Lohbado's Identity

proceed slowly, with determination

Club Morono Tabernacle

acrylic on paper

Ok, so you’re trying to write your memoir. First step is to find out who you’re writing about. Who is myself? This isn’t a flaky question. How can you write your memoir if you can’t locate the self being written about?

The trouble is, self is more like a living field, constantly changing, like a river flowing. The moment you begin to describe the self, the self has already changed from living being into a description. The description of self is related to a situation or environment. The descriptions are anchored to moments, which no longer exist. A described moment takes on a life of its own, quite different than the actual moment that one perhaps hoped to evoke. Nobody will ever fully know the moment behind the moment that stimulated the author to describe the moment.

Does the self remain identical throughout a lifetime? Is my concept of self at sixteen the same as my concept of self at sixty? Obviously not. There is no single, fixed enduring self. Description of self could entail a catalogue, a loose sequence or set of situations, remembered at random. Much of what happened is forgotten, or distorted in the act of remembering. Which aspects of the so-called self will you write about? Some aspects you will choose to not write about. Others you will, depending on how you feel, or the story you may or may not be trying to tell, or the impression you’re trying to make. The self is a heap, accumulated strata. One might cut out a chunk and try and sculpt it into an identity.