A Carefully Conceived Mask Shielding a Soul-Less Abstraction
The Phasing and Ideas Series - Entry 10
The Phrasing and Ideas series is about elaborating on the thousand-plus entries I’ve collected in a document by the same name. These entries have been scavenged over several years through plenty of different situations and mediums. Every article visits one of the entries and gives it additional context, from where it was taken from, what it means to me, who I was when I found it, how it has grown with me over time, etc. For more information on the ‘Phasing and Ideas’ series, you can click below.
Foreword
I remember either getting this phrase directly from dialogue in American Psycho or coming up with it myself with heavy influence from the book.
This was something that came to me in my early 20s at a much edgier, less filtered time in my life. It describes those sequences where we find ourselves detaching from the world, feeling like an outsider to all things, and only putting up a persona to skate through daily human interaction. Sequences when we walk through the world with that little bit of shine on our face as Christian Bale does in the film version of American Psycho, that look like he’s a department store doll more so than a real person: gaze completely fixed ahead, skin polished to the point where it feels synthetic, and a walking gait tinged in a chilled apatheticness. Perhaps that’s just me harking back on my edgier days describing that, but my best guess is that we all have those momentary periods, however brief, before we are enthralled again by the heavy emotion toward all things.
Fear & Transparency, Modern Day
Nowadays, when I think of this phrase I think of my constant struggle and progression to shed masks that I hide behind in my life to different people. It’s a constant challenge to be transparent, vulnerable, and bare consistently, and not be someone that you’re not. Those lies of differing degrees that I’ve hidden behind and still hide behind sometimes, in the realms of mental health, career, general outlook, events, etc. are scary. I know someday they’ll all blow up in my face, and my ego will be annihilated. Someday I’ll lose a lot of people because of this, and I just hope I can limit the damage by continuously shedding the masks.
It’s not easy to shed the mask, I’m sure folks who have had the experience can attest to this. It is downright uncomfortable at times, but as one does shed the layers of that carefully conceived shield, there is liberation on the other side… whether you’re accepted still or not.
I suppose this phrase is more applicable to my life today than I realized. I’m no stranger to putting up a front as you can see — a carefully crafted persona that I present to the world. And now, pondering the idea of a mask concealing something deeper, I realize the longer the mask is kept on, the more risk one becomes of losing touch with the true self. Perhaps I’ve known that for a little while now… but it wasn’t exactly what I had planned to write when beginning the write-up on this phrase.
It’s easy to get wrapped up in the façade we present to the world — the image of ourselves that we want others to see. But now considering the phrase, I realize how dangerous this can be. We risk becoming the very abstraction we fear — a hollow shell of a person, devoid of any real substance.
In the end, all these years later, I see this phrase as a warning — a reminder to not take myself too seriously, to not get too wrapped up in the image I present to others. Because in the end, that image is just a mask — and the person beneath it is far more interesting and complex than any abstraction could ever be. Additionally, I now realize the mask itself is not the parts one hides about themselves from the world, but the false ideas of oneself one puts out into the world freely.
And I didn’t expect to have that realization while writing this up.
This entry was more so for me, reader. Therapeutic in a way.
To read the next entry in the Phasing and Ideas Series, click below.