“Doubles” or “I’d much rather watch the people watching Kircher’s production”

There wasn’t much reading this week, not that I’m complaining. Poe’s story was strange, and I kinda feel coerced into making the connection between the narrator and the man of the crowd. First, I do give myself credit that I might’ve seen the connection between the sickly observer of human condition (what a neat-and-tidy title) and the man of the crowd who is almost mindless and void of personality due to his affliction of being unable to be alone. But I don’t know that I would, without the directed reading of the story due to the topic of the week, have made the whole “doppelganger” connection between the two. Yes, possibly I might’ve some how meandered toward the conclusion that the sickly narrator was in fact coming to grips with the idea that he himself had the “great misfortune of not being able to be alone”. But knowing that I didn’t know that a predominant trait of dopplegangaresque writing is that “these alters relate to your innermost, secret self, and act epiphanically to unveil you to the world – and to yourself” well…my faith in my brain kinda ends there.

After reading Warner and accumulating the knowledge contrary to my previous belief of doppelgangers, specifically the notion that “It [the doppelganger] can mean [be] a lookalike who is a false twin, or, more commonly, someone who does not resemble oneself outwardly but embodies some inner truth.” To further drive the point home if I read the Poe story through that lens it’s more than a strange story, it’s kind of creepy.

Unnerving? Check. Creepy? Check.

Why is it creepy? I guess this is where I get into specifics.

I'm a writer. When I read I read greedily. A) I look for what I can steal and B) I look for what I can learn, which are kinda the same thing, but not really. When reading Poe’s story or any story for that matter, I tend to put myself in the position of the protagonist. I want to know what it is that I can learn from this characters experience. What do I learn from the sickly observer?

That which I see in others that sickens might only be a reflection of myself.

OOOOOOOOOOO… that is creepy. Aside: I wonder if this shows something about me, something that can be interpreted through some kind of blogology, some kind of forerunner of graphology?

While I was reading the first bit of the Warner I started to think, “gee, this doppelganger/doubling stuff can’t all be bad… I can see how it could be goo—oh, there it is.” Warner wrote, “the double also solicits hopes and dreams for yourself, of a possible becoming different while remaining the same person, of escaping the bounds of self, of aspiring to the polymorphous perversity of infants…” Yeaaaaaaaaa… what he said. I started thinking about how better off a person would be with this revelation of kind of deep-rooted problem, condition or affliction, but I guess it could’ve been said better. And was.

I think I need to back it up a bit. What exactly are we talking about this week? We’re talking about doubles, doppelgangers, the possibility of the other “us” revealing something. We’re talking about Representation (as always) and the effect of it. If we’re looking at doppelgangers as a mirror of our true self, then what are we looking at? If we’re talking about the possibility of other realities, what are we talking about? All of these subjects were touched upon in Warner’s essay and I have a problem with them. The problem is that I can’t seem to resolve the connection between parallel worlds and doppelgangers/doubles. I can see that there is a connection, but I can seem to cross that synaptic gap.

Ummm… yea.

This is me throwing cohesive blogging to the wind. *throw*