day 72

Returning to the metaphors of theatre and the stage (if that is even possible),
'I' has a peculiar narrative to unfold - 'I' is not on stage.

What is excruciatingly painful about this narrative is the impossibility to be a fantastic performer of oneself. It is almost imperative that some form of mediation or medium- history books, journalism, statues and tombstones - must exist before a performance can unfold. Hence, 'I' in a paradoxical way has to be oneself without being oneself.

we can say what we want about 'I';
but even though 'I' can only be physically there on stage, 'I', the single one image-of-God does not know what it means to be an image-of-God; 'I' ends up in inverted commas, a restricted economy of totalizing the image that 'I' is.

I am - that is the infinite projection that does not return to oneself.

For I am - on stage but subsequently, I can be elsewhere. What then is my relation to the stage or the event that has passed? I am - performing but am I performing the pure image I can be or am I reflecting just another non-performance of myself eaten up as if the temporality and fleeting quality of my performance immediately separates me from my impossibility as a living being?

Here is another paradox - the impossibility of my being is precisely my possibility as a human being. And this comedy is not lost when I proceed to perform myself on stage - I must be, and in so doing, I stop being.

The great comedies almost always present this dilemma to us. We take ourselves too seriously, therein lies the comedy.

Perhaps, there is a more straightforward way of thinking this: if everything is performance, in that moment when we can speak of it as performance, we immediately displace it as such into thinking of it as a non-performance. Now, that is not very straightforward.
The tragedy of thinking that everything is performance is to lose the sense in which one can also be incompetent in performing or to be more precise, one is always in rehearsal. But then again, how do you perform non-performance? Surely, the greatest performance (I'm being ironic here) is our own deaths - jumping off building, drowning ourselves - in other words, the stage that is our performance space always have some part to play in our narrativising of our lives. They almost go hand in hand with the performer in providing the perfect ending. It is as if the physical world in which we by accident find ourselves in, provide exactly the resources for us to take our lives. But that is only in the realm of endings. I am interested in the non-performances of everyday life - how we labouriously drag ourselves on stages and perform with varying affects and effects of the self and 'I' in varying roles and responsibilities. Sometimes, they are unbearable to watch. Sometimes, they are so perfect that I cannot suspend my disbelief. It is because there are never good performances or some performances are over-committed to being a performance that makes possible my distinction of performance/non-performance.

Then in that case, Non-performance or the perpetual state of rehearsal of one self is another human narrativising. In fact, I have also restricted the event into a categorical entity in which one can begin to think about 'I'. I has much to say - but like the sun appearing/disappearing over the horizon, only a concept of linear time in cyclical repetition can tell us if it is an appearance or disappearance. In light of this, the non-performance of 'I' is really another performance. The difference, however, is that it almost never marks itself as a Said, a success of sorts; Instead, it is a saying, a doing, a performing, a becoming, being or even a being-unto-death, a process that must in time to come meet its eventual end. Without such a horizon of expectation, one will think one is performing extremely well. For the metaphor of 'Rehearsal' really presupposes that there is a final performance that we must rehearse for. The expectation to perform creates in us (in existential terms) an anxiety to perform, but in this case, we often perform badly and inappropriately. The way in which we struggle towards our own dying (as compared to killing) is really a comedy. A precision that leaves chance to mock us, as much as 'I' attempts to abolish chance. For within each death (taken as the extreme of perfect performances with the intended end), is a duality - a parody (of life) and a tragedy (of life) - simultaneously making us cry and laugh.

But there is also an ultimate non-performance that the performance of suicides exhibits later on - post event. It is that of the non-performance of self. One simply ceases to exist. (At least as a human being.)

But really, if we continue to think in terms of 'everything' with metaphors of performance, we really find ourselves in a loop leaping from performance to non-performance; an irony that is lost in us because we sometimes live the doctrine of performance so religiously.

There is something very straightforward in thinking of existence (or society, where this phenomenon is very prevalent in sociology and anthropology) and that is not by thinking that 'everything is a performance'. To make such a distinction is to immediately perform 'everything is a performance'. It is to only highlight what is already an articulation of existence in our own ways of existing. It is a performative that does not speak for existence. Instead, existence always has its own way to remind how bad performers we are, most capable in the surface of things. Our only saving grace, really, is our perfect performance of death (both as a non-performance that ends our performance, as well as bringing 'to die' its fulfillment.)

And here is the simple fact: We always fail in our attempts to will our deaths - Death is always an accident that must be in relation with the conditions of nature and man-made (our exteriority) most often indeterminable by us.

However, we will still succeed in dying once, eventually, without the need to do anything.
There is something in the inevitable relation between failure and success which makes living, though labourious and unbearable, bearable and so simple that it actually hurts our ego to know that living is simple. Simply put: we don't wish to know that death can take us by surprise. But the joke's on us.

"I am - not on stage" is an articulation of what this simple living means. It is the relation (the hyphen) that makes possible the articulation to even occur. In other words, the capacity to perform (or not) is not only determined by the self and our own absolute alterity, it is dependent exactly on the stage that we don't belong to; there is no stage for us after Eden. We have to create our own.

In other words, I almost always have to imagine the stage in which 'I' can come to fold, whether as a failure, a comedian, a clown or simply a competent actor of many roles. The radical thought that is proposed here is that it is the simplicity 'to live and die' that makes our little narrative of 'everything is performance' seems really trivial and almost a waste of time to think in those metaphors. Surely, we already know that. But what is radical in the simplistic understanding of 'everything is performance' is that we always fail to manifest 'everything' as a performance. We fail; Highly successful in utilizing the tools, rules and functions to manifest something, but never able to reach the core of 'everything', we only 'perform' the surface of things without the depth and profound understanding of 'I'.

How do I perform 'I'? That is a simple question. So simple that I cannot answer that. By way of escaping the question, I can only say how I intend to end this performance - by dying. (but this text then will only make sense posthumously.

Or perhaps, by asking what 'H' means - when I is in relation with another I.
It's not about the face. It's about the interface or hyphen that we helplessly find ourselves in; the stage that is not a stage but a being-in-relation-to-another and makes possible 'I' to be as 'I' is, in a state of immense simplicity - to live and to die - and without the baggage of performance and ultimately a success/failure narrative of our becoming - coming to death. Really, it's an ethical relation - both inwardly and outwardly without being unable to determine what constitute this tapestry of existence.

YHWH

But that performance or discourse is for another day.