Friday, January 25, 2008
chemelion
i guess this is what you are if you change often. i alter my path artistically depending on who i'm around sometimes. i even will start talking like someone if i spend enough time with them. i wonder if this is a common thing. do other people/artists/animals do this? i feel like its an ingrained part of my personality now. i feel like i learn by imitating and then finding new sources. when some of my hippie friends ask me this question about whether i most associate myself with water, land or sky, i always answer water. i like the notions behind that element. i like that its flexible most of all.
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4 comments:
Hey Shelby, I have this same quality, at the very least in the sense of talking like people. I spent a lot of time wondering when I was younger if this meant that I didn't have an identity of my own? Right about the time I decided to embrace this as something that was just the way I was, with no meaning attached, I read a magazine article with an "expert" in something like how to succeed as a professional that (I think he was a psychologist,psychiatrist or sociologist by training and past experience) the more you can "mimic peoples voice patterns and body language, the more "successful" you will be. I was at first appalled to read this, what?! Was I trying to manipulate people unbeknownts to me? But then I realized that people like this guy are looking for what some people do naturally and trying to make it into a "teachable" system for others, so that everyone can "profit". Sorry about all the quotation marks, but it is hard to write this quickly with out indicating my skepticism in some kind of short hand. Basically my bottom line came to, this guy may not have a clue what he is talking about, but the reason he thinks this quality can be used for profit is that it makes other people feel comfortable. So whether it is a hippy water identity, or a Tony Robinson how to succeed powerfully, context that other people put it into, it seems to me that for some of us it is just how we are, and if it does serve to put people at ease that is great, and I submit that if this thesis is true this quality gains us much in that if people are more at ease, they share more with us and we learn more from them because of it. I'm probably rambling a bit here, I haven't turned this into a question. I guess really I am asking if my experience with/thinking about this topic (I'm about to make up a word...drum roll please...) Chemeleonesqueness! is in anyway similar to your own?
i think this kind of maleability is totally good for us in the long run. i certainly hope it is a skill i can continue to improve upon because putting people at ease in the end benefits me. sure its good for them but i don't have to deal with as much bull shit. and maybe one day i can profit from it. i'll sell used cars. not really. actually that seems like the gross manipulative side. i think folks can tell if you are "acting" and the real thing that gets you in with people is empathy. i think you can learn that better by having a real open mind and an insatiable curiosity.
i enjoy it when something a friend ususally says or does comes out through you. i stop myself and say, "oh i just did a ...." and it usually makes me laugh. i don't know what that means, but maybe it is a way for us to feel connected with the community around us.
your whittled people seem to harness your friends "look." i don't necessarily mean their likeness but more of a particular way they might always stand or how their body might react to a smile. it might be more apparent because i am familiar with some of the real people. are you going to have pictures with these or are you thinking on having them on their own?
hi, yes I agree that people can sense both sincerity and falseness. On Harrell's website in the writing section there is a piece called something like "towards a more tender..." Anyhow in it he writes that people have asked him how he manages to get strangers to engage in his projects. You should read it as I will paraphrase badly, but part of the answer is that he is genuinely interested in them, people love to be listened too, and only a genuine interest will work.
And Rebecca your example of "channeling" people close to you seems to back up this idea of empathy.
As Rebecca points out your carvings of your friends demonstrate a genuine attention paid to each person specifically. This makes me think of another question, if we take Harrell's idea of genuine listening as a starting point; do we only listen with our ears, is empathetic listening even achieved primarily through the ears? I think you touch on this question a little when you say that openness and curiosity are vital components, but I wonder, are their other vital components that we might think about in terms of empathy? Also can one be truly empathetic with out some sort of reciprocity? I mean, can one just listen and be empathetic, or does it require the listener to offer something back to the speaker?
I don't think that makes sense yet, let me try this. Can we truly empathize with a character in a book or a movie, or is true empathy inside a completed circuit? Does empathy look like an oval, or an arrow?
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