How to Get Rid of Identity (a work in progress)
This is a hard one.
1. Stay hydrated. This makes me see that actually the answer is to get really painfully ill. Intense pain & physical suffering make me not care if I'm the prime minister, a good daughter, or have nice hair. Then I just want the pain I am to end. Is that right? It sounds right.
2. If you throw everything away you just have to start collecting stuff and ideas again and money, so it may counterproduce new identities without having the clean slate effect (or clean slat effect ha ha).
3. Go underground. What might "going underground" look like in 2007? Where underground is may depend on where ground is, and probably has nothing to do with actual sea-level, even though my image of underground always involves lots of crouching. This is not, in fact, how one goes underground, I don't think. "The great fortune of tomorrow will hide itself. Will go underground." Duchamps
4. Kick all the meanings out of the word "here"--if you can do that then you can kick the meanings out of "anything" and "everything" and even out of a bunch of personalities animating a human body. It seems.
5. When Ginsberg was 14 he wrote in his diary that he was either a genius, [something something], or schizophrenic, but that he thought it was the first two. This has to do with identity but not with getting rid of it, more like courting it. I mean, he was thinking about biographers reading his diary when he was like 10 years old. How could he even stand up?
Please give more advice on getting rid of identity if you have it.
1. Stay hydrated. This makes me see that actually the answer is to get really painfully ill. Intense pain & physical suffering make me not care if I'm the prime minister, a good daughter, or have nice hair. Then I just want the pain I am to end. Is that right? It sounds right.
2. If you throw everything away you just have to start collecting stuff and ideas again and money, so it may counterproduce new identities without having the clean slate effect (or clean slat effect ha ha).
3. Go underground. What might "going underground" look like in 2007? Where underground is may depend on where ground is, and probably has nothing to do with actual sea-level, even though my image of underground always involves lots of crouching. This is not, in fact, how one goes underground, I don't think. "The great fortune of tomorrow will hide itself. Will go underground." Duchamps
4. Kick all the meanings out of the word "here"--if you can do that then you can kick the meanings out of "anything" and "everything" and even out of a bunch of personalities animating a human body. It seems.
5. When Ginsberg was 14 he wrote in his diary that he was either a genius, [something something], or schizophrenic, but that he thought it was the first two. This has to do with identity but not with getting rid of it, more like courting it. I mean, he was thinking about biographers reading his diary when he was like 10 years old. How could he even stand up?
Please give more advice on getting rid of identity if you have it.
Labels: scooters
posted by cathye at
8:11 AM
3 Comments:
When I was little, I thought moving was good for getting rid of identity.
It certainly allows you to reinvent yourself -- I mean, with whole new people to see you, you can pretend to be someone wholly different, who will be perceived differently than you were perceived in the last place that you were.
As I get older, though, it doesn't seem like moving helps you escape yourself. You are always there. In fact, the older you get, the more there you are, regardless of where your physical being manifests.
So the only thing I can suggest now is a sudden dissociative fugue.
or a beatles pick up band ... maybe if we dressed like them too.
I think I agree about moving when you're older--then you still have to reinvent yourself for those around you but it's like reinventing the wheel so it's not that interesting or exciting. Same old.
things that have worked for me:
1) break ups (not recommended for you, tho)
2) moving. I suspect this would always work for me regardless of age. (not recommended for you, tho)
3) putting my poems in my guitar.
4) slacking off a lot, but then it's hard to stop
5) travel, but it sometimes doesn't stick when you get back
6) buying a scooter
7) throw away one or two things... throwing away everything doesn't work... you're right about that. but throwing away one or two things might work.
8) taking a nap
9) cleaning
10) writing a letter to my dad (not recommended for you)
11) paying bills
12) buying some new clothes (probably doesn't work for women since they buy clothes all the time)
13) putting books back on shelves so there are no books not on shelves
14) go see a band alone
These things don't really get rid of identity but they help alter or manage identity, maybe.
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