City's breakin' down on a camel's back,
They just have to go 'cos they don't know whack,
So while you fill the streets it's appealing to see,
You won't get out the county, 'cos you're mad and free ..
Anonymity is amazing.
I’ve been meaning to try and work this post into conversation with people, as it helps to explain a habit of mine which has become far more frequent in this final year of university life.
About October-November time last year, I began taking long walks around town, usually late at night. In these early days it was more of a distraction than anything else, a way of clearing my head and getting away from what we were realising was going to become an even more hellish workload. However, as it went on I started to realise that it was less of a semi-therapeutic escape from stress than a desire to be a random everyman to passers-by (random in the true sense of the word, not the crappy one which has been by hijacked by anyone who considers themselves remotely quirky).
The anonymity thing goes back to my first year. Back then, fresh out of school among an uncountable number of new faces, there was the best chance one could have to re-invent oneself; to become a new ‘you’, cast off any habits that you weren’t fond of and simply adopt a new mindset for a new stage of life. The beauty of this was that none of these new peers would recognise a change; rather they would accept this as the ‘you’ you had always been.
Admittedly I didn’t do the best job I could have, but it was almost a thrill to realise that it was possible. Then inevitably, whatever persona you had chosen for yourself became the norm and altering it remained as much of a challenge as it always had been. The updated me, with whatever improvements or changes had been made, had been somewhat set in stone with this new group of friends and course-mates.
This changed again in Germany, though this time with the advantage, to some extent, of a language barrier: new friends could be made and the chance to be a different person arose again, but any alterations that might be perceived as negative could be shrugged off and attributed to misunderstanding or differences in culture. This example is true for the people I was in close contact with. Amongst the population of the town however, it was even better. It wouldn’t be an over-estimate to say that virtually everyone in the tiny town where I was working recognised or at least knew of me, so meeting strangers in the street and chatting to them was amazing, simply because I could dispel or encourage (even to the extent of telling little white lies) any pre-conceptions they had of me. This was perhaps one of the most rewarding aspects of the year.
It is in some sense a mask which hides anything that you feel unable or unwilling to change (feel free to make inadequacy jokes from this point.) This is probably where my love for masks at times like Halloween comes; being disguised is far more interesting than being you with a pair of cat ears.
Which leads us to my aforementioned habit. I naively underestimated the range of people that one can come across in a large city. Walking round Leeds at night, one can meet more interesting and story-worthy people than in a whole day spent on campus. Night is infinitely better because people are at their most open, namely drunk, homeless, and generally more likely to be sociable.
And these random encounters, which you don’t even have to go out of your way to find, are fantastic. Because these people know nothing about you, there is a slim chance of ever coming across them again, and all the feelings of that first, wonderful year come flooding back. Their judgment, if any, is irrelevant. Judgment from people has never really phased me, but it’s never as interesting coming from your friends as it is from people you are making your first and probably only impression upon. You can re-invent yourself between streets, change your name, your accent, be as charming, as confident, as interesting or as much of a stand-offish dickhead as you choose. Anonymity is my buzz.
Concerning the negative personas, this isn’t of course to say that you go out of your way to be a dickhead. It’s just liberating sometimes to act completely out of the norm under the legitimacy of being just another weird guy or drunken bigot that you don’t have to walk more than five minutes to come across on the average night.
It’s a weird habit. I don’t deny that. And this isn’t to say that any of my friendships are stale or I worry about changing my habits amongst them, it’s simply that the thrill of being someone else of your choice, if only for a night, occasionally outweighs the more solid relationships of everyday life.
There’s probably some weird Freudian explanation for this, but it’s better than some of the current theories involving prostitutes, drugs and nervous breakdowns. It’s just nice to be someone different for a change, yeah? Man, you sure are a stickler for details.
