I have found myself confronted with this as part of my very existence. I dance my dance of instance art and, in the process, it is that very individuation that becomes the core mechanic of the art. The word 'mechanic' is less than ideal, but it is what we have to lean on: yes, it is impressive when one forks smoothly or can lean creatively on the mutation algorithms, but the truly artistic aspect is putting a fine point on the ways in which we change on an hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute, second-by-second basis.
Back in systime 59 (2183 by the old calendar), one of my first true exhibitions was a gala of sorts. I rented out a large ballroom and invited 50 individuals to join me in their finest for an evening of dances and delights. However, they were not to dance with each other, they were to dance with me. I forked 50 times over leaving fifty fennecs (well, 51, as one of me was left as the emcee for the evening) and we began dancing to all sorts of lovely music from throughout the centuries.
However, one by one, my instances began to quit. It was no quiet affair. They quit with looks of agony, with yelps of fear, with wide eyes and trembling paws. The more instances that quit, the more anxious the remaining instances became. One by one, their number dwindled, until there was only one remaining, sobbing and pleading to remain, to not be annihilated. And then it, too, quit with a shriek.
It was, of course, an act. Quitting does not feel like anything. There is no pain, no fear, certainly no anxiety in an instance artist such as myself. However, it did put a fine point on the absurdity of our condition, that these instances were no longer me, that that they changed with every step of their ballroom dance.
That final instance was dancing with a member of my own clade: Time Is A Finger Pointing At Itself. I went into the exhibition with little plan as to who would be the final dancer. It had little to do with their skill (though our dear Pointillist was a fine dancer in her own right), and more to do with how they were reacting to this play of self. Would I lean into someone who shared in the foxes' terror? Would I lean into someone who expressed joy at the dance that I had set up? In the end, I leaned into an actor — A Finger Pointing runs a theatre company, made up mostly of members of her own stanza — who adopted an almost villainous aspect. She danced with a serene smile, even as that final dancer dissolved into tears, ending the song with a flourish of a bow even as it cried out in agony.
Another reason that I chose her is that she correctly divined that I would not be merging the experiences of my up-tree instances back into myself as the emcee. It was not something that any of the guests needed to know. It was a private joke between all 51 of me. It was a way for me to be the audience as well. After all, did the other dancers not have access to my internal thoughts? Why, then, should I be any different?
She, however, saw right through me, because of course she did. She is an inveterate actor! She is the manager of a troupe of actors! She picked her part and played it, and turned it into a show even for little old Dear.
In our discussion afterward, we lingered long on this selfdom-as-play. "Sometimes I send a fork to a party I would really rather participate in myself, and when she returns with all those lovely experiences freshly welling up in her I think they belong to her," she said. "It is less about willful individuation and more about.. how every fork is an individual."
To prove her point, she forked and then, on a whim, pulled this new fork over until she stumbled and slumped against her, laughing. She explained, "Here she is caught completely off her guard because I did not intend to surprise her until just now. She is different from me!"
It is all very Heraclitus, is it not? He was the one who said that no man crosses the same river twice, because the river has changed minute-to-minute, second-to-second, as does the man. It was Weinberger who said that no one ever reads the same poem twice, because by reading the poem, the reader is changed: "Every reading of every poem, regardless of language, is an act of translation: translation into the reader's intellectual and emotional life. As no individual reader remains the same, each reading becomes a different — not merely another — reading."
These are the things I think about when I think about the impermanence of the self, which is always.
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