“Living authentically” has been a theme for some time, expressed online in a million ways and changing the landscape of self-help culture and its attendant books promising transformation.
Usually, the phrase seems to just be shorthand for license to relieve oneself of responsibility and agency, rather than in any integrated concept of the self, and true pouring out from the center of the person. Although it has been largely butchered at this point, the hunger for it remains.
I have long loved the Latin phrase Esse quam videri, which expresses in a concise way this desire to live authentically. It is usually translated for meaning as “To be rather than to seem.”
Esse quam videri has haunted me, capturing the quiet, insistent voice of my heart which obstinately rejects posturing and the imposition of transient, shallow desires upon me.
I am human. The pressures, especially from the online world where mimetic desire reigns supreme and moves at a dizzying pace, do affect me and often succeed in temporarily drowning out this central voice.
But I usually cannot be imposed upon for long, as I have been given the wonderful (and sometimes maddeningly dominant) gift of not being able to tolerate what doesn’t align.
I have a notably low threshold for inauthenticity and misalignment, which shows up fast in my heart and mind and spirit, but even in my body. It quickly exhausts me.
This has been very inconvenient for the algorithmically-driven music market in which I have long needed to somewhat exist.
But this strange gift has allowed me to retain the essence of myself through a shockingly tumultuous time in human history.
I consider this all a fair trade off, especially because my listeners and supporters are incredible and make it possible for me to create sincerely and earnestly from the inside out.
The reality is that most of us do struggle to cultivate a real interior life out of which can flow not only work and art with the intuitive mark of the “real,” but also simple, sincere human action and presence in relation to others. We also, unfortunately, often fail as a result to recognize the lack of real interiority in public figures and artists. We are awed by cleverness and finesse, but rarely able to be attentive as a culture to the whispered underpinning of what is real.
We are constantly bombarded with external forces which are themselves cultivated via outside and imposed desires, through advertisements, but also through our shared public spheres online. We are drummed up into going after all kinds of things we not only do not need but in truth barely even want.
Those voices have become so loud mostly because of how much of our time has become consumed with listening to them. Our lives are full of media and the messaging within it all.
There is a way out, but it involves an inescapable heroism now.
This heroism takes the form, mostly, of a lot more silence and real contact with our inner selves.
It means spending real, attentive time with those we love in the flesh—looking them in the eye with out phones out of reach.
It means resting and attending to the limits and needs of our bodies and nervous system, avoiding the dysregulation that leaves us especially vulnerable to the messaging we often encounter without defenses.
It also means engaging deeply with thoughtful art, and that has often been my way of accessing what is real in myself—through seeing it wrestled with in others.
Mostly, it involves choosing to find ways to be truly present and receive reality—to focus on authentic being over seeming.
Esse quam videri.
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My own of expressing the reality of my inner world and inviting people into something truer and closer to the bone is through my own creative work, especially in music.
Sometimes a sense of authenticity can only be felt and not explained in an essay or article.
In my private archive, there is more of this work—much of it not available elsewhere.
If you feel like continuing, you’re welcome there.
Access to the private archive is sent by email, and the archive includes my ongoing writing and occasional invitations to be more deeply involved in this very human work.
All of this is made possible by generous patrons.
KAY CLARITY ARCHIVE 