Of Masks & Men

Yesterday the kiln was opened after this week's firing. My kids had been home the past couple weeks and something we all did was make masks. Our walls are slowly filling up with them.

Masks have been a long part of human history. Witch doctors and warriors wear masks. Actors in Greek tragedies wore masks. It seems like there are several Woody Allen films incorporating Greek tragedians absurdly placed into a modern context, something like Michael Palin's Spanish Inquisition interlopers.

I recall a scene in R. M. Rilke's Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge involving a mask. The story was Rilke's single novel, somewhat of a lament on the significance of life, death and the quest for authentic individuality. The writing is often impressionistic. The scene I recall, somewhat hazily, is of the main character trying to decide which face to put on in the morning, as if faces themselves are masks. His real face, if I remember accurately, had a hole in it.

We all know something of masks, which can be used to both reveal and conceal identities. When there is a great pain in our hearts, a cheerful mask is convenient lest too many people get too nosy, asking too many questions and picking at the scabs which you hope will soon heal. Clowns put on faces to project an impression that may be at great odds with the clown within.

"I heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley," Dylan sang in Hard Rain's Gonna Fall.

Masks are all the rage at masquerade balls, as well. I remember a Halloween party in Athens when I was in college in which my face was concealed neath a white sheet with the eyes cut out, more like the scarecrow on Wizard of Oz than a KKK style of hood. As the evening wore on, many people wondered who I was. The clue was a piece of curved rib in my hand, which I later used while beating percussions during the music we made late into the night. Only Netty connected the clue to my identity, with an eye twinkle that indicated she was not going to spoil it by telling the others where that guy in the mask had gone.

What I remember from the experience are several things. First, when we wear masks that conceal our identity, it makes people curious. Who are you? It becomes a game. In the Batman story, one ongoing theme was the perpetual curiosity regarding his true identity. Second, this concealment also gave the masked person power. Self-revelation was the masked one's perogative. Third, and also important, the mask left me alienated as well. I wanted to show people who I was. I wanted to reveal myself... and the mask left me separated. Our own masks do the same when we project something other than who we are.

Perhaps this is one of the problems with masks. And the more our mask-face it at odds with our real selves, the more alone and alienated we feel. The mask might bring us momentary attention, but there is no heart communion. To kiss, to touch, to embrace... masks and robes must be discarded.

TO BEST ENJOY THE MASKS, CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE