You Have One Identity

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 20 August 2014.

I guess my thought is to not worry too much about what the era is with the pictures.

I believe one of the aspects of the project is finding one's true self, and, in our case, that would be resolving the dichotomies of Art and Arthur, Will and Will. I still think it makes sense to put together fantasy situations whenever we have the time, resources, and wherewithal to do so. But I also think we should document things as is, as they are actually happening in reality. Using the "vintage" filters adds an interesting layer to the dichotomy of true and false selves, but I think it's worth doing in whatever capacity.

Mark Zuckerberg

You mentioned in a previous email about how "nobody sustains the legend." I think our project is about bringing a legend to life and as I said way, way back as my rationale for starting a blog, that is an interesting story in and of itself. As for myself, I probably won't be able to muster much authenticity this year, costume or setting wise. But I'm going to go ahead and document me working on the project. And if that means a 70s-looking photograph of me sitting at my Mac working on Garage Band, so be it. At this point, it is keeping with the disjunctive time aspect of the project.

Remember, our own time period would be post-"turbulent reversals"!

This brings up some ideas worth exploring. I had a pretty awesome discussion with my cousin a few years back. It started with Mark Zuckerberg's famous quote "You have one identity," which is so fascinating, since he is one of the prime forces facilitating the wholesale fragmentation of identity we experience today. Of course, he's not totally to blame, because the machine just serves up whatever dream/nightmare the human being imagines.

But could it also be said that we express our one identity more fully by having avatars? I keep my identities way more separate than you do, but I'm conscious of a lot of "orphaned" aspects of my identity that are reclaimed within this project. When I chartered the whole idea back in 1998, it was my way of expressing a seeming overabundance of masculinity in a music scene dominated by shoegazing indie eunuchs. In inventing this and other identities, I have, in some sense, created more commodious frames for self expression. I guess it could be true that there is a way to just "be who you are" sans avatars but, in my experience, I've needed to find, invent, and/or hijack various vehicles to fight back against the deadening effects of society's ever-constricting boundaries.

I'd like to hear your opinion on this, but I also like that the project has not come to a definite conclusion about this question, that we are holding up both possibilities as the tragic and/or comic outcome of this undertaking. Documenting the project in its artifice and in its reality seems like a good idea regardless of what we decide (if we decide).

So that's my pitch for both fiction and nonfiction photographs.