we cycle through a series of selves

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
Isn’t that what poetry taps into or accesses? Self as word association rotisserie/carousel

one day will position a certain set of language cues depending on mood, experience, intentions, the next hour it could shift entirely and what you gather in with the final edit is all these selves/parts/subconscious elements
 

luka

Well-known member
thats something subtly different. thats more about potential and unrealised selves
 

luka

Well-known member
stifled selves. aborted selves. although its rooted in the same thing. which is mutability and mulitplicity.
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
Am on board with the idea that we have many different 'people' (obviously they're not actually different people, it's a metaphor) that we slip into in a non chronological order. I find the best example is seeing old friends, especially in new places, the way that you both revert pretty quickly to being the way you both were the last time that relationship was a thing. Or the way you feel when you do exercise that you haven't done for a long time. Different selves that pop up from time to time.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Yeah I think @shakahislop brings up a point I think was absent so far, namely how the you that is active depends on the social circumstances.

@luka maybe in theory consider a multitude of avatars, and I can tell you from firsthand experience, having multiple avatars in the same milieu may better allow for personic segmentation.
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
I believe in this thread fully, as much as I believe in anything, but I don't feel it. I never feel like a a cycling self but I know its happening
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
my wife is the picture of this thread. I get thats a very typical thing to say about 'the wife' but I swear she has some mild, innocuous form of schizophrenia. shes basically unbeknownst to herself a pathological liar but in a generally harmless fashion.
 

sus

Well-known member
my wife is the picture of this thread. I get thats a very typical thing to say about 'the wife' but I swear she has some mild, innocuous form of schizophrenia. shes basically unbeknownst to herself a pathological liar but in a generally harmless fashion.
Don't let her gaslight you Linebaugh
 

Simon silverdollarcircle

Well-known member
I think having different selves is the simplest and most convincing attitude to have to explain what the fuck it is we're doing really. Like it's so common to look back on something you did, either yesterday or years ago and think "what was I doing? I don't understand why I did/ said that!". And it's tempting in those instances to try and find some underlying cause or deep character trait that will provide the explanation. But really it's much simpler and better and more plausible to just think - because it was someone else doing/saying it!
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
Today has been a series of cycle rides through various selves. Agency with and interplay over such parts is intriguing

Woke up in a foul mood. Instant toxic bitterness at god where you go straight at first causes, your eyelid breaks open reluctantly “you slack cunt god, you miserly prick, pretending no cunt knows you’re sneaking round or shouting, all or nothing type of cunt”. Just getting momentum into blasphemous rage, alarm clock for the kids pings and then you simply have to haul it

Dad head. Mrs slept on so we made porridge. Don’t expect nippers to understand tidy + porridge. New bourgeois shower head. Very nice pressure, not like that you disgusting chimps. Warming up the visceral god hate abated. Mrs found some random photos from the football recently, years and years ago, kind of photos that act like fanned out memory doilies. Cut ups of images, sounds, dates, relationships, players, who’s dead now, instantly kaleidoscopic. First work call and everything pivoted

Work self. Cease swearing. Do not swear or tell people to fuck off. You have your colleague head for different personalities, the odd cunt or busy body, then your client head for the range of communication abilities and focus (eg are they still nodding out and lying?). Juggle accordingly. Be sgt-major and rip a cunt if you have to and be patient, empathic and focused for different client ranges. Not face to face, so no threats of violence. If it’s NHS liaising go up a gear, flatten out language entirely. Rapport isn’t a factor, Kafka might be

The couple who run the local shop for local people. Happy clappers, unavoidable awkward interactions nipping down. I’ve tried every convivial self with these 2. Jokes. News. It’s from not dropping 40£ a week on alcohol. The conversations always finish hanging, like Childan, unable to pick up a certain cadence or shift. And then a much older criminal self pipes up with “they’re the perfect laundering front - white, Christian, religious, constant turnover- you should dig into these 2 a bit, see whose £ they’re fronting”. Picture pics of atypical, local, good-cause literature pinned up and a bay window full of trade ads, to help the community. Hmmm

Pickled self, everyone in bed or work. This is when the drinker/heroin fiend can play their calling cards “go on, it’ll be fine, sleep it off”. Tap tap tap. Hear it? I mostly play these chaps Lull. Mick Harris for transcendent calm

 

sus

Well-known member
we may practically say that he has as many different social selves as there are disetinct groups of persons about whose opinion he cares. He generally shows a different side of himself to each of these different groups. Many a youth who is demure enough before his parents and teachers, swears and swaggers like a pirate among his "tough" young friends. We do not show ourselves to our children as to our club companions, to our customers as to the laborers we employ, to our own masters and employers as to our intimate friends.
(William James c. 1900)

And of course you have Whitman, "Do I contradict myself? OK, I contradict myself." Someone on Twitter last week said: Internal consistency of beliefs/behavior over time (i.e. "authenticity") is a psyop to undermine your own efficacy in the world. I think I might agree!
 
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