Hello,
I am a cultural anthropologist and one of my interests is self reflexivity as a tool to understand qualities that enable change in humans. In this blog I wish to share a model I call "the earring effect," a way to reflect on our ever day performance.
A Story...
One morning on October 2005, after a linguistic anthropology class for which I was co-assisting, the other teaching assistant and I walked out of the classroom heading towards the outside of the building. While waiting for the class instructor, who was walking right behind us attending to the crowd of students who gathered around her everyday after class, I noticed that the other assistant was wearing a very pretty pair of earrings. They were rectangular stain glass pieces of art, silver framing tiny colorful triangular pieces. “I like your earrings!” I said, and she immediately reached towards her ears with both hands to find the earrings. At the very moment she touched them I could see her visualize them in her eyes. “Oh! These ones! Yeah, it’s funny because I put earrings on and since I don’t see them I don’t remember which ones I am wearing.”
Before we finished laughing the professor joined us. I summarized for her what just happened. The professor responded “I’m afraid of spiders more than any normal person is. My father-in-law gave me a pair of earrings as a Christmas present some time ago and they are two silver spiders. At the moment I saw them I didn’t react positively but kept them because they were my father-in-law’s present. Later I figured that I could wear them for Halloween and be OK with it because I don’t see them.”
Earrings are my favorite piece of jewelry. But they are a kind of jewelry that I can only see when I buy them, get them out of the box, put them on and when I take them off. If I don’t see them while I’m wearing them, why is it that I like wearing them in the first place?
Imagination seems to play an important role in wearing earrings because at the moment of deciding which earrings you will wear it is all about imagining how you will look with them in combination of your outfit. But this is not something we continuously think about. Once we put them on we forget that we have them on or become unconscious about how they look on us until the moment we look at ourselves in the mirror, touch them, somebody reminds you of them or take them off for the night.
Since I am a performer this train of thought led me to think of performance and the moments when I step on the stage (I put the earrings on), and I get off the stage (I take the earrings off). While on stage however, I don’t see my reflection. On stage I am doing what I am doing, and I take pleasure in performing for the audience who is watching and observing me. I am not actively thinking about how they perceive me, or what I look like from their perspective during the performance. However, there are quick moments in which you become aware of how you appear, not by actually seeing yourself but by imagining how you are seen. Like reaching to your ears to remember what earrings you have on and how they look on you.
A look from an audience member, a word in a song, a commentary from your dance partner, something will trigger your self-consciousness and you suddenly become aware of yourself on stage. Watching yourself perform in a video recoding (where you can also see what earrings you are wearing) does not work because real time and space are far removed, and watching yourself in this context limits imagination, a key aspect for self-reflexive analysis. That awakening moment from being self unconscious to self conscious, by “reaching to touch your ears” or literally reaching into your conscious memory to imagine how you look from the audience’s perspective, is what I call the Earring Effect. This model is useful in thinking of self-awareness on stage, be it an actual performance stage or life as a stage.
I am a cultural anthropologist and one of my interests is self reflexivity as a tool to understand qualities that enable change in humans. In this blog I wish to share a model I call "the earring effect," a way to reflect on our ever day performance.
A Story...
One morning on October 2005, after a linguistic anthropology class for which I was co-assisting, the other teaching assistant and I walked out of the classroom heading towards the outside of the building. While waiting for the class instructor, who was walking right behind us attending to the crowd of students who gathered around her everyday after class, I noticed that the other assistant was wearing a very pretty pair of earrings. They were rectangular stain glass pieces of art, silver framing tiny colorful triangular pieces. “I like your earrings!” I said, and she immediately reached towards her ears with both hands to find the earrings. At the very moment she touched them I could see her visualize them in her eyes. “Oh! These ones! Yeah, it’s funny because I put earrings on and since I don’t see them I don’t remember which ones I am wearing.”
Before we finished laughing the professor joined us. I summarized for her what just happened. The professor responded “I’m afraid of spiders more than any normal person is. My father-in-law gave me a pair of earrings as a Christmas present some time ago and they are two silver spiders. At the moment I saw them I didn’t react positively but kept them because they were my father-in-law’s present. Later I figured that I could wear them for Halloween and be OK with it because I don’t see them.”
Earrings are my favorite piece of jewelry. But they are a kind of jewelry that I can only see when I buy them, get them out of the box, put them on and when I take them off. If I don’t see them while I’m wearing them, why is it that I like wearing them in the first place?
Imagination seems to play an important role in wearing earrings because at the moment of deciding which earrings you will wear it is all about imagining how you will look with them in combination of your outfit. But this is not something we continuously think about. Once we put them on we forget that we have them on or become unconscious about how they look on us until the moment we look at ourselves in the mirror, touch them, somebody reminds you of them or take them off for the night.
Since I am a performer this train of thought led me to think of performance and the moments when I step on the stage (I put the earrings on), and I get off the stage (I take the earrings off). While on stage however, I don’t see my reflection. On stage I am doing what I am doing, and I take pleasure in performing for the audience who is watching and observing me. I am not actively thinking about how they perceive me, or what I look like from their perspective during the performance. However, there are quick moments in which you become aware of how you appear, not by actually seeing yourself but by imagining how you are seen. Like reaching to your ears to remember what earrings you have on and how they look on you.
A look from an audience member, a word in a song, a commentary from your dance partner, something will trigger your self-consciousness and you suddenly become aware of yourself on stage. Watching yourself perform in a video recoding (where you can also see what earrings you are wearing) does not work because real time and space are far removed, and watching yourself in this context limits imagination, a key aspect for self-reflexive analysis. That awakening moment from being self unconscious to self conscious, by “reaching to touch your ears” or literally reaching into your conscious memory to imagine how you look from the audience’s perspective, is what I call the Earring Effect. This model is useful in thinking of self-awareness on stage, be it an actual performance stage or life as a stage.
