{"id":399,"date":"2012-03-30T15:05:02","date_gmt":"2012-03-30T23:05:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=399"},"modified":"2012-03-30T15:05:02","modified_gmt":"2012-03-30T23:05:02","slug":"adam-many-parts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=399","title":{"rendered":"Adam Many-Parts"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a recent blog post on dancing a thousand flames<\/a>, I mentioned the idea of being many selves\u2014playing many roles. I\u2019m flagrant in this regard, playing with the whole idea of playing roles. Of course many cartoonists, comic book writers, and dramatists do likewise, and I\u2019ve been more than a little influenced by these genres. In a larger sense, every poem, musical composition, and work of art might also be imagined to be an expression of yet another facet of the creator. So anyone who creates roles does this. <\/p>\n

People create roles with their pets, attributing to them more than one name, for example; and they do this with their kids and their sweethearts\u2014\u201cpet names.\u201d I created a name for my beard because of the way our cat cuddled up to it: mommy baby belly beard<\/em>. She liked the fuzzy, we think, and it brought back her relationship when she was a baby. <\/p>\n

I think most people play about 20 major roles and about 100 minor roles and about 1000 transient roles. I don\u2019t even count roles that aren\u2019t repeated. But some become part of a small routine, if only for a few days or months. There are also certain dream scenes that I have visited, or remember\u2014and that counts as a re-visit\u2014and so there\u2019s a spectrum of how much does a picture, or a slight role advance into the role repertoire towards being a major role? I guess it depends on how much one \u201cdoes\u201d that role, and perhaps add, does it with some conscious awareness that it is a role. Picking one\u2019s nose doesn\u2019t count until one realizes that there is a small secret shameful role of the nose-picker that is in fact part of one\u2019s private role repertoire. The nose-picker, the crotch-scratcher, the masturbator\u2014don\u2019t even talk about such things! <\/p>\n

So, among the roles I play, I just identified on: the identity identify-er\u2014sort of active right now, identifying some of the identities or roles that I play.  (ha ha!) Another role is  the library book browser, and another one is the role of being nice to the repairman. <\/p>\n

I have to use a little maturity and discipline in this, because my bratty kid role is tempted to complain that things shouldn\u2019t break and what\u2019s he going to do about that!?! But I register this little scene in my mind and maybe or maybe not I\u2019ll play it out later with my wife as an \u201caudience,\u201d just to see what that fussbudget complex has to say for itself. Anyway, I am not about to play that with the repair man\u2014he\u2019d be confused and hurt! He is really a nice fellow and doesn\u2019t know\u2014or perhaps he knows all too well\u2014how people can get grumpy and rude about whatever breaking and taking it out on the guy who\u2019s trying to fix it. <\/p>\n

There are so many roles: The news reader, the cartoonist, the writer of thoughtful emails, the preparer of presentations, and numerous silly ones that I\u2019m not prepared to mention because I don\u2019t know how you\u2019d take it. Of course there are the roles of all my cartoon characters that in fact truly represent little tiny and sometimes not-so-tiny aspects of me, as shown on my website at Adam ManyParts<\/a>. <\/p>\n

My hope, though, is to witness to what I fool around with and hope that I can encourage you to begin to own, celebrate, enjoy, and consciously perform more roles in your life, selecting the time and place and the kinds of people around at the time who would enjoy these roles rather than be bewildered by them. (I haven\u2019t always been very aware in this way, but that\u2019s another story.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a recent blog post on dancing a thousand flames, I mentioned the idea of being many selves\u2014playing many roles. I\u2019m flagrant in this regard, playing with the whole idea of playing roles. Of course many cartoonists, comic book writers, and dramatists do likewise, and I\u2019ve been more than a little influenced by these genres. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,25,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autobiographical","category-play-and-spontaneity","category-literacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}