Fame Animals – Alex Knight and Clark Lewis
We organize the fragmented pieces of our psyches into ordered composites that we represent to ourselves and others. Truly, we are many internal pieces of often conflicting viewpoints. We struggle to make sense of how we oscillate between extremes within ourselves. On one hand we are instructed to be seen and not heard, to avoid too much attention, to minimize the potential for jealousy amongst our peers. On the other hand, we are encouraged to express ourselves grandly, to be ourselves, to be identified for who we are. Similarly, we war within ourselves over what others may think of us if they really knew who we are.
We selectively emphasize what is preferable and diminish what is not. We meet others with an expectation that our curated personalities will suffice for authenticity. We are not evil for deceiving others; we are merely surviving a cultural experience that necessitates the neutralizing of extremes, the modification of oneself towards a collective aim while, simultaneously, we are encouraged to shine brightly as an individual: a mindfuck for even the most consciously cultivated among us. The truth is, we need attention and we go about getting attention in ways that are both conscious and unconscious. Our culture dictates for us the values that we are to pursue and cherish: beauty, prestige, money, and the acquisition of externalized power, etc. We often believe that possessing these values will reward us with fame of moderate or grand proportions.
Interestingly, a sole desire for fame is often a shadow of our formative needs for attention, often unmet and still aching in the hearts of us all. Even with good enough parents, many of us failed to receive exactly the kind of attention that we might actually require. We journey through this paradox as we mature into adulthood; it is a cycle of seeking attention, receiving attention, evading attention, and feeling conflicted. Along the way, in the best cases, we discover our own unique domains of needs, and we learn to ask others for their voluntary participation in our attempts at fulfillment. We learn to integrate what happens when we receive what we need and what to do and not do about it in the moments in which we are lacking.
