Mirror image

The Today show these last few mornings have focussed on selfies, which has got me thinking...

The little box at the corner of the Skype screen offers me an on-going presentation of myself in action, but when I steal a glance, it's already lapsed into the standard inert face with Fu-manchu mouth corners, hooded eyes, uptilted chin, slack throat.

In a mirror, I go gimlet, conducting a minute examination of the topography of the face: the bumps and abysses, the clumps and colors of what covers the bones of the front of my head. I feel affection for the scenery, but it doesn't feel like me.

There's no life in these images. If I mug, it's just posing. Even naked before a shower, it's still putting on a show. At photograph time, my grin improves the picture but feels like a deliberate gesture. Maybe models and movies stars feel an organic connection between image and identity, but I don't find it intuitive.

It's hard to reconcile these representations with what I see my students and colleagues respond to. I know there's a liveliness in my expression, perhaps eyes, possibly mouth, maybe brow, that catches their attention, even provokes and encourages them. It pleases me too, though I only see it second-hand. My face is more interesting to me as instrument than as image.

Here are some other things I've noticed:

If I let my face slump into a studied impassivity when response is not needed or required, it feels encrusted with a mask-like shell.

Likewise, I recognize the life in my body better when I'm dancing or running or working in the garden, say, than when contemplating the expanse of exposed skin manifested in the looking glass.

My recorded voice, which I hear often, seems likewise uninteresting to me, though I enjoy playing with my voice when practicing whistling or declamation.

Clothes, especially shirts, are a pleasure but mostly as I see or feel them on me. Certain linens or silks are delightful to carry and see on the sleeve.

Does this mean that I really only know myself either from the inside as embodied experience or indirectly as a presence for others, people and things? I know my face by rubbing it with my hands, or as a reflection on the face opposite me. Where I don't seem to know or care to know myself is in the mirror and even photographs seem interesting only as historical artifacts: "Look at the head of hair on that guy."

We see images everywhere. Certain ones are very compelling but the ones of myself not; they seem other to me. I hope I'm being honest here; it's not easy to be sure. In any case, I'm happy to meet myself up close or out far, rather than in the middle distance a screens-length away.