Lock Down

I sometimes wonder about the sagacity of being an open person. My problem is that the curve of my life had been largely silted by secrets up until a short time ago, so when I finally emerged blinking into the sunlight (please excuse the cliché), I probably went too far the other way. This has resulted in too many people knowing too much about me – and subsequently believing that they are qualified to hold opinions about me and to make judgements about me - when really it’s none of their damned business.

It’s all my fault of course – I’ve been too generous with information about myself, and certainly far too generous with my time and money, and this has given people the idea that I’m an easy target for abuse and other acts of near recidivism; a soft touch perhaps. I’d have said before now that I’m as tough as old boots (another cliché – gosh, this is bad writing isn’t it?), but recent events have hurt me. I don’t know what people see when they look at Richard Pilgrim, but my guess is that they see a palpable fool with no sensitivity and even less dignity. Where there’s no sense, there’s no feeling (and that’s not a cliché, it’s an adage).

I am booked to perform in a Pecha Kucha event tomorrow evening. This is a show where individuals are given six minutes and forty seconds to present the essence of their lives in a series of overhead slides with a commentary. The presentation is meant to say everything about ourselves: Who are we? Why are we? Where have we come from? Where are we going? It is not intended that anyone should take themselves too seriously in this, and any attempt to use the event as humorless self-promotion will result in a ‘yellow card’. I’ve seen these events before – people are staging them world-wide - and they’re fun.

However, my problem now is that by presenting my life story in the light-hearted way I was planning to, I will be willfully exposing myself to further ridicule from people who think that my generally open demeanour gives them free licence to sneer and scoff at me. Right now, I’m hardly of the disposition to deal with this, so I’m tempted to contact the organizers and withdraw.

What I ought to be doing instead, is closing myself down to the rest of my so-called fellow humans and turning my life into a sort of mobius curve – one where the real surface of my personality becomes slightly difficult to fathom and where the fragilities of my heart become locked inside an internal circle. I need to behave with more dignity in future, and I need to stop being so generous with myself – then at least I won’t get continually slapped in the face by others who use my generosity only to debase me in order to boost their own (already bloated) egos.

Now I know exactly how Greta Garbo felt. But it’s good; it’s positive.