Dichotomy of Appearances

I am intrigued with the dichotomy of appearances—the dichotomy of what is perceived and what is the substance.

We are reminded that the words are not the ideas, and the ideas themselves do not exist outside our transient, in-the-moment interpreting of sensory data. We are reminded that the war horse or nude is a bunch of paint daubs on canvas. That the actor is not the role. (Our modern word "persona" is derived from the Etruscan word for "mask.")

The most intriguing inversion of this dichotomy is:

We recognize the other person by his or her appearance, posture and gait, sound of the voice and intonation and gestures—that is, but many outward aspects. And we infer the inner person by what the person says and does, what he or she has said and done in the past, by tell-tale cultural cliues, like winks and nods, frowns, smiles, animated movements. By all of these signs, we develop a paradigm that we believe "describes" the other person's "inner self." All of this from outside the person.

But the one person we do know intimately, whose motivations we understand, whose reactions and associative thinking and likes and dislikes we know as intimately as the "Biblical" meaning of that word conveys . . . is the same person whose appearances we know least well. Namely, ourselves.

Typically, one is surprised by how he appears in a photograph or film and by how he sounds on a recording. And, perhaps, he thinks less of himself because of the sound of his voice or his shape or movements . . . without realizing that that is exactly how his friends know him. In other words, he might misinterpret his own appearances, thinking that he is less attractive because of these qualities, even though he knows himself better than anyone else.

Furthermore, individuals who can control their appearances the best are those skilled in the various arts of public appearance—dancers, actors, models, speakers, and the like. They have learned how to control the variables of their appearance, the sound of the voice, posture, walk, hand gestures, clothing, choice of words, hair style and skin surface. They have mastered, in other words, the ability to manipulate superficial qualities in order to enhance or express what can pass for essential qualities.

Isn't this like art: the artist creates some kind of manifestation by manipulating discrete independent aspects of a presentation, so that some form of "whole" is produced that conveys a certain impression, whereas events "in the real world" unfold as they do without this kind of pretense? (Now, the event may be a play or painting, which itself does involve a pretense of some kind, but our experience of it "in the real world" typically does not: we go to the theater or gallery and see it, we don't pretend to see it.)