did they both exist? Was the creation of Conker essential for discovering his complete person? Was his last naked dance the final piece in the puzzle of completing himself as a person and therefore the key to him being able to move to the next dimension he often talked of?
The last time i seen him he sold me a book, Building a Character, by Constantin Stanislavki. I started to read this and it began to delve into the workings of becoming someone else, and how you needed to be yourself at the same time and use untapped parts of yourself, until you merely became the observer of your new character. And let it take over.
Dr Conker was definitly an alter ego for Alan to shed his shy and quiet ways and become the complete person and party animal that he wanted to be. He would transform from Bookworm to Party Animal every weekend and make thousands of people go crazy with him. The online support for him after he passed has been massive and there’s no denying he touched many many people. Was this because he gave a glimpse into becoming the whole person we all could be? Instead of the limited thought-out boring fake we construct to get by in the world.
In being ourself we are limited, as Yourself is merely a self-conscious character you chose to portray to people to elicit a certain reaction. You are a fake. You have made your persona – contrived a way of being to get what you want from people. What if you decided to become someone other than yourself? What might happen? Could the core of you or the universe shine through brighter the more you let go?
I watched the documentary Hip Hop Hoax the other night. Two Scottish lads failing in the music world… who then decide to become American. 24 hours a day, they create brand new personalities. Their families are freaked out, and then their fan base booms, everyone wants to know them, and they sign a £50,000 record deal in no time.
Instead of trying to be ourselves all the time, taking on a new persona can allow for deep integrity to really shine out of the cracks. Shedding our Self is the ultimate in Letting Go. Drop the ego and achieve enlightenment.
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“I believed fully and sincerely in the reality of what I was doing and feeling; out of this there emerged a sense of confidence in myself and in the rightness of the image i had created, in the sincerity of his actions. This was not the self-confidence of a person absorbed in himself, a self-conscious actor; it was something of a quite different nature, akin to a conviction of it’s own integrity” -Stanislavski
FLAPSANDWICH 