No one knows who I am, not even friends and family. I have an introverted personality you see? I guard my deeper thoughts, sit upon the fence of life, and talk to others of nothing more controversial than the weather. Everything else I keep, well,…
Private.
I share my deeper thoughts here of course, and in my stories, but only under the veil of a pseudonym. As an audience you are equally anonymous and unseen. We are ships that pass in the night, and will never meet. I could be anyone. You might have passed me on the M61 this morning, or stood beside me in the chippey queue last night, but you’ll never know me. I’ve grown up this way, no one really knowing me. It used to make me feel strange, isolated, alien, but now, in the September of my life, I realise I prefer it.
I speculate a lot on things that are probably beyond my intellect. I dream too, and write a lot, but I fear those who know me will only take the piss, and pick up on my typos, so no one who knows me knows what I write, or even that I write, let alone that I write as Michael Graeme. I seem to find my balance in it, but still, sometimes I pause, like now, and ask: is it healthy, such a secret life?
Online social media encourages us to open up more of our lives, our thoughts, our indiscretions, even our downright stupidity to the scrutiny of others. But to one possessed of such a private, introspective nature, openness of this degree borders on obscenity.
Private. Why?
There’s a dignity in it, I suppose. Old fashioned word – dignity – and misunderstood. Some think it’s about putting on a show, walking around with a stick up your arse, but it’s not – quite the opposite. It’s about not putting on a show at all.
I suppose it’s a wonder I’ve been married as long as I have – 25 years next year – for to hear myself speak I would surely be better living alone, but the present Lady Graeme seems understanding, and is anyway possessed of her own quiet dignity, so we see eye to eye most of the time. But I sometimes wonder what it would be like to out myself – to live as Michael Graeme and say the things I say here, express my thoughts, my most capricious desires,…
In the open,…
I’ve made speculative forays in this direction, around the dinner table, but I find eyes glaze over and yawns are stifled. Others cut in with irrelevant asides, and then I hear the sound of my own voice, so I shut up. Better to leave the pontificating to Michael Graeme, and to you dear anonymous reader, as my patient listener, the pair of you preventing my whole self – the whole ambivalent bag of me – from going slowly mad.
Life is never simple; personas do not always complement one another – indeed they must by nature be contrasting. But fortunately, both this self and all my others seem at least capable of cooperating, so there’s a good chance I may yet survive my life.
I’m reminded of Stanley Kubrick’s final movie “Eye’s Wide Shut”, a tale of destructive sexual fantasy containing more full frontal female nudity than I think I’ve ever seen in any Holywood movie. To paraphrase the closing lines, the best we can hope for is that we survive our fantasies. But then so much of life is fantasy – even the bits we think are real – the thoughts we speak out loud, and those we hold closer to ourselves. But it is only through this, our vehicle of fantasy, imperfect though it might be, we can explore the nature of reality. And I suppose I’ve always viewed reality as more of a personal interpretation, than a consensus thing.
In maintaining a veil of privacy then perhaps we’re simply protecting others from our view of the world, a world we sense, rightly or wrongly, may not sit well with others. Are we right then to look to our own privacy? Is there greater integrity in dignity, are we being truer to ourselves? Or is it a deceit? Do we fail utterly to engage with life, when we make ourselves so private, no one even knows we’re there?
Think we all have a secret side. Perceptive people, such as writers, study it more carefully than the average folks.
“Life is not supposed to be fun. It is just something you do and you don’t get to quit”: The Ultimate Law of the Universe, 2nd corollary.
You speak wisely my friend, and your words are very timely right now. Thanks.