Many years ago I was giving an English Language class to adults in Paris and a woman who had been in the class came up to me at the end of the class and asked my date and time and location of birth. I thought nothing of it. The next week she was back in the class and gave me a cassette. It was my astrological theme analysis. I am Capricorn with Venus in Scorpio. I listened to it at home and, although I obviously did not believe in the objective truth of astrological claims, I found it revealing. The mere fact of having interpretations of my character offered to me caused me to think again. It said I was a difficult character. Was I a difficult character? It had never occurred to me. I thought about it. I looked at my recent experiences. Well, maybe I was.
It is so hard to look at yourself. We tend to do it through the filters of fiction where you follow another character and judge him or her and so, in an oblique kind of way, see yourself. What would I do in those circumstances? Art, of all varieties, is this medium to circumnavigate the self. It also happens when you take stock of material in which you figure; old photos; old letters. When I look at all the pieces I have written in peoplearerubbish, it reacquaints me with my full self, not just the partial synchronic version I am lugging around in the workaday world. Anything that gives you a lens to look at the self is useful, even if the actual material it might offer you is nonsense. As so often, it is the process that you use that creates the illumination; the conclusion they offer you is mostly drivel.
peoplearerubbish 