The title of this note reflects not only its contents but timeliness when considering the recent 'death' of Melusine.
It is the end of another year. People, the media in particular, begin their annual review of the year past. This morning I read an article -photo essay- online in The New York Times Their Words to Live By: Artists We Lost in 2017. The quotes chosen for two artists jumped out of me. The first, from author/actor/playwright/screenwriter/director/... Sam Shepard on the challenge finding our identity presents us. The second, from comic actor/director/entertainer/singer/writer/philantropist/fundraiser/... Jerry Lewis on the animosity of others one encounters when openly living a multifaceted identity -doing so in words that are humorous and egotistical, both revealing of what it takes to do so.
Interesting how the identity of neither artist can be described in a single word. Even the word 'artist' fails to do so because the moment I write it I realize I should answer the unspoken but always thought question 'what kind?'. Shepard's answer to the at times anxiety inducing question of personal identity we pose ourselves, 'Who am I?' is that it remains unresolved. All of the quantifiers of identity, the words separated by the backslashes can be continually added to throughout our lives. After our deaths others might (attempt) to continue adding to those words, but those are identity not claimed for by ourselves but applied upon us by others. This is important to differentiate when addressing identity -that which we claim for ourselves and that applied to us by others, and how the two are or are not reconciled. Lewis's statement of the hatred one encounters when living out a multifaceted identity speaks to the difficulty of reconciling who we are with who others want us to be. The terms he uses to describe himself are relevant in the egotism they display. The hatred directed toward the person living his or her multifacetedness is a hatred directed toward the egotism which denies others the ability to define the identity of another on their terms. Egotism allows us to claim our identity and its multifacetedness as we see it, and not as others want it to be. This multifacetedness often contains conflicting and contradictory fragments of identity which make others uncomfortable, angry and defense at the challenge it presents to them of the own conflicts and contradictions contained in themselves. The person able to live his or her multifacetedness and not let themselves become a victim of the hatred of others must be an egotist.