On Revealing Through Masks:

One reason that performance anxiety can surround this type of writing is the sheer exposure of it. What makes this forum so exciting--the seemingly boundless reach of the world wide web--is simultaneously terrifying. It is hard to fathom the nature of the "stage" on which we perform.

There may be some relief in the possibility of constructing varying identities for oneself within this virtual reality--for example, by creating multiple blogs, websites, email accounts, and online personas. These might provide a sense of control over one's self-revelation, which could be freeing. While there may be a sense of unease about where one's "genuine" identity lies, perhaps identity, like knowledge, is perpetually under creation and re-creation. (Hence the rich therapeutic potential of the creative arts modalities, in which I am with luck building a career!)

In a recent discussion of my struggles with performance anxiety in both writing and music-making, my music therapy supervisor asked me what was so particularly fearsome about attempting these creative acts. Were my expectations unreasonably high? Would it be so terrible to write some weak or even illogical prose? I assured him that what pains me is an inability, at times, to begin writing or playing at all, rather than unfulfilled grandiose expectations. I could never be accused of aspiring to sound like Dostoevsky or Bach! He replied, only partially in jest, that perhaps I could experiment sometime with adopting the "voice" of Dostoevsky or Bach, which could offer release from crippling self-consciousness and perhaps awaken unforeseen development.

Toward this end, I am inspired by a curious biographical note about Charlotte Bronte in Tony Tanner's introduction to the 1979 Penguin edition of Villette. Bronte's father apparently wrote:

When my children were very young...thinking that they knew more than I had yet discovered, in order to make them speak with less timidity, I deemed that if they were put under a sort of cover I might gain my end; and happening to have a mask in the house, I told them to stand and speak boldly from under cover of the mask.

Tanner observes that "in later life, that mask for Charlotte Bronte became a series of fictional personae--The Professor, Jane Eyre, and Lucy Snowe...; masks which indeed enabled her to 'speak boldly'...while in actual life she was excruciatingly shy." (p. 7)