The Show Must Go ON!

I know that if we were a site like others, we might spend today's posting on the mythic underpinnings of The Avengers, because is "hot shit" right now - or at least, that's what we've all been told to think is hot shit right now.

But I have this affliction. Maybe it is incurable. I can't seem to care about what I'm supposed to care about. I just care about whatever it is that has me by the - what do you call it? Balls? Nethers? It's what IT is, and until it has been worked out, the thing will keep me up nights and drive me totally mad. No matter what time of day or night it is, no matter what other tasks seem like they should be more pressing, some weird inner voice determines what the topic of the day must be, and that voice must be heeded or else everything else - and I do mean everything - be damned.

Sometimes, by some grand convergence, it so happens that the topic du jour is the same as what has me in such a way, and on those days, the traffic just rolls in. On those days, I can pretend I am some kind of SEO wizard. But the truth is that traffic is totally meaningless. None of those people stay, because none of them actually care about anything. They are, like so many people these days, just trend chasers. And they will keep trend chasing day after day, and unless if your life is spent defining and chasing trends yourself, you're nothing to them.

What has me today is actually just a continuation of the thread that has developed over the past month or so. If you recall, I mean if you are actually one of the regulars around here, you may have noticed that we first covered storytelling of the past, and why storytelling is so important. We also covered the possibilities afforded by new technologies for storytelling - and the links I'm sharing here are just a few of the many that the writers on this site let loose on those topics. We have covered how storytelling has changed over time, and how it hasn't, and this has even spread over to Odd Duck where I discuss the important topic of how storytelling is relevant to brands.

We have looked at some very painful and raw issues that arise around questions of identity, we scratched the surface of how comedy can be a vital tool in allowing us an access point to the unconscious of a culture, (as well as our own unconscious.) We have explored all these issues again in the form of a tongue-in-cheek Gonzomentary that some of us created, and we discussed many of these topics in a series of college classrooms, two of which are so far available in our podcast series.



Quite a virtual classroom to begin with, and we have only really begun! Yet at the same time, I reached a crisis point in my own life, which I have discussed only somewhat here, and I considered walking the plank and ending it all, but I came around the other side thinking that instead the answer was a re-appraisal of my identity. I thought that maybe the world would treat me differently, the way I wanted to be treated, if I came to it as someone different. (My issue has been and remains not myself but rather the world I live in.)



However, we come finally to the crux of this post. I know this is not how you are supposed to write blog posts, everything is supposed to be tiny little bite-sized-nuggets of bullshitty nothingness that people can digest, shit out and move on to the next thing in their mcnugget lives. I just can't do it. If that makes us all a failure than so fucking be it. I can't do it.

The past 24 hours have made me rethink the approach of rebirthing identity. Some of it is technological. Google will quite simply not allow my to disown my identity and start anew without turning my back on on the real friends along with the troublesome or poseur ones, and more to the point, it forces me to use all their services linked to the same identity, so if I don't intent to kill my web business, which is tied to my digital identity, my only option is to create a virtual or digital doppelganger.

This is something that most of you have already done years ago, and it is something that I have fought tooth and fucking nail. For years I have refused to compartmentalize, slice up, or censor one iota of who I am digitally or otherwise based on what some future corporation, organization, or government entity might think of my honest feelings right now. Even if they are in bad taste. Even if I change my mind in five minutes. Is the schizophrenia of identity the new normal? Am I some holdover of a bygone era that years for the Jungian ideal of synthesis and union, and which seeks to bring all thoughts - no matter how questionable to the society at large - into the light of consciousness? For - most of all - transparency and honesty are virtues to me even if what shines through isn't always pretty. My partners and friends and lovers know me, they really know me, as much as anyone can know another, and it is because I have no veils, I have no compartmentalization or post-modern schizophrenia of the sort which seems to be forced on us at every turn, and I am wondering now if what I had seen as a solution to my existential dilemma to in fact be a trick, a trap to lure me into precisely what I have always sought to avoid.

I don't know. But I do know this: I will create a second identity simply as an experiment in this "new normal" with the hunch that I am so hooked on the honesty and consistency of my own moody identity that, though moods may create the illusion of difference, the truth is that my doppelganger and I will actually be one and the same. It is, in my opinion, quite possible that I cannot be vivisected. This is a question that we raised in Citizen Y, and it is one that I think I am finding the answer to in my own life. (Which is good because, how many of you actually read let alone mentally experienced Citizen Y? Come on, be honest.)

I would like to leave you with this disquieting question, and I really hope that you have read this far because I consider this a fairly important post, as articles on this site go:

When you see a friend losing everything, but they are an "internet friend only," how does this differ from entertainment that we pay for on TV? What if in five years I told you that Sascha Idakaar (my doppelganger), had been the "real" me all along, and Jamie Curcio was a character I have been playing as part of a long running reality art project?

Would you feel cheated? Would you have the right to be? We are all living digital lives now. Those that fight for that life to be honest rather than a lie, like myself, may be in a new class: the transmedia entertainers who are living lives based around entertaining the passive audience. (Again, read Citizen Y. John and I entertained just this possibility for the future, and I think it is far more real than we may have even realized.) Tragedy is art, and art is cathartic entertainment.

We have laid out the puzzle-pieces of a past life - many lives - all over the internet, in book stores, in peoples homes, in people's pockets and in their minds and hearts - in albums - in performances - and they are as real as any "reality" you have ever tasted, touched, or felt.

Seek out these realities, there are many more out there, just waiting for you to unlock - and please do not hate the entertainer for their joy and suffering, and call us "unreal" or "actor" or "fakes." We did it all for you. We have just been playing the roles gives us since sui generis, and we play them until the end. And there is so much more more to come. The possibilities are only just beginning to show themselves...

Welcome to the show...

[Check out some of the books, albums, and soon movies produced by Mythos Media and our various media partners.]