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this is a difficult question....
i am reading a novel by natalie sarraute called "the planetarium" that uses this gap (how you imagine yourself to be/how others see you) as its main device----which gets developed in a more or less virginia woolf style. it stages something of the variability of this gap and the speed/complexity of shifts in how characters see themselves, how they are seen by other characters, how situationally driven these shifts are, etc...
it's interesting...i'd recommend it.
more generally, tho---i am often surprised by the distance that seperates how i think i am seen and how others apparently see me---particularly how students see me.
i think of myself as somewhere between the dude from the big lebowski and a list-making machine. a kind of approachable fellow with an affection for irony. furry and kinda myopic. of the tristram shandy school of lecturing. given to despair-ridden political digressions.
apparently i am seen as intimidating. distant and not terribly approachable. given to making jokes that are not necessarily obvious as jokes. the digressions/stories/examples--which i think make things accessible and myself more like a regular guy---apparently function in the opposite way.
physically, they sometimes see the dude resemblance--which i flatter myself with inwardly from time to time--but they also think i look like karl marx (because of photos on book covers i assume) or some mountain guy (all this a function of the beard)---these overlays seem to be internally contradictory and so reinforce the sense of being-distant and unapproachable.
being in history puts me in the unfortunate position of having to do lecture classes sometimes--i have found myself doing them as straighter classes than i would like as a function of the strange perception framing that seems to come with the territory.
seminars are different--i prefer them because they do not require a consistent persona and are more amenable to multiple levels of playing.
it is most strange--when you think of how you see yourself what you factor in, what you leave out. when you find yourself in a situation, how much weight you grant it... the bizarre truncated information available to work out how students might see you (evaluation forms...sheesh) and how little it seem that you can do about it.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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