Reflections in the Endless Mirror
A number of years ago my brother and I gave a film show at Maryland Art Place, at the 14 Karet Cabaret, an art space in Baltimore. We were presenting a film based upon H.P. Lovecraft stories called Wilber Whateley’s Sex Drive. Coincidentally, it was the same week that Pulp Fiction was released. I recall an acquaintance of mine, a young woman, rushing into the space and exclaiming how she’d seen it, and said it was the realization of everything she could ever hope to do in art. She was entranced; it’s cool had blown her mind.
This struck me as something one shouldn’t say, particularly an artist. If an artist is fully expressed in the work of another artist, it removes any justification of pursuing their own work. However, if it was true, I also thought she was lucky, off the hook! She could stop pursuing the artistic self-expression, with its omnipresent threat of poverty and dissatisfaction.
An artist is fundamentally dissatisfied. Someone who, not finding themselves reflected in the world, needs to construct their own place. This takes the form of a mirror created through their objects. They create their mirror apart from themselves, and, seeing others look at it, can finally say, “I exist.” And if they don’t create this mirror, they feel dissatisfied, questioning the validity of their existence. The need for self-reflection powerful: Richard Wagner, for example, wanted the entire world to be his mirror.
Mirrors are key to understanding human psychology. Our culture is filled with them. Narcissus and his reflection, Echo and his voice, the Evil Queen in Snow White, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Dorian Gray and his portrait, Poe’s William Wilson and his double. The Velvet Underground sings about them, so does Kraftwerk, Welles’ Citizen Kane is trapped in one. They can be as simple as a photograph or as complex as a personality cult. And it continues into lifestyles, the things with which we surround ourselves. We want to see ourselves reflected in a certain context, so we seek what’s needed to create it.
Anything can be a mirror; anything can serve to reflect us back to ourselves. When someone says they like something, what they mean is that it reflects them back in a pleasing way. Consider the statement, “I like Heavy Metal.” Doesn’t that mean that the person finds themselves reflected in the music, that it gives them an image of their imagined self?
It’s the same with any interest. The collector is the extreme example. Until the completion is attained, it’s like they are consumed by an itch that can’t be scratched. I’ve known people like this, whether it’s playing cards, comic books or 78 records. They all share the feeling that getting a complete collection is equivalent to personal realization. And curiously, though rare, they sell the collection and start over with something else.
One’s personal mirrors are never identified. They’re hidden behind names like art, hobbies, interests, collections, research, jobs, etc. The psychological goal is never admitted. Self-consciousness is never welcome in the process; paradoxically, there must be an element of not seeing in the construction of one’s personal mirror. People are fragile like the mirrors they create, and if broken, the image is hard to reconstruct.