"Looking into a Mirror Sideways"

Laurie Anderson, Absent in the Present: Looking into a Mirror Sideways, 1975 © Laurie Anderson

(I know it seems like I'm on a roll this week... and maybe I am... and maybe I'm not. This is my second attempt to put up this post. So, while it occurs to me that I may be slowly retrieving more of my voice after (its) long absence, it is equally as possible that I'm deluding myself...

Or, trying to communicate with a mirror bisecting my face.)

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Laurie Anderson: "I think Donald Trump changed my relationship to reality more than virtual reality did. The second people started chanting “Lock her up,” my sense of reality shifted in a major way. I wish I had more distance and I wish I could just see, “This is really an insane person trying to get attention.” He’s very, very good at what he does. Sometimes I’m kind of lured into his world, even though I recognize it as one of attention-seeking and deeply, deeply disconnected from reality. I still get fooled by it. So, I try not to see it as a disintegrating phase, the last phase of our system. But I would have to say I’m more influenced by his vocabulary of fake news than I am by any art concept of what’s real and what’s not real, or what’s virtual and what’s not virtual, because those things I understand. I understand that art isn’t real, already. But I thought that the real world was real. Silly me, you know?"

- From a 2018 interview with Laurie Anderson found on this MIT page. Keep in mind, 2018 was a deep-shit pandemic year... illusions/delusions/fear were rife in those days... and, quite possibly, still are.

(Correction: the Pandemic - as we know it - wasn't in full swing until 2020. "Illusions/delusions/fear" were "rife" in 2018, but the doo-doo had yet to hit the fan. It merely nourished invasive weeds...) (re: the original green-blooded cast from A Little Shop of Horrors.)

“Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he. Throughout the whole absurd life I'd lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. What did other people's deaths or a mother's love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we're all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brothers? Couldn't he see, couldn't he see that? Everybody was privileged. There were only privileged people. The others would all be condemned one day. And he would be condemned, too.”

- Albert Camus, from The Stranger.

“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”

- Albert Camus.

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This is, yet, another Addendum to the Camus post. It seems he and I continue to dance in the multiverse of the Absurd.

As it was, I just happened upon another artistic contribution by American artist & musician Laurie Anderson; one which seemed to reflect my ongoing Absurdist theme.

Regarding her 1975 photo (above), at a rapid glance, the little girl in the mirror looks like a googly-eyed monster... or the product of a very bad (chemical) trip. In reality, she's no more than a playful little kid who has learned a new trick, an illusion involving a mirror. She wasn't really a monster. But she surely loved appearing like one.

The illusion she created, however, is the central theme of this post. That is, when things start getting scary, wonky, weird, or a little out-or-sync we might ask ourselves: is this just some trick with mirrors?

Take loose cannon (and Republican pawn), Donald Trump, for instance... quite a lot of distortion there. Quite a lot of mirror tricks all the way around. One "sideways" mirror trick makes America appear like a divided nation. A similar mirror trick makes thieves look like clowns. Another mirror trick allows the most marginalized and ineffectual people to appear gargantuan and menacing. It's amazing what can be accomplished with a few strategically placed mirrors.

What's more amazing is that anyone is sane... 

"So, I try not to see it as a disintegrating phase, the last phase of our system."

Laurie Anderson may have been envisioning the future with that line... the pandemic and beyond. (See this related thought experiment.) However, "the last phase of our system" is (most likely) farther away than it appears in our present mirror. But, maybe I'm not looking in the right mirror.

Then again, maybe it's time that you and I dragged ourselves away from mirrors altogether... giving both ourselves & the mirrors a much-needed break (pun intended).

To the Moon, perhaps?