Here is the pdf link: http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/themask.pdf.
I feel so good! Last weekend, I purchased a set of damaged masks from a yardsale off of Mission Drive (in support of some girls going to Norway for a soccer tour) and the following week I drove home--and suddenly (ironically right after an uninspiring dental consultation), after three years of desiring to write a decent poem about "the mask," a song starts cranking out of me... and VERY FAST! Oh my gosh! My dream song on the mask, has come through! Key words are mask and "discrepancy" aha. Wow. It might be modified in the future, but this is the first "Mask" poem I am pleased with. I told Oscar Flores I wanted to do a filmed monologue about the "Mask" and it ended up that I'm singing. Well, it's part song, part monologue-ish.
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I just had an extensive conversation with Hector at Starbucks (I think I am frappuccinoed out. I had three fraps in the month of April!) and he told me about a book by Irving "Something" on Representations of Self in Everyday Life, written in the 1960s. It is about the struggle of individual identity in a portrayal of self to one's self, versus one's family, one's known community, and society in general. They are usually very different faces. I told him about the poem "The Mask" and informed him that the source of inspiration was a dichotomous experience in my 8th grade art class, which was essentially a very polite, overly nice, quiet girl constructing a horrifically beautiful barbaric, dark, cannibalistic mask. And which face was true? At that time, I was a very dichotomous creature--I was a suppressed, stifled, chaotic barbaric mask within the shell of this goodie-two-shoes-feet-kissing student (surrounded by other rotten 13-year-old low-lifes, being 13 is being low-life by default!). Both extremely divergent characters existed and the suppression built and accumulated over the years into high school such that I was carrying a heavy metal ball in my chest. It all snapped when I found out I was a valedictorian "stick" figure in the mirror. Then the mask and the polite character started to reveal itself (rather than just the polite character), as I suffered through bipolar bouts for more than a year, until finally my identity slowly started to weave into one coordinated (and much calmer) whole as I entered the College of Creative Studies at UC Santa Barbara. My unique identity was incorporated into the traditional-cow-herding educational system along with the guidance of a few kind, caring professors. My individual identity became my familial and societal identity, and visa versa. CCS saved my life and health in more ways than one: all in the name of institutionalizing individual intellectual identity!
It's been over a year since I have come to revisit this poem. "The Mask" in it's current state is a bit drawn out. There are a few gem lines in it, but I can tell this poem was "Pre Barry Spacks," and that I was trying to cram too much information into one poem/song. I remember first crossing the 91 freeway bridge when crafting this poem. Back in the old regime days of Txriel. Turbulent times.
Who's consistent nowadays anyway? Look at the Biologically Incorrect Blog poem "The Dent." Who says what they mean? Mean what they say? Say what they do? Do what they say? Who's someone completely aligned with their emotions, thoughts, actions, evoked universe? No one... not even Obama.
Poor guy, but he's got a truthful mind and heart, that's fo'shizzle.
I was born with the mask inside me. It started becoming more apparent around ages 11 and 12. And then it clearly manifested itself at age 13. The primary question from the outsider is "How can a very polite, quiet girl create such a beautifully hideous, terrifying (terrible beauty) mask?" And hence became the still-more-conscious-yet-subconscious-battle between the identification of my inner universe, versus the outer universe, the outer self I portrayed. The inner world was locked up for so many years, malnourished, not expressed.... until it ate me alive. The mask is still inside me... this discrepancy between the inner universe and the outer universe... but I always have to address the mask, I will always have to express it, independent of audience response or need, it's a dragon, it needs venting, release, because if I don't... as I very well know... the mask will consume me alive.
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