I've
been thinking of how masks and/or hidden identities aid some people in
feeling free to reveal who they are or perhaps try on who they imagine
themselves to be. I begin to imagine masquerade balls, the history and
art of Venetian masks, bank robberies, and the rubbery masks depicting
politicians that seemed to be big at an earlier point in history. I
think of some of the artwork of Gillian Wearing from long ago. In
particular, her work Confess all on video. Don't worry you will be in disguise. Intrigued? Call Gillian
(1994), which was a 30 minute video of people who had answered an ad in
Time Out magazine being recorded in masks confessing fantasies,
betrayals and just general secrets of every stripe.
(pause)
Growing
up Catholic, you learn to crave confessions: Your own and those of
other people. The electricity of catharsis that runs through your body
as you tell your misdeeds, but also the excitement and wonder at who it
actually is listening on the other side of that dark-latticed window
within the oak-smelling confessional booth. Perhaps someone stepped in
before the priest did. Perhaps the priest is more gloriously rotten than
you.
Working in proximity to particular types of sexualized work for a number of years, that craving would get satisfied.
We
all know, on particular levels, that everyone has things they do in the
shadows. Sometimes those shadows are darker, sometimes they only seem
dark to person who did them, and sometimes there are those who simply
wonder "What's so fucking dark about this? Desire is desire. Let there
be light."
I think of all of the confessions I have heard over the
years, and I think of my own. Such a strange vehicle one rides in to
hear stories from strangers about their secret desires or identities.
I
recall stories from men who would sneak into their mother's closets to
have sex with their shoes, of men who coveted the idea of being dressed
up as a girl by a woman, of men who wanted to leap over a woman in order
to have her kick him in the stomach, mid-air, just to send him flying.
Men who wanted to be denied. Men who wanted to be run over (Not
symbolically, but literally. As in Jeeps.).
I've lost all
perspective on what is taboo these days. Recently a political figure's
voluptuous husband had the curtain pulled back on his joy-smeared face
in the throws of his
sublime and almost saint-like bimbo-fication. For me, too often there
will be these "big reveals" that seem to be nothing more than a
flashlight shining into the dark dank basement people hide their desires
in. Too often it is the masks of the "vanilla" mainstream that strikes
me as the most perverse: Promoting family values and flat-front khakis
out in broad daylight.
In a context where all is consensual, what
is the big reveal? Why the dank basements? Perhaps the basements simply
function as the mask that some need in order to fully confess and
access the depths of their desire.
I say to each their own and, for my own hunger,
spare no detail.
be well; be loved.
k
P.S. What is something you've participated in that you would hesitate the most to tell another person?
[Image: Photo from Alexander McQueen's show, Dante, A/W 1996]
