Of beautiful defenses

Silence.

Blissful silence.

Beautiful, blissful silence.

It has always been something I crave. The silence of peace. The solace of solitude. The sense of aloneness when you feel weary of the world--when needs must to place a barrier between yourself and the outside world whenever you tire of it.

Upon the surface, most would be forgiven for thinking that I enjoy the limelight. To a certain point, I would agree that I do enjoy the attention. I would also heartily agree that most audiences are fools. They believe the facade conjured and take it as truth. They insist the public and the private must be one and the same. They demand transparency and take you at your face value that that is all there is to what makes you a unique creature. Nothing is ever as it seems. We all wear masks. We all tell little white lies (Good heavens! You don't look a day above 35, Mrs Wong!) and big black ones (I did not have sexual relations with that woman ... !).

Sometimes the truth is exactly what scares us into such perfidy. Sometimes the truth is boring. Bland. We are sometimes afraid that the truth about us would diminish us in others' eyes. To a person who prides in being known as an Incomparable, Original and Unique this must rankle.

How painful it is to be regarded as--gasp!--common!

Therefore we put on a show. Whether they carry the glitz of Ceasar's Palace or the gritty edge of a Sundance nominee, we perform our little charades. Sometimes the canny viewers will guess at the truth and we abashedly come clean, or we layer another performance--an improv, if you will--on top of it. Before we know it, the smokescreen we had concocted became a point of fact to be appended to us. Our personality, our idiosyncracies--everything!--became a warped image of what we are.

It has now become a guessing game as we all attempt to unmask everyone around us. And it is a beautiful thing to watch. Even as I sit quietly in the far corner of the local coffee shop or a secluded section of a bar--or anywhere for that matter, I smile as I relish the amateur performances before me.

The incompetent boss who covers up her deficiency by obsessing over every trivial minutae. The young father glaring at his wife whilst the recalcitrant child struggles in his hand as he waits patiently for her to finish her shopping--then smiles indulgently at her when she comes out from the store. The backstabbing office bitch trying to cover her misstep with unimaginative small talk. The young man taking a second look at the girl two tables away as his date prattles on about her day. The late evening jogger gorging on food as if it were his last meal. The drunken yuppie enjoying being groped by his gay best friend. The voluntarily oblivious girlfriend who pleads ignorance about her beau's marital status.

Even as I take it all in, I am ever wondering if I am the lone observer here? Mayhap there is someone else lurking in the wings, noting my movements? My smug smirk as I watch other people stumble. Are they near enough to hear my muttered invectives? How would I look to them?

Bitter. Jaded and cynical. Enjoys observing anothers' fall, thinks himself so smart with his snappy comebacks and sarcastic asides. Covers his insecurities with bizarre behaviour--maybe he wasn't hugged enough as a child.

Is that the real me? or just the front that I present?

Is that why I treasure the silence I bind myself in sometimes? That for the few brief minutes, I can just be--without fear of saying the right things, of making other people laugh ... of putting on yet another show.