Goffman, Ziggy and Me

23.11.04


My father was looking at the newspaper today. He said ‘The Teddy Bear and Evi are there’. Then he shows me the paper. I track a reference to the ‘stories’ (the blog). I’m happy for them and laugh indifferently at my case. I was never part of a community (although I know I am). In general, I don’t like belonging to something. All right, I have made you freak out and I definitely have the inferiority complex. Let’s put it that way. If I don’t admit it, I won’t stop being like that. If I do, I might manage to change something/some day.I had said that I wouldn’t write anything! It’s impossible. I’m addicted (I repeat that) to the blog and I’m being dead serious! In the future I might wind up in a detox clinic in order to get rid of constant blogging.

Yesterday I was reading an article from a book written by Erving Goffman: ‘The Presentation of self in everyday life’. I understood a lot about what I did both to you and to myself. I have confused you, speaking about the defence of difference on the one hand and presenting myself as a guy just like the rest on the other. I see what I mean (and I’m not worried for as long as this happens) but it’s something that I can’t explain. Nonetheless, the wisdom of things is somewhere in the middle (as usual). Anyway, that’s not the question. The question is, how can I be so tired from this procedure and yet find it extremely difficult to take my hands from the keyboard? Someone yells at me: ‘Go back to your normal life, you dumbo’. And I answer: ‘This has become a part of my normal life’.

I remember David Bowie (he is probably my favourite artist) when he was living as Ziggy Stardust and almost got sick with schizophrenia, because he believed so much in the personality he had created for himself that he forgot who he really was. I hope that this won’t happen to me, because, let’s face it, no matter how real myself is here, I really get into my new role. As for publicity, what am I to say? When you aren’t after her, she finds you. When you are after her, she doesn’t come to you at all. Unless you are Ziggy Stardust.