opening night

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

Kurt Vonnegut (Mother Night)

This theme keeps coming up today, the idea that we all put up a “theatrical” self to everyone, except when we’re alone. I don’t think this makes the “selves” we present to others any less authentic though. Because, really, what are we like when we are by ourselves? Utterly boring and filled with incoherent and (mostly) insignificant thoughts, if nothing else, an audience forces us to organize into distinguishable objects, rather than lumps of raw material. We are only art after we go on stage.

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