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The Face of Another

*Guest Contributor

I just watched an amazing film by the most under-rated director of all time, Hiroshi Teshigahara. The title of the movie is, “The Face of Another”. It’s the story about a man who loses his face in a horrible industrial accident, and he replaces it with another detachable face. He ends up living a double life. The protagonist undergoes an extreme case of identity crises, and it comes to a point where his mask takes over his normal self.

The film is packed with endless metaphors of the masks that we all wear. It got me thinking about our sense of identity and the masks we wear everyday, whether it be at our jobs, or the ones we put on in our relationships with others. The masks we wear when we’re riding the subway, or the masks that we’re expected to wear deemed proper by society. It began to hit me that the entire world is a mask. Buddha once said that all of life is an illusion. I firmly believe in this statement, that life really is just a dream. I guess my take on it is a bit more cynical, but then again, you have to be a little cynical in society unless you want to have the veil constantly pulled over your face.

It’s not until we’re drinking with our friends or co-workers that we’re able to put our masks aside- allowing us to act like our normal inner selves. The interesting thing is that even our drinking personaes are masks as well. Society says that we can’t act a certain way unless we’re drunk or high or whatever. And then the next morning when we see our co-workers or friends, we just end up saying, “oh, I was just trashed”, to excuse the behavior. That’s actually how many complexes are born. Repressed facets of our own nature.

I think that’s why I love backpacking so much. Because I’m not tied down to any regimented schedule that reinforces my typical identity. I can lose myself completely. I can wake up and sleep at anytime that I want. Eat, drink, and walk whenever I feel, and time begins to fade away. My course becomes completely open to basically doing anything at anytime, because there are no expectations lurking over my shoulder. The entire calendar starts to become irrelevant, except for the day when you have to snap out of the spell and go back home. I usually always listen to different types of music as well, because all the other songs in my iPod remind me too much of who I am- or who I’m supposed to be. The songs are too deeply rooted in my former situation and environment.

And then you have the different smells, spicy foods, scents in the air, traditional culture, and different faces and language of the other country. It’s pure bliss. The 5,000 lb mask is completely thrown off and a new identity is formed, (at least for the time being). Hell- you can even change your name when you’re traveling. ;)

FLAT-BLACK

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This entry was written by flat-black and posted on December 18, 2007 at 3:44 am and filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment(Latest is displayed first) or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

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4 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

  1. What a great post, I have been thinking about it all day, what you were saying about the sounds you listen to. I often wonder why I seem so steeped, so entrenched in the past, in my own personal history, in decisions I made, roads I took and it is probably partly because I listen to music that takes me back 20 years( and some !) and then I get lost in who I was then.

    I guess it all comes down to being in the moment and accepting the who you are of that moment as we are always so wide open to possibility.

    One of the great things I always found about travelling was the possibility of the day before me, who knew where I would end up, what I would do, who I might meet…

    Thanks for the food for thought.

    1. Catriona on December 21st, 2007 at 9:21 pm

  2. Thanks a lot Catriona,
    Glad you liked the posting.
    Another funny thing about the new music that I listen to while traveling usually only makes sense when I’m traveling. When I return to my country, the newly acquired music doesn’t seem to fit the old environment, and then I usually end up getting back into the same music that I was listening to before I left on my adventure. I guess the old structure begins to reclaim it’s old mold once again. Although, I’m sure that if I transposed the existing structure of my current environment, my music would probably change again as well.

    2. flat-black on December 24th, 2007 at 5:52 am

  3. flat-black: Very nice. I couldn’t agree more about people allowing peer and societal pressures to mold them into a shadow of their true selves. Keepin’ it real is no small undertaking. In fact, I find I need to check myself–in the “befo’ you wreck yo’self” sense–at regular intervals or else I get lost in the all the commotion and trite comparisons. So true that traveling, especially alone, is the cure-all to mental ailments. Sounds cheesy, but you def have to lose yourself in a new environment to find yourself again. A few people get that, but most don’t. They’re too caught up in their trivial routines to see who they’ve become and what might actually make them happy.

    I don’t usually listen to music when I’m traveling, except for live performances, I guess because I want to hear all the new sounds around me. With all the time in transit and chilling out in cool new places, I tend to read voraciously, though, and I always end up forming some very strong connections between the new world around me and the message of the author I am reading. I’m a huge fan of Sci-Fi and philosophically heavy fiction when I am traveling.

    3. Steven Nishida on December 24th, 2007 at 7:47 pm

  4. Hey Steven,
    That’s great that you don’t usually listen to music when you’re traveling. The new sounds around you are definitely music in themselves.

    I like what you said about the connection you form with the new world and the message of the author you’re reading- same here. I’m also a heavy reader when traveling, and the perfect book usually ends up falling into my lap. The last time I left NYC, I ventured out to Mexico, and picked up Cormac McCarthy’s latest book, “The Road”. It was the perfect book for me at the time, ’cause I was traveling alone in a very trying mind-state. I bought a ticket to Mexico about 10 hours before leaving, and really needed some strong inspiration to help boost me up in a country that I’ve never been before. Not to mention, the much rawer conditions. I ended up taking a lot more risks than I usually do, and it ended up being one amazing trip.

    4. flat-black on December 25th, 2007 at 1:31 am

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