Batman, Spiderman, the newsman on a local television channel…the alter ego of the true person inside. NFL Quarterbacks, professional bowlers, authors, artists and landscaping professionals represent the alter ego that which fights to survive in a world already overcrowded with too many wanna-be’s.
Dictionary.com describes an alter ego as being somebody’s alternate personality. It sounds presentable, easy to digest but all too often much too heavy for the people, places and things involved to carry.
In Michael Cera’s new film Youth in Revolt his alter ego François Dillinger becomes the controller, a smooth criminal of sorts with enough charisma to develop a persona of being higher than the real self, recreating his confidence in the way of tipping his arrows in different directions to gain access to a more accepted self.
The producers wasted no time in making Francois a bad nightmare—his attitude is fed by a determination which challenges the weaker self to lengthen the chain connected to the realms of what’s right and wrong and go the distance on any effort delivered as long as he’s given what he’s asked for. In this story…it’s first love.
Altering your ego is part of doing great business—it allows a person to slip from the knot that’s kept them tied up. By becoming, you’re allowing yourself to evolve. Fans of a Renaissance Festival pace through large crowds while locked onto their alter egos—a Wal-Mart greeter can’t be that happy to see you! What is Ronald McDonald really like when the oversized red floppy shoes finally come off?
Toy store shelves are brimming with alter ego games, some labeled more dangerous than others such as Dungeons and Dragons, video games based on war or violence and we might as well toss in Beer Pong—those who reign are far from being their true self, they establish an attitude of victory based on a character the imagination has cut from the system and set free for others to play nice with.
Michael Cera’s new film opens a different shape of what’s commonly called Him, Her, It or in some cases they get a bigger, better faster name, isn’t that what we do in radio? I’m Arroe on the air but I’ll argue for hours with you about whom the daily writer is versus the person who dabbles in paint while walking slowly through a forest with Native American Spiritual tools tightly gripped in his finger prints only to come home to a stack of bills that must be paid…none of those alter egos hang around long enough to sign their name on the bottom of the check.
You can find success through your alter ego.
Some people, like Michael locate trouble. The writers didn’t hide from theater fans what drugs do to an altered state. The wide range of drug circulation and the need for the spread of correct information on the effects of drugs in man, especially his brain, have led the Center for Scientific Culture Diffusion of Cassino University, to widen the scope of "Alter Ego. Drugs and the brain", a touring educational exhibition, by dedicating more attention to socially accepted drugs, such as alcohol and tobacco, and to new substances like ecstasy and similar drugs.
Author Willie Gaffer wrote this about alter egos: For most of us, our missing pieces just cause us to become somewhat dysfunctional. We are not as spontaneous, joyous, graceful, or creative as a human should naturally be. It's tragic but it's not usually a threat to survival. Other than that, we all occasionally do crazy things which the dominant personality cannot explain. "I don't know! Something just came over me. I lost control." I believe this loss of control is a manifestation of a suppressed alter ego.
Giving some autonomy to these personalities is one of the risks of opening ourselves to creative activities. We can only be creative to the extent that we are willing to risk being crazy. These fragments reside, after all, in the same part of the mind-soul which gives us inspiration and creative ideas. The aha's of life. With autonomy, sometimes these personalities do crazy and stupid things, usually out of rage for something which has been forgotten by everyone except the injured alter ego.
Google the dangers of having an alter ego and over 66,000 entries fight to be seen on the surface of your tiny computer screen. Without much of it sinking into your heart and head it’s extremely safe to say that we’re products of what rock star Tom Petty describes as being a piece of everything. Every song you hear is a sliver of something borrowed which came from another chunk of music lifted from their inspiration and so on and so on.
Everyday living is no different—the image in my mirror earned the nickname the beast. We never agree! That freak has a way of seeing right through me and is never happy with what I bring to our meetings. Thirty years of radio broadcasting and I’ve been everyone from Casey Kasum to Wolfman Jack…I still hear parts of Major Dan Miller on KOOK in Billings to Rick Dees in LA. A side of me dances with Stern while wallowing in knee deep mud with Limbaugh’s infectious habits of gathering ears around a loosely put together table. If we’ve talked, written or shaken hands, somewhere on my radio presentation a piece of you has made its way through me to reach listeners you’ll never see.
This might explain why Oprah’s well touted book The Secret sat so well in the purpose of there being a higher more meaningful reason. It’s when we stop altering our egos that sharing becomes mine, mine, mine. By recognizing the importance of what your efforts invite into the world, the whisper becomes either a breeze or wind in the ways you’ve elected to deliver it. Sheltering your presence becomes the storm. What you give and or allow to move through you is like sitting on the white sands of South Beach in Miami and the sun is unforgettably perfect.
632 DARE Graduation speeches and not a single one of them were meant for me—I've never taken a drug in my life so how could the radio jerk tell thousands of wandering eyes not to do them. I didn't take them but I've lost two friends to drug abuse who did. I stood before those schools with a solid statement, “I’m here today to change one life.”
My daily writing is no different—the only difference between the Web and a gymnasium filled with cramped legs and sleeping backsides…the alter ego echo reaches around the world searching for that single heartbeat whose vow was to quit today…and then…we met.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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