I am a misrecogoniser of people, I realise. I misrecognised a woman in the park today and only recognised her because of her dog. I misrecognised an old friend in the supermarket the other week because he was wearing glasses. A couple of years ago I misrecognised someone I hadn’t seen for thirty years because she too was wearing glasses. She hadn’t changed but my focus was again on the glasses. Glasses clearly fox me. I am fooled like the audience of some primitive play when a baddie puts on a different hat and becomes, in a convention upheld by the audience, unrecognisable, or when a Shakespearean Viola or Rosalind ties her hair up and immediately becomes a boy. But, like these theatrical conventions, am I willingly suspending my disbelief about people? Because these were people, in every case, that I might not want to see, people where my conception of them has become too complicated. My unconscious is telling me that I don’t want to recognise them. I don’t know what I think of them.
Last week I saw my brother on an underground train. We were in the same packed train and I saw him across a crowded carriage, his face constricted within a hood. I pointed at him and he seemed to look at me, but he made no sign of recognition. I picked my way through the carriage, still pointing at him. When I got up to him his face remained inexpressive. He looked at me puzzled, not knowing who I was. It was like in a dream. It was only when I smiled slightly that he saw who I was. What are you doing on this train? he said. As though I had no right to be there. I’m on my way home from work, I said. It was a banal enough explanation. Along with thousands of other people, I could have added. But he seemed unconvinced and was still looking at me with that air of an aggrieved viewer of some disreputable sleight of hand. He is looking at me like I did with those glasses people. He has got to that stage where he does not know what to think of me.
peoplearerubbish 