To Ignore or Acknowledge

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One of the reasons I haven’t blogged much in recent weeks is that I started doing performance art this past December. I’d never done performance art before, despite the avenues and opportunities it opens up to explore things in ways that are more difficult to explore in other media. I think this is in part because I’ve never had such a compelling opportunity to explore performance art before (or maybe I just never noticed previous opportunities), but my shyness undoubtedly played a part in not doing performance art. Writing is hardly a performative art, at least in the ways I pursue it, and even in my piano-playing youth I was kind of “hiding” behind that piano when I performed. With performance art you put yourself out there for your audience much more than in other kinds of art, especially when your performance has deep personal meaning to you.

Without getting into too much detail, my current performances are based on my shyness and other social issues I have, exploring both how they’re constructed and how they’re perceived by others. I’ve done six performances to date, and most of them have led to interesting conversations and revelations. I’m not sure how long I’ll keep doing this particular set of performances, but they’ve certainly been worthwhile so far, and they’ve opened my mind to the possibility of doing different kinds of performance art in the future.

One of the more interesting dynamics resulting from these performances comes from me presenting aspects of my personality that are considered deviations from the “normal” in terms of how I conduct myself in social situations; some might call these deviations “problems” or “difficulties” or other similar terms. As I’ve discussed my performances with others I’ve become more conscious of how we, as a society, are expected to cover these deviations up, through behavioural or chemical changes (whether through alcohol or other drugs). To not conceal these deviations bothers a great many people, and to be open about one’s deviations, as I am about mine during my performances, is frightening to some, even when they’re confronted with those deviations in a non-threatening way.

In a lot of ways it reminds me of my autistic friends and the debate currently going on over the idea of neurodiversity, or treating those whose thought processes are considered deviations (or “problems” or, worse yet, “diseases” and “disorders”) as just variations of the human condition like skin colour and gender, and that the idea of “curing” them is antithetical to basic principles of diversity and respect for others. I’ve never been diagnosed as autistic, but I’ve wondered for a long time where the difficulties I’ve had in “normal” social situations come from. As much as I’ve been hurt over the years by not being able to interact in certain social situations like I wish I could, I have to wonder where that line is between how much I should be expected to conform to the behaviour patterns of neurotypicals, and how much others should be expected to work with my unique patterns of behaviour to interact with me.

After a recent performance I was encouraged by an audience member to just focus on my positives, to do things the way I want to do them and not worry about what other people think. I understand the part about not worrying about what other people think, although that’s something I still struggle with. I can understand the rationale behind focusing on the positive — I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how I needed more positivity in my life — but I’ve also given a lot of thought to the problems that come when people focus only on the positive and how that leads to people making bad judgments when they assume a person (or group or whatever) can do no wrong. On a wider level I think this can be evidenced in American politics with how some conservatives treat Ronald Reagan, elevating him to the level of “conserva-Jesus” and ignoring those parts of Reagan and his legacy that are antithetical to current conservative doctrine (like Reagan’s support of the 1994 assault weapons ban and nuclear disarmament). I’ve certainly seen modern Democrats treat President Obama the same way.

Our society seems to be set up to encourage this kind of view. I don’t think there’s a problem with saying it’s not polite to harp on people’s deviations — I don’t know anyone who likes having that done to them — but what we do as a culture is to go beyond “not mentioning” and into “not thinking about,” at least unless we perceive danger from those deviations. When we don’t think about something — whether a deviation or an opposing viewpoint or what have you — then we’re not fully prepared for what happens when it becomes an issue for some reason. This is why I think it’s far better to recognize a deviation, if only in our own heads, when it presents itself, because otherwise we aren’t prepared for the future, and that could hurt not only us but the people who rely on us as well.

I know that for me, personally, I don’t like being put on a pedestal. I make a point of telling the students I teach, at the start of every term, not only am I not perfect, but I want to know when I’m not getting through to them, or boring them, or ticking them off or what have you, because I’m not a perfect teacher and I want to get better, not just for their benefit but also for the benefit of all the students I teach in the future. I run into a lot of resistance there, though, because so many of them are brought up to think that their teachers at school are, if not infallible, then at least incontrovertible. It would probably make my job easier if I just played along with this mindset, but I have a responsibility to my students to be the best teacher I can be for them, and honest and open feedback about my performance as a teacher is a necessity, I believe, for a teacher to perform their job well.

(I should add that, as refreshing as it can be to be open about your deviations and the mistakes you’ve made in the past and so on, there is such a thing as harping on this so often that you make an annoyance out of yourself. This is something I’ve been guilty of in the past, and I’m trying not to do it again.)

We live in a culture that could use a lot more courtesy, but I think that some of the “courtesy”  we currently practice only serves to exacerbate certain problems because we never acknowledge or confront them like we should. Through my performance art I’ve been able to start  some small dialogues on how we handle some of these difficulties, and that’s made this recent foray of mine quite fulfilling. It’s a start towards a larger dialogue, at least, and perhaps this is a topic I can explore here in future blogs.

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