Negotiating Double Lives
Most people divide their time into public and private lives,
the one often fiercely guarded from the other. The public self is how people
act in the presence of others. The private self is how a person sees himself or
herself. Public lives are open to observation by society at large, whereas
information about private lives is controlled by the person, who can choose
what to share and what to consider an invasion of privacy.
People who are in public office are legally obligated to act
in the interests of the people they represent, while a person enhancing their
own interests are said to be acting privately. Scandals erupt when those
holding public office use privileges for private gain.
Totalitarian governments achieve public control by reducing
the private space. Today electronic
surveillance, and the use of algorithms by marketing to gather information
about the habits of people are so extensive that many have given up control
over their privacy. Ironically, the current restrictions imposed on social
media in Pakistan, may control internet freedom, but also deprives the
government of data collection of users. Many monetise their own private lives
by sharing podcasts, or by reporters who follow the lives of famous or infamous
personalities.
Private lives can also be propelled into the public sphere with
newsworthy events, such as heroic rescues by ordinary citizens, the discovery
of a secret serial killer, or the revealing of very personal details during divorce
or custody court cases.
People may choose to reveal their private lives by writing
autobiographies or painting self-portraits. Art by its nature of tapping into personal
emotion and communicating it through creative expression makes a natural bridge
between the private self and the public sphere.
While today many creative professionals have formally
trained in art, theatre or music schools, or, as in the past, by apprenticing
to a master, there have been many artists who kept their creative work a
secret.
Marcel Duchamp had been secretly working on an artwork Étant
Donnés for 20 years, while the public believed he had given up art and
focused on chess. The artist’s legacy was to make the work public after his
death.
Ron Gittin painted and sculpted every surface, wall and
ceiling of his flat in England for over 33 years, discovered only after his
death at 80 years of age.
US prisoner, Jesse
Krimes, secretly created epic works of art using materials available
to him in prison, smuggling the pieces out one-by-one through the prison
mail room. Apokaluptein:16389067 is a mural made up of 39 prison
bedsheets constructed over three years. It was his way of disconnecting from imprisonment.
James Hampton worked as a janitor and over 14 years, secretly
built a large assemblage of religious art from scavenged materials in a rented
garage. Retired Australian country maths teacher, Robert
Martiensen, created 7000 artworks in secret over 20 years.
Craft is generally a private activity, taking place within
the home and in the context of other domestic chores and responsibilities. The postal
project “Feministo” began a movement for women to exchange artworks through the
post across UK.
Art curators are increasingly taking an interest in what
they call Secret Artists. These may be ordinary people or discoveries of art
works by public figures such as Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, and General
Franciso Franco.
Art produced secretly creates a space to make bad paintings
without fear of judgement, to leave projects half-finished without a sense of
failure. Society is filled with people with beautiful voices, poets, people
with calligraphic handwriting, an eye for decorating their homes, making
exquisite embroidery - people who let art enrich their lives.
Sometimes the private passion replaces the public
identity. Novelists Franz Kafka and
Charles Dickens both worked as legal clerks. The poet T S Eliot was a banker.
Writer Qudratullah Shahab, poets Mustafa Zaidi and Perveen Shakir, and artist
Hanif Ramay were civil servants. Poet William Carlos Williams worked as a paediatrician.
Novelist Kurt Vonnegut managed a Saab dealership. Composer Philip Glass drove a
cab and did odd jobs as a plumber or electrician. Writers Syed Zameer Jafri and Brigadier Siddique Salik
are more likely to be discussed in literary circles than armed forces
gatherings.
Leading double
lives usually has a negative connotation, with snoopers looking to dismantle
the reputation of people. However, leading a double life can be
self-fulfilling, avoiding the trap of being defined solely by a day job. In the
film ‘Shall we Dance’, Richard Gere‘s character, a lawyer, secretly joins
ballroom dancing classes. When his wife discovers his passion, she says ‘Your
life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness.’
Durriya Kazi
August 25, 2024
Karachi
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