What is “The Mirror”?
Comments (3) To own up to my history outs me as trans and brings up a long stretch of time – the first twenty or so years of my life – that’s at odds with how I see myself now. When I talk with people about Judaism, do I acknowledge my Bar Mitzvah and out myself, or do I say I had a Bat Mitzvah and rewrite part of my life? When a coworker talks about buying suits or ties, do I chime in with memories of my experiences, or do I stay silent? Do I ask my parents to take down pictures from the first two decades of my life? To wipe clean the time before I was 22 or 23? To cover the mirrors which reflect the parts of myself I don’t always want to remember, don’t always want to see?
From Trans Form, my December 2009 show (emphasis added)
Uncovering the Mirrors postcard
My upcoming show is called Uncovering the Mirrors. It’s a reference to the bolded line above, sure, but more broadly it’s a reference to how one holds shiva (a mourning gathering in Judaism): “It is proper to cover the mirrors in the shiva house [because] a mourner is striving to ignore his/her own physicality and vanity in order to concentrate on the reality of being a soul.”
The “mirror” in my performances is a metaphor for something. In Trans Form, it was a metaphor for “the parts of myself I don’t always want to remember.” That is, the “male” parts of me that I was trying to get away from.
The title Uncovering the Mirrors, though, speaks to a desire to not cover up or hide. And so, recently, I’ve been trying to figure out what, exactly, that mirror is.
Themocracy