Yet Untitled 123 - Me comes of age
An essay about two siblings living inside my head
Dearest Yet Untitler,
Something happened with the last instalment. Did you notice?
Here it is again in case you missed it.
I think what happened was that I grazed against what I had been looking for when I first started writing YU - perhaps best described as a voice in the first person which took a step away from documentary towards fiction. Perhaps it was subtle, something that only I perceived - but I found it refreshing to share my thoughts in a tone that, to me, reads more like (do I dare say it?) a novel I’d like to write one day 😱.
As I said, this tone has been my draw all along but, dearest YUer, I’ve been treading cautiously. Last week felt like I was staring my objective in the face. It happens once in a while, but it isn’t consistent.
Now here I am again, being documentary and meta when I’m itching to be fictional and fabulous😆.
These days, my preferred media consumption leans more towards non-fiction than fiction. I feel I’m living a golden age of the documentary feature where filmmakers are pushing the form to a place where lines between fact and are constantly blurred.
I love how The Pigeon Tunnel keeps us confused about whether we’re listening to Le Carré talk about his life or one of the characters in his books. I love how in Against the Tide and All that Breathes, I kept questioning whether I’m watching a documentary or a really well-made indie feature film. I love how the Cannes winning feature All We Imagine as Light presents documentary truth within an impressively assured poetic treatment.
So, far from shunning non-fiction and documentation, I’m reaffirming my hunger to blur the lines.
Perhaps it’s time to set down what lies on either side of these said lines I’m dying to blur.
Autobiography…
…definitely lies on one side of this blur-worthy line.
I mean…it can’t be more obvious to me! With YU, I dip into my life like Winnie the Pooh dips into a pot of bee-circled honey. I am my own primary source material - the person I meet each week and peep through the eyes of.
It is I!
What’s on the other side?
Maybe that’s the wrong question. Maybe the correct question is: WHAT’S INSIDE?
I’ve always found Autobiography ‘safe’, but…
Autobiography on its own bores me…
…and I think this is the reason why I keep looking beyond it. But I confess that a lot of the time I look beyond without stepping out of its confines. Forget lines, the whole view outside is blurry, and I get daunted by the thought of describing things I don’t see so clearly as I see my own life.
But after last week’s instalment, I’m less daunted. I’m wondering why.
Here’s a thought.
Autobiography on its own may feel boring to me because I’m going to the same places again and again.
Why does this happen?
Well - I guess I too am a creature of habit and a chooser of paths of least resistance. But someone else navigating my autobiography may chart a different course through it, revealing all manner of exciting things.
I think this is what happened while writing YU 122: I ended up being inside my own autobiography as someone else rather than as myself. And I gave that entity lease to write about what they saw.
Let me try and illustrate this the best I can:
Being in my autobiography not as myself but as ‘someone else’, I loosened my grip enough to let this someone define themselves as they pleased. While still being me - being of me - they still became…different; seeing different things, responding somewhat differently than I would when occupying my body.
I let this ‘someone’ occupy my narrative. When stuff like this happens -
Me like.
Me feel free.
Me get adventurous. In my adventure, me treat time differently, history differently. Me explore truth differently.
Me interested.
I find it interesting that…
Wait. Who’s this ‘I’ person now? He’s back!
Perhaps the ‘I’ is the Vasant who lives in Vasant’s body and ‘Me’ is the Vasant who lives in the narratives he creates. Hmmm 🤔.
This is hard to simulate, but let me try:
When ‘I’ writes, things like this come out:
Whenever I go to see a film made by a friend of mine, I’m over-aware of the fact that I still haven’t made a film of my own. I’m sure that I imagine it, but I keep thinking of the same question on everyone’s lips - “When do we get to see yours?”
I need to remind myself that today’s about my friend and not about me. I draw solace from the fact that - in some way - I too am a part of their story, having read screenplay drafts, sent in suggestions for actors and crew, just been there. I think about this and it carries me past my disquiet and lets me focus on celebrating their moment.
Stuff like this happens when I let ‘Me’ loose
I entered cautiously, aware of eyes on me, dismissing the idea almost immediately, reprimanding myself for considering myself that important. I was conscious of how I looked, more so of the question I imagined everyone wanted to ask - “What about your, film? When are we seeing it?”
Seeing A’s friendly face allowed me to put these insecure thoughts aside. I reminded myself why we had come - to celebrate A’s film finally releasing. Someone asked me anyhow, eventually - “What about your, film? When are we seeing it?” I answered cheerfully, ‘Soon,’ but inside my head I played with the idea of how, in a room full of filmmakers, all our stories are like children. The ones that survive being stillborn need sweat, blood and effort to grow (it takes a village et al) and when they come of age, how natural it is to celebrate even when the child isn’t your own.
The poetry of this image soothed me and my confidence in how I could transform it into a newsletter made me feel secure before every version of “What about your, film? When are we seeing it?”.
Interestingly, when ‘I’ lets ‘Me’ speak, ‘Me’ refers to himself as I!
Restating that such simulations are difficult, I still find it interesting that while both passages are honest, ‘Me’ revealed things beyond the obvious. ‘Me’ has my ‘I’ nodding in fascination. ‘Me’ produces the more interesting work.
Am I being unfair? My two daughters hate it when I compare one with the other!
I’ll say this, dearest YUer - it felt painful to write while channeling ‘Me’. Birthing painful.
‘Me’ is the one who’s at the other end of the umbilical cord connected directly to my life. When it forges something, the thing it forges is a living thing and it causes me pain when I have to wrench it from myself and allow it to stand before you like a teetering fawn - unsteady but alive.
The ‘I’ looks.
The ‘Me’ creates.
But I cannot deny my ‘I’ - my looker, my observer. If ‘Me’ may only care about what makes him feel alive, ‘I’ doesn’t want to write about things that make him feel dead. He too has his preferences. He looks, perhaps he points ‘Me’ in the right direction.
The confluence of the ‘I’ and ‘Me’, the movement of the currents between the two - I love the way they skew the things that reflect off my life. The conversation between this duo is my blurrer of lines. Perhaps YU is the place where they have a pint of gluten free beer together (they are, after all, born of my flesh and its physiology) hatching shenanigans about how they’ll keep leading the body that boxes them; the entity that houses them; towards...what? Better stories? Deeper Understanding? Empathy?
F**k knows. Whatever it is, it’s made of Good Juju.
All I can say is that after this instalment, ‘Me’ will be getting a bigger room because he seems to be coming of age. Let these two siblings speak to each other in front of the common bathroom they share and thrash things out.
Like a fair parent, I’ll make sure I see them both, explaining one to the other when I need to.
Thanks for listening!
Lots of love :-)
Vasant 👁️👅👁️
(Emoji curated by ✨Ananya✨)
As always, I’d love to hear from you - whether your “I” or your “Me”. Both are welcome!