Masks

 Masks 

“When you look at me, what do you see? What are you looking for?” I asked Dr. Feight this morning.

     “I’m listening more than I’m looking, actually,” he said.

     “What do you hear, then? What are you listening for?”

     “Different things at different times.”

     “Do you sense I’m putting on different voices?” I said.

     “Not intentionally.” He paused. “Are you? . . . Intentionally?”

     “I hadn’t thought so,” I shrugged.

     “Why this line of conversation?” he asked.

Zombo face mask, pre-1917

Roz and I had gone to Richmond to see an exhibition of African masks, I told him. And every one was different from every other one. Even those of the same pattern, carved of the same wood with the same tools, painted with the same dyes were different from one another, as if there was an honesty in the wood the carver couldn’t cut away or around, that the dyer couldn’t cover over with paint.

     The masks looked to me the way we would look if we looked the way we felt, never quite symmetrical, always pulled somewhat askew. One eye slightly larger than the other or the other slightly nearer our nose than the one: then, the world is not symmetrical either because we see differently from the different eyes. One ear protruding more than the other or the other flatter to the head than the one, so that the music of the spheres is never regular either because we are hearing it differently through the different ears. Our sense of smell is sideways, too, because one nostril is wider than the other, the other nostril is more nervous than the one.

“I had always thought of masks as disguises,” I told Dr. Feight, “but maybe they are more the way we really look.”

02.18.19

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 * For more about Dr. Feight and me with links to all “our” posts, click here.