Websites that you visit often know you. Or they know your cookie. And they recognize you. Like a good friend, they say, “hello.” But unlike a good friend, unless your friend is Rod Serling or David Byrne, they give you a curious option. My online bank, for instance, has a link that says: “I’m not Kent.”
I’m not exaggerating when I say that it sometimes sends me reeling, that it sometimes seems like either: a) a distinct possibility, or b), a viable option. It depends on my optimism, but the feeling is the same. And so are the roots. It’s a little postmodern and a little nouveau vague, a little depression and a little bit of 21st century alienation. It’s born of a lot of things, not the least of which being a life that’s increasingly mediated through technology. There are other things too: a lost job, artistic ennui, the pressure-sensitive door at the supermarket not opening for me. In short: oh, godless universe, who am I?
I’ve long known that identity is a thing that’s built of component parts, just as I’ve felt that there is no plan, no order, no meaning. It’s just that there wasn’t always a feeling of fear and even doubt that came along with it (a contradiction, sure). But hey, I’m almost 33—and I still don’t know whom I want to be.
There are stories where an ordinary man becomes a man without a past, a plebeian turned assassin*, an amnesiac, a prisoner who dreams his execution anew every time he dies**, any of a number of narratives—many of them violent—about the arbitrary nature of identity. Yes, too, there are narratives where old men think they’re Knights (but that’s another story).
If “I’m not Kent” is a condition, I’m not sure what will become of me. And if it’s an option and I click it, I may scream as loud as I can: “My God, what have I done!”
*Manchette’s 3 To Kill
**The Twilight Zone: Shadow Play
