Image? What image?

Before all this stuff with the major awards (i.e. acceptances) and back when the only things I had actually published were two little poems - this was perhaps three or so weeks back - I was talking to a friend of mine about how the only two things I had ever published were about suicide and how I wondered if my next publications would continue in that theme.

Her response - and I of course don't recall everything she said, but imagine that my paraphrasings will suffice in place of exact quotes - was, "It takes a certain image to pull that off."

And I had this moment of, "What, precisely, is she talking about?" So I said, "Image? Expound, please."

She said, "Themes like suicide are associated with whiny goths or Byronic heroes. It takes a certain degree of jerkishness and controlled darkness to pull things like that off effectively."

I said, "Ah, I see." But inside, I was thinking, "Image? What image?"

I know there are a number of would-be writers/musicians/artists/other such people who worry an awful lot about what their "image" will be - how the public will perceive them, how they will present themselves as a persona, etc. I worried about such things when I was, what, thirteen. At the age of thirteen, I was still under the impression that, when I wrote, it would be appreciated by the mass public and that I would appear for book signings and talks in front of people, and all that stuff.

Nowadays, I don't think about an image at all. Perhaps if I were a musician or actor or sort of person who makes public appearances as part of the job, I would worry about how I was perceived by people and thus try to shape an image for myself. But I'm a writer. The thing about being a writer is that people don't see you. You don't appear on movie and television screens. You don't go on stage in front of hundreds of people. You don't even go to art gallery displays and talk about the cryptic meaning of your sculpture that looks more like a cross between a bicycle and a bucket than anything else. Alright. That last sentence was less me being serious and more me having fun with the idea of "art people". I acknowledge that, in art, people probably don't "see you", either. But I honestly don't know how the art world works, nor am I talking about it. I am talking about the writing world. 

I don't know how that works, either, but I do know that people don't see you in the writing world. You're just the name on the book cover and maybe in the "about the author" bit, if such a bit exists. (Assuming you're publishing books and not short stories/poems. If the latter is the case, then you can forget about having an image even more so.) So my writing about suicide and the sort of "image" I would have to work for really don't cross my mind at all. Since I'm almost certainly not going to gain any level of fame - not the sort where I'll be making public appearances and people will even remember what I looked and acted like - I don't have to put any effort into an image whatsoever. I don't.

For those who are curious, though, if I did find myself in such a place where I had to develop an "image", I would act in a sort of understatedly quirky way, the sort of way one might act if one didn't entirely know what one was doing where one was but had been told there would be some exciting adventure and was currently acting like said adventure was already going on. But I'd also discuss dark or sad things with great cheerfulness and no hesitation about disclosing the details of my psychological dysfunctions. But after talking about that for thirty seconds, I'd likely want to turn the topic to something else, such as what a former teacher of mine told me about sea hares or how I microwave my tea when it gets cold. I'd wear a vest or coat or something, and I'd always have my question mark pin on somewhere. I'd sometimes wear a hat (which would probably become my "iconic item", so I'd of course have to wear it all the time) and I'd always wear jeans of some dark color and scuffed-up/adventurey-looking boots. Sometimes, I'd do something completely different and dress up like a psychedelic dandy from some 1960's band, still acting the same, of course. If it seems like I've put too much thought into it for something that's not going to happen, know that this is essentially an exaggeration/distillation of how I normally act and dress.

So there you have it. A basic run-down of how I feel about image and the like. In other news, I just discovered that I do not have my medications with me (having left them at a relative's house), and I won't realistically be able to acquire them at least until tomorrow afternoon or so. This means I will miss at least two doses. My bipolar disorder (which I have been trying to be more out about and accepting of) has been acting up ever-so-slightly lately (actually, possibly not very slightly - I seriously don't know anymore). I do hope I take everything pretty well.

Also, I just realized that I mentioned I had bipolar disorder. Which is, to some people, a form of crazy. I totally forgot that "crazy" can be part of one's image, too. I suppose I'll add "crazy" to the list of all the wonderful things I thought I'd be like in that paragraph. Hurrah.