The Man and (The Woman and) The Mask

So we've taken our positions in the war against epiphany. Battle lines are drawn, erect. Some of you have rightly slashed at the hot-air-balloon that is my prose; and good, since it's there to be deflated. Others have taken part in the festivities. What a brilliant drama of comments has spawned from the little diatribe that could! All participants in the tussle of ownership, the great territorial conflict of interpretation. The real juice began to flow long after my post finished.

And yet, something worries me about my varied receptions (and whether I've received these receptions correctly). I had hoped a fairly blatant irony would drip out of that 'article', an irony that was indeed recognised (whether as unconscious or conscious): I was writing in a voice which was highly opinionated about the evils of firm opinions. It affirmed modesty, arrogantly. I feel silly attempting to deconstruct my own attempt at humour, but I felt that was a critical current of the whole piece. Sure, the claiming of epiphany does give me (if the me of this post can be aligned with the I of the previous) the shits, but I took care to filter this through an overblown mouthpiece. Satire is an extreme sport, in so far as it demands extremity of opinion. Risky, vertiginous, full of sweeping, flailing swords of generalisation. The ferocity of the satirist's opinion increases at a rate indirectly proportional to his/her knowledge. Less reason, more roar.

What concerns me about many readers (myself included - for my reading at some stage morphed into a lazy scan of quantity over quality) is that they don't seem to be sufficiently alive to the flexibility of the writer's voice. Of course, the contracts between writer and reader are always different, and signed at different times. Text framed as a newspaper article, for example, inherently contains an agreement that the facts will speak, and they will arrive through a transparent mouthpiece, unfiltered by a voice. Fiction, on the other hand, has other programmed expectations: among them, the freedom of the 'writer' to be distinct from the 'narrator', with the former controlling the latter. But we stumble when the text enters cyberspace and leaves the accountability of the heavier, inkier print author. How does one read an unlabelled, unprogrammed Blog with only one post to its name? How does one form the Blogger behind this Blog? Do we need their corporeality to engage with them, or can we grapple with shadows?

To plead the writer's mask may sound like a cop-out; and indeed, it will not always stand as a defence. Somewhere along the line, the writer has to face up to the responsibility of having written. Those figures who inform public opinion especially - Jonesy, Miranda Devine etc - need to back their creations bravely. But there is nothing wrong, even in these most extreme cases of self and opinion coalescing indistinguishably, with remembering the fluidity of voice. A writer approaches a product which is particularly manipulable. And this product can, as a result, be quite beautifully insincere. My favourite authors have mastered the art of skimming across the surface with agility, wielding their voice and mask as lightly and dexterously as a dancer. The loss of insincerity would be a tragic one: and I think (finally, an assertion!) that this applies to blogging as much as it does fiction.

Ultimately, the loss of control a writer experiences when anything is 'published' is an exhilarating feeling. What matter perceived misconceptions when they integrally help fertilise a rich world of readings? And it is in that most democratic of spaces, the net, where readings are perhaps most impossible to pin down. The wonderland of pseudonyms and avatars is a fantastic place to be ripped to shreds and re-sutured, all in the comfort of your own home: who knows whether or not Amenite is really a corpulent Bangladeshi addicted to Tasty Cheese, or whether or not I am really a black finger-puppeteer with three criminal convictions to my name. And, finally, does it matter? Online identity, like all written identities, has a strong hand in governing reception. The important thing is to keep the mask in the back of the mind as you read, a caution against face value; and have it ready to put on, when prepared to play along.

The War Against Epiphany

A negative to start: few things get my goat by the gonads more than someone announcing they have just had a life-changing realisation. Elevating this empty claim with the title 'epiphany' is rarer, but all the more offensive for that. There is something so implicitly self-congratulatory about the paradigm formula 'I've just had an amazing epiphany' and its cognates ('I've just had an incredible realisation', 'I've just come to the wonderful realisation'). On thinking about why this seemingly innocuous claim grates with me to such an extent, I most emphatically did not experience any epiphanies of any sort. If I felt an epiphany scratching in my cerebral recesses, I would immediately suppress it. I can safely posit myself in the camp of the anti-epiphanists.

To claim epiphany is tantamount to saying, in effect: 'I've recently obtained complete access to the hitherto concealed laws of the universe, and you haven't. Thank you, Goodnight.' The subtext wreaks of conceit. In this fantastical moment, special knowledge apparently bundles itself up, brands itself ostentatiously with 'Top Secret' stamps, and delivers itself as a marvellous ad hominem revelation. 'Everything just...made sense.' Well hats off to you, sir. Great kudos, Madam. A legion of sweaty physicists has been clambering for your keys to the cosmos for many years now, but you got there first.

I would welcome the epiphanist to take his/her perfect form and mould other untruths with it before attempting to wield it persuasively against me. My resistance swells when it is faced with any act of intellectual haste, and this is precisely what the epiphany is. As a moment of instantaneous sublimity, the idea has its use in constructing the myths of progress which console us every day: history lurches forward in fitful leaps as Albert chalks out e=mc^2, or Edison materialises the light-bulb, once confined to his comic-book thought-bubble, into the real thing. But the run-of-the-mill epiphany is far more dangerous, even though it can be seen as an individualisation of this 'history is summed from pivotal points' model. Epiphanies, for the most part, are tools used by confused people to delude themselves into thinking they've succeeded in resolving their heavily pixellated life. They bring the comfort of closure, but it is a rushed, forced variety of closure. I'm convinced that many of the worst decisions ever made first tempted their deciders in the seductive form of the epiphany.

Epiphanies do not menace solely because of their swiftness and freshness (note the integral involvement of recency in the formula, the word 'just': 'I've just had an epiphany.'). Danger also lies in their ready-made nature: the fact that, like nuggets of conventional wisdom, they are 'always already' constructed. For some unfathomable reason, the epiphany is dignified to a sphere in which it is rendered immune to regular criticism. Once I pluck out an epiphany from the nethermind, that's it. Pointless disputing revelation, the highest form of truth, right? The epiphany carries an 'Undisputed Canon Amusement Park - Free Entry' ticket with it at all times. But the ticket is a forgery. The problem is, the epiphanist is so busy toothlessly guffawing at his own good fortune that he/she forgets to check the verification barcode. 'Come right in, epiphany, my faculties will be glad to have you. You're extremely good looking, aren't you?' Epiphanies tend to effortlessly slip past the useful systems of check and balance we have installed, designed to filter the good counsel from the bad. I will leave you to conjure yourselves the horrors that would arise if the thought 'I really want to put frozen chicken on a wooden stick and lick it like an ice cream' were pampered with the special treatment reserved for the epiphany.

These benign realisations seemingly working in our favour are actually the germs of extremism. Moderation (and, in my view, good living) requires that everything which passes through our minds, frivolous or profound, should be subject to the same laws of scrutiny. Confusions, obfuscations, wading through the mud - these sensations should be part and parcel of an unending process of self-examination, enjoyed in themselves, rather than slighted as tiresome preludes to the moments when 'it all comes together'. Progress is a sloth of an animal, and its quicker, more glamorous agents should be treated with suspicion. Renouncing the charm of the epiphany is a liberating act. I noticed the other day that my most widely used conversational mannerism is 'I don't know.' Even when spouting comfortable facts securely placed within my field of knowledge, 'I don't know, but...' often remains the introduction. The quirk functions not so much as an admission of ignorance as a signal to one's interlocutor: 'This is what I say now, but it could very well be otherwise, and my thought is eager to play with its companions even before it's been verbalised itself.' Hesitation is a wonderful, heady aeration of a thing. So the next time you feel the urge to tell me about your moment of insight, dear epiphanist, consider whether your nugget might not be better left in the flighty realms of possibility, untethered in the ether. The world repays second thoughts. And if it is still importunate enough to demand a trip down to earth, worry not: myself and my mustered army of anti-epiphanists will be more than happy to suffocate it with the gentle prods of uncertainty. 'I don't know, but people who have epiphanies are usually wankers.'