MEDITATION ON MASKS #3 OF 3

063-70 — Cabin Robbs Meadow

© Hilary F. Marckx, all rights reserved
This is part three of three
from an extract from a manuscript I used
in a class on spirituality and photography
at the Pacific School of Religion,
and the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA

Over-identification with anything—or projection, idealogy, group, activity, or process—weakens potentiality for wholeness of self and endangers identification with humanity. If we set ourselves apart from other lives, we cut ourselves off from all life. Masks create unreality, for if the metaphor, World-as-God’s-Body works, and how we treat one’s body is how we treat the person, then to cut ourself off from a part of the world, is to amputate our self from the organism which gives us life. We do not dare to set ourselves apart from the world.
Once I discussed this with a person who felt there was no problem with making judgements on others. “If I see a nut case,” he said, “I see a nut case, and that is that! My recognizing someone as being a nut case has no bearing on me!” I wonder? Scripture is quite definite about humans wearing the mask of judge. Matthew 7:1 says, “Judge not or else you become as those whom you judge.” Psychologists would call this projection. To understand why we use masks for overprotection when a persona would do just as well, and why other’s masks can upset us so much, it might be well to explore the psychological term projection.
In my discussion of Erich Neumann, I wrote there are be certain parts of one’s unconscious mind that must be repressed for the person to be socialized. This kind of repression is part of the normal process of the mind’s journey to consciousness. There is a downside to this. Our minds also repress things it would be healthy to face—our fear of success or failure, our weak self-images, fear of lack of popularity. Unknown to us at the conscious level, these fears are hidden deep in our unconscious minds and are compensated for by over-achievement, risk-taking, over-assertiveness, or sycophantism. Our built-in mental protection mechanism is afraid of pain, is designed to avoid pain at all costs, so many things we might need to deal with or work on get hidden from our conscious view. When we are faced with these fears in others we react in a way that is out of proportion to the circumstance. I have heard it expressed in this way: we dislike intensely those who reflect to us our hidden fears–the fears our masks are supposed to hide.
Another way our projections trip us is when we project onto another person, or persons, that which we need ourselves at a depth level. I have noticed the following scenario in my own life experience. I will meet someone, male or female, who I see as exciting, or prayerful, or lovely, or very beautiful and I am taken up by their very essence. I want to be near them, learn from them, and I obsess about them. After awhile I find that they might be beautiful, and I was turned to gelatin when they smiled at me, but in reality they were pretty much a dud–boring. It might be I was overwhelmed by someone’s spirituality, and wanted to give myself completely to their holy presence. Later it turns out that while the person prays a lot, they have no sense of loyalty or do not care one whit for other humans.
I hate cute as a category, but we had a little cat which was the world’s cutest cat. We found her starving in the street as a kitten. She had brain damage from lack of nutrition and grew up slowly—very slowly. Her name was William, and we call her Willy, or Willy-yum because she was delicious, or Willie-bee because she buzzed around like a bee, or Little Bird because she chirped like a bird, or Bunny because she had rabbit feet. You get it. Well, Willy never grew up. She was what one might call suffering from developmental potential loss—she as retarded. She was a forever kitten. Cherie said, “she is like fresh strawberries which you have them for a while, and you know that they will not last, so you try to soak up as much of their flavor as you can.” That is how it was with Willy.
Willy was black and white with a pie-bald face that had the appearance of always wishing for something that is just wonderful. She had eyes that looked at me and broke my heart. She acted ferocious. She stole our hearts, and we doted on her. Her meow was more of a bleat than a meow, so we called her our little lamb.
Willy would look at a spot that nobody else could see and would follow it over her head until she fell over backwards. Sometimes Willy would jump at an insect, but miss it by three or four feet. She learned that she could train us to open doors by lying on her back and flashing her tummy at us. She learned that if she cried enough, and if we tried hard enough, we would figure out what she wanted and give it to her. So she cried on the floor beneath a window that had a sunny spot on it until we figured it out and lifted her up. She fell asleep. Willy-yum rarely walked anywhere on her own, she was carried. Someone in the house usually had her tucked on their arm.
I asked myself and Cherie if Willy was real or not. As wonderful as she was, she was only a cat. To this day, Cherie says Willy is an angel sent to teach us about loving. I suspect that Willy was a projection of some deep need we had. Her fur was the softest of any cat I have ever petted, but that is beside the point. I say she was a projection because when she squinted her eyes and blinked, and sniffed the air I seemed to melt inside, and I suspect that she met some repressed need I had to give myself completely to a being that could reciprocate without strings. She slept curled up on my chest or in my armpit at night.
Willy was a safe bet. She only asked me to feed her, to love her, not to yell at her, and to give her everything she wanted as fast as I could. A cat can get by with that, but if she were human it would wear thin in seconds. If she were a child, in nano-seconds. Also, if she were human, I would have been stealing her humanity by not seeing her for the human she was. Her cat-ness was secure with me, and, more importantly, my humanness was secure with Willy. If we were humans, we would destroy each other. As it is, we do not, but I wonder what healing I needed, to be able to give myself as freely to people as I did with that cat. When she was 20 years old, we held her as the vet injected her for her final sleep. Five years later I still grieve deeply.
This is the question for “Meditation on Masks”: what are the masks we wear, and how do we implement them? Photography leads us to meditate long on masks. We see them everywhere. Our lenses seek the masks which in reality are symbols of what is deeply hidden in human’s minds and culture.
Walk around. Think of still water and the deeps beneath its surface—that which lies hidden from our view. This is the material of fearful dreams. What is it we dream, and what in our waking world is reflexive of our nightmares? Think of still water and what is reflected on its surface–that which lies within our view. What are those things we see which bother us? Why? What do they represent to us? As we go about our day, what is it that shocks us? What surprises have been brought to us? It is in shocks and surprises that we get a glimpse of what we repress and hide from ourselves and others.
A shadow on the wall, a rock formation, the pattern left from too many bills posted on a building’s wall, an expression, a dog or cat, simply the seam of a skirt or the hem of pants: these can trigger emotions which lie beneath our minds, and help lift our masks. As we photograph that to which we respond, in a way we photograph ourselves. Go for the big emotive responses—love, hate, terror—but investigate the subtleties as well. A vague sense of disquiet many time needs to be explored. Has your breath ever caught when you thought of something? Why? Can it be photographed?
As you pray through this meditation on masks, keep your camera with you as a companion. Try to photograph whatever it is that you respond to—let nothing get past your sense of being. Think of what you see as a mask, and try to photograph what lies below the mask. Keep looking for yourself reflected in the world around you—beneath the masks. Listen to music. Be aware of images when you feel the music’s rhythms. Look for them later to photograph. Remember, in this meditation on masks we seek a self hidden deeply within ourselves, but reflected by life and lives around us. When we get visions, we photograph them and discover parts of our hidden selves.

MEDITATION ON MASKS # 1 of 3

131-72 — Morning #1

© Hilary F. Marckx, all rights reserved
This is part of one of three
from an extract from a manuscript I used
in a class on spirituality and photography
at the Pacific School of Religion,
and the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA

The purpose of this meditation is to discover the masks around us. What is the protective coloration we use? How do we hide from each other? What devices do we use to fool others into thinking we are other than we really are? How are we fooled by masks? In this meditation on masks the idea is to see through the mask to the real person. Layer by layer we look for our true center—the place behind the mask. To see our own masks, we look at our own reaction to masks in general. We will use the camera to look for the masks of our culture for insights into the masks we use ourselves. Advertisements, billboards, window displays, faces: these can be symbolic of our own masks, and can find clues to that which we would try to hide from others and from ourselves.
What face is it we put on for the world, and how do we know if it is the right face, or just something of the moment to hide behind? How do we know there is a wrong face? How do we know there is a face at all? To understand these questions, the distinctions between masks and personas need to be discussed.
Persona is a Latin word which originally was used to refer to the masks used in classical theater. The actors would use masks to become the character played. Many times the mask was known better than the actor. In a Jungian framework, a persona is that which we use to go about the daily functioning of our lives. I am a husband, lover, grandfather, photographer, theologian, professor, photographer: these are some of my personas. When the personas are used to hide behind, they become masks.
A persona becomes a mask when we begin to use it to gain distance from people and issues. If my persona is part of my identity, and opens my humanity to those around me, I am fine; if my persona becomes my whole identity obscuring my humanity, then something is wrong, out of kilter, and my persona has become a mask.
A mask can be used in many ways, but I will hold to three main usages here. A mask can be used as a power object; when we put on a mask we put on power. A mask can be used as a screen providing anonymity; when we hide behind a mask, like classical actors, people cannot see who we really are. A mask can provide us a facade of constancy; we can use a mask to keep others from observing various emotional changes we are going through. Another way to distinguish between persona and mask is this way: A mask provides distance between us and the real world; we use a persona to enter fully into the real world.
Masks in the primitive world are used to bring home the reality of myths, and the particular mask used has its own creation story which fits within a people’s larger mythic setting. Masks are generally of particular animals and are used by a shaman to turn into, be possessed by, take on a new identity of power. Putting on a mask enables the shaman to give up or to stand aside from the humanity condition, to die to self, and become incarnate spirit. It is the invocation of the power of another within, and the mask-wearer becomes more than the reality of being. The mask wearer also wears a mask so as not to be recognized by spirits. Suet and fat are used on the face as disguise which protects or defends against harmful spirits. It is also understood that the entire costume of a shaman is a mask which transforms the shaman into another being. Sometimes the mask is designed with the ability, through mechanisms of ropes and pullies, to display more than one face—sometimes a second and a third face.
A particular mask in a myth-system is related to other masks in what is termed a transformational relationship. This transformational relationship between masks in a myth-system is akin to the transformational relationship which exists in the making of the masks themselves. This is to say that masks in a sense exegete a myth, or that the mask-wearing shaman is able to, through the power imbued in the mask, open a myth up for further ritualistic understanding. Masks are used as part of rituals, and that usage is to symbolize and therefore bring the reality of the myth home to the participants.
Masks have been used since prehistorical times. They are seen painted on the walls of caves in France, burial masks were used by the Egyptians, and the Greeks used masks in their theater. In the story The Mask of Apollo, historical novelist Mary Renault portrays actors in Greek theater. There an actor might have many parts to play, and a mask for each character. The actor was expected to have enough life experience to change bodily responses enough to fit the parts. The actors were generally men who characterized children, women, young men as well as old men. The troupes were many times small with the actors expected to perform many different roles. The masks helped the actor move smoothly from one part to the next, at times in the same play. The masks also helped the audience know how to better respond to the part played.
According to historian Will Durant, masks were worn for both comedy and tragedy, and the masks were made with a brass mouthpiece which projected and reinforced the voice of the actor. The Greek theaters were large, and visibility and hearing needed to be enhanced, so nuances were traded off to help the viewer. Durant explains that the masks not only enhanced the actor’s voice, but the actor’s height as well through the use of an onkos, or projection on the actor’s head. All in all, masks transformed the actor into another identity which made the real self of the actor unrecognizable.
In choosing the Latin word persona to indicate the many ways one person relates to the world, psychology made a shrewd insight into human behavior and a subtle distinction between healthy and pathological behavior. As I understand the distinction, the persona we use, such as that of father and mother, or profession or trade, is healthy in that it identifies a way we exist in our world. It is unhealthy when the identification goes beyond the identification of a way we function, and becomes who it is that is functioning.