Don’t waste your Halloween this year: use the power of the mask to unleash your creativity.
Earlier this year, just two weeks before the death of Dame Edna (and her creator Barry Humphries) YouTube started mysteriously serving me content of the comedian interviewing a string of global celebrities. I watched her interview Cher, Joan Rivers, Dusty Springfield, and Robin Williams (among others). In each case, I was struck by how the humor from as far back as the 70s still resonates today and how unflinchingly she delivered her razor-sharp wit. None of these global megastars could keep up as she darted around them, whippet-like, besting them with every swipe. You could clearly sense Joan Rivers searching through her most shocking boob-joke repertoire to compete, but failing to match the Aussie. One moment bucked the trend. It was Robin Williams dressed as an Italian pizza delivery guy and he momentarily had the Dame on her (kitten) heels. But when she stripped him of his fake mustache she was back in control.
Admiring this superhuman (or truly human) state of absolute flow made me feel Oscar Wilde's quote more viscerally than ever: "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he'll tell you the truth."
I was watching unadulterated truth on the screen. The moment Barry became Edna, he removed one of the biggest burdens we carry - that we are one person. All of life is a performance. The biggest lie is that any one person is, well, one person. Without this great lumbering lie, we are on the way to being truly liberated. And that gives us the power to wipe the floor with Hollywood's titans.
I think we live in a world that's become rather earnest and rigid about identity. While we celebrate the language of 'fluidity' and 'non-binary', we don't appear to recognize how many personalities and modes we actually have. We're ossifying into increasingly fixed roles that, in turn, begin to imprison us - either by self-definition or by that of society. I never used to define myself as a white male, and when I do I instantly feel smaller and less free to be a whole human.
This time of year is a good time to reflect on how it would feel to dress up more often and what we’d gain from it. I recently made friends with a professional clown. The very first conversation we had was about vulnerability and honest emotion. “No one can express a breadth of true emotion more than a clown,” she told me. While there’s no shortage of identity conversations in our culture today, we are surprisingly welded into the one we’ve affiliated with, and this can make us terribly unimaginative.
Having worked in and beside the creative industry for a quarter century, I’ve found that the sooner we bring out the masks the earlier you have the essential raw ingredients for new ideas: vulnerability and emotion. However to unearth these true feelings I’ve found that one of the most inspiring ruses is to actually ask people to put on a mask. This simple action immediately animates us, unleashing our childlike urge to perform. And in this state the truth slips out quite willingly.
The creative businesses that we work with have a duty to occupy this state as much as possible. And we have the means to get us there. What the drag queen and the clown represent is this fundamental duty of the creative. The duty to play, mock, pretend, and unlock those hidden emotions that we avoid at all costs when dressed in our civvies. They also expose the central myth that we are just one person and that demographics can be defined and pinned down easily. Once we unlock the skills of the clown or the drag queen, we can more freely leverage our human instincts often banished from the workplace - and these can get us closer to that raw truth.
So as you consider your Halloween plans this year, spare a thought for the clowns and the dames in all of us. Keep pretending. It's the most truthful thing you can do.