Sunday, September 03, 2006

Try this on.

"I figured out how to hang on as long as I want. It's all a matter of making friends with the Malkovich body: rather than thinking of it as an enemy that has to be pounded into submission, I've begun imagining it as a really expensive suit that I enjoy wearing." -Being John Malkovich

My impetus for posting is the discovery of another framework that helps. The words encapsulate the experience of disidentification (mine have been more or less happenchance) in a way powerful enough, for me, to recall it.

4 comments:

Bob said...

I like the Malkovich quote but can't understand your point.

anonymous julie said...

"Say it again, but use more words," right?

The suit thing is a paradigm that is useful, to me, in disassociating from percieved immediate conditions and attending to the experience of what's actually (apparently) going on around me. The suggestion implicit in the title is that it might be a useful exercise to anybody else.

Does that help?

Jon said...

Yes. The last few days, I've been thinking about how to particpate in a virtual reality environment, you need to put on a suit of gloves and a helmet to "see," "touch," and "hear" the imaginary world.

It's almost funny that most people don't see that in a similar way, they put on a suit (known as the "birthday suit") to allow sensory interaction with this imaginary world.

anonymous julie said...

That is kind of ironic, isn't it!