A few nights ago, as I was waiting for a friend at a bus stop, I felt as though I could be anyone. All the people walking around me, didn't know me, wouldn't know me, and I was a complete stranger to all of them. The light and warmth from late afternoon sun enhanced the feeling of being expatriated, somewhere else, lost. A warm city smells different. I like being anonymous, ignored or met with curiosity. New. Fresh. It's a big city feeling and I rarely get it in Uppsala.
Now since I did, I felt even more - paradoxically - at home.
-
Speaking of anonymity, the thought occurred to me to start blogging anonymously. Loosen the shackles and inhibitions caused the possible reviews of employers, family, etc. Complete freedom of expression.
Completely naked.
But wearing a mask.
2 comments:
Thought about it for a long time but decided to go against it and to let myself express all that means something to me in the whole truth and nothing but the truth. What would you accomplish by writing incognito? Write what you want we will love you anyway.
Can be trouble if people who don’t count in to the closest circle of friends reads it and thereby gets to know you at a level were they shouldn’t. But that what it’s for according to me. Naked and with so much self confidence that you can do it. If someone has a problem with it, fuck them. Don’t need such assholes anyway.
Trust me my mom doesn’t want to know everything I do. But then she shouldn’t read it. I am who I am and well that’s it.
Don’t go incognito on us. It’s only a way of not trusting your surrounding. (all in all its up to you and I can understand it when it comes to colleagues reading it.)
Stand up for yourself and let yourself be seen, you are too much worth to slip into anonymity.
What I would accomplish by writing incognito is the freedom to be extremely honest and creative. Andreas, you may think you know me and you claim you will like me whatever I write. Would you? Or would you turn out to be an "asshole" I don't need, as you put it? And again, it's this duscussion of honesty. There is no way I would expose my most inner thoughts to whoever wanted to see. Such intimacies are too often also weak spots, chinks in the armor for your enemies to jab their swords into. Or for your friends to recoil in horror from, wondering what the h*ll they ever saw in you. I don't think its an issue of self confidence.
Being a stranger among strangers all these complications would be relieved, and all that is left are voices in the dark, thoughts and observations that would stand on their one, without the value personal prejudice etc.
Furthermore, it just hits me, that I am not only exposing myself here. Anyone who knows me, will also most likely know who my girlfriend is, who my flatmates are and so on. The feigned protection of their good names by only using initials and epitets would be nullified. No man is an island. As long as he has an identity.
---
I admire your confidence, and your honesty Andreas. But how do I know it is really honest? And where are your boundaries?
Post a Comment