Mimesis, Smoking Jackets, and the Dusty Smell of Erudition

I saw photographs of a man whose acquaintance I've held for some years now. He posed before a fireplace with a carefully stoic expression and a pipe, a sweater, and other smoking-room accoutrements. I've watched this carefully guided transformation of his somewhat casually for quite a few years now, and the meticulous grooming of the aura and persona struck me full force tonight.

It's not that I hadn't noticed before. The previous awareness is what has led to the possibility of my being so conscious of the creation of this guise or image. But something about this more recent picture struck me acutely as does a slow, laborious change after years once one has achieved some distance and then looked back.

One element that helped catch my attention was the responses of others toward this man's photo. Of course they expressed some sentiments of its being so captivating, so brooding or erudite--so positively literary or something. I'm playing it fast and loose here about their responses because it wasn't so much the specific content of their feedback that drew my thoughts but rather the overall impression that the appearance and posture were clearly designed to produce in the observer. And the fact that I had an intimate enough knowledge of this person's life to understand just what the process has been made this situation all the more clear.

I thought to myself, now all the observers will see him as a certain way, and that is what he wanted before and still clearly wants (at least on some level). The funny thing is that the aesthetic and impression, the apparent identity, has been purposefully and carefully cultivated to reflect that very sense. "He looks so much like a professor," an observer might offer. True enough. He does.

But the (further) funny thing is that he specifically observed certain personages, like professors and poets, and crafted his own appearance and sensibilities with their auras and aesthetics (yes, with their fashions) in mind. It's a re-projection of what they themselves, usually, picked up from others with whom they had a similar relationship. (A character in a novel once mused that magicians love to cultivate the cartoonish trappings of their archetypes, and it's true; we do.)

I don't think there's anything wrong with this. I have long detected certain elements of this mimetic and conscious cultivation in myself and my own personality and psyche--which neither condemns nor justifies the behavior, though it does help me to understand when I see it in others. And when I see it in others, it helps me understand what I see in myself. The result is both to eliminate and excise rotten places in myself like cutting out bruises in fruit, as well as to give more purposeful attention to parts of myself that need to be actively, consciously cultivated.

This includes mimesis. Actively working to shape myself into certain patterns that I recognize as good, right, and most high. And while I'm comfortable enough with my beard and with standing in impressive places with an erudite manner while looking like a disaffected Ivy Leaguer who escaped his banal campus for the soul-revealing haven of an Irish tavern, that's simply not sufficient for my highest form of becoming.