Something of Myself

The Death of The Author

He feels like writing today. An incessant surge grips him – the monsters inside handcuff him to history and make him write. He is challenged today. For he does not know what exactly he wants to uncover, which part of himself does he want to put out on display, like the newly dressed mannequin at Harrods. Old self, new clothing. The past drips steadily onto him, drip, drip, drop, drop, drip, drop….

He wants to uncover all, once and for all and then go away – far, far away from the public gaze. People who know him, people who follow him, people who track him like paparazzis...in short, he wants to move away from the Other. For ages, ever since childhood, he read and was gradually led to believe that the self is defined only by the Other, at the cost of the Other, for the Other and perishes to make his absence felt in the life of the Other (I find that very confusing, I don’t know about you).

Today, nothing is his anymore. Every part of him has been sold - some at a very high price, others given away, as souvenirs to those who loved him deeply, but could not perform to stay. What is it that remains, he asks himself, as he stands at this cross-road. The bile hits the inside of the tongue. The nerves get nervy. Heavy sighs remain unheard.

What is it exactly that he wants to write?

Is it about how he feels violated? Is it about how deeply he mourns the death of his beloved? In this unpredictable existence, that you choose to call life, he is perplexed as he attempts to unravel the shroud that covers his inner self.

He has lost himself – all of himself.

The only thing that remains are his words. Words that he carefully chose over others, words that just came out, like vomit; words that engulfed him, mauled him, solaced him, touched him and most importantly, taught him how to differentiate one from another. These words are the only thing that he has today that he can turn back to, these words that are a product of what he had felt inside. Not the ones he showed outside.

Greenblatt was partially erring when he declared that we are nothing but performers and our identities nothing but a complex mixture of performance and self-fashioning. He struggles hard to convince himself that he is not just a performer. He is also an artist.

His struggle I can see, for I can see him in me and me in him. It’s all the same thing you know, this double-act, this protean urge to be the self and the Other; mixing ‘memories and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.’ The heap of broken images and the dead tree provides this cricket no relief.

The writing shall have to cease. The words will have to be tucked away with the memories of those who have gone away, and those who are leaving (and this includes him). He’s run out of choices you see, the only choice being to push them deep inside where seasons do not exist, where feelings are trampled upon, where flesh is replaced with metal, where money is sex, where friendship is betrayal, where love is lost, where consciousness begins to wane, where angels fear to tread.

I feel sorry for him.