Unknown White Male. Creepers!

Dr. R and I went to see "Unknown White Male" on Sunday night, and it's taken me more than 24 hours to digest this film before I could even *think* of commenting on it. No, not a film review. What's the point of that? Just: Oh my.

So, this is a biography, a documentary, about a guy who wakes up from a fugue state (as in, totally dissociated and doesn't even *know* that he doesn't know who he is or what he's all about) on a subway pulling into Coney Island. Awakening from this, he realizes he doesn't know who he is, and turns himself into the police, who take him to the hospital, where doctors put him in the psych ward while they try to find someone who knows who he is.

Long story short: The guy's got total retrograde amnesia, and the film is all about how he reconnects with the important people in his life: family, close friends, ex-girlfriends, teachers, etc. But the dude never -- not during the filming that extends through about two years of his life after waking from this fugue state -- NEVER recovers his memory. He doesn't know anything about his life before, remembers no one. Doctors can't find any biological basis for this memory loss, but there is some speculation by his sisters that the death of his mother (a few years previous?) was very difficult for him to accept.

The film poses some serious questions that my mind is still trying to wrap itself around, especially in light of the presentation I gave tonight on Narrative Therapy. If we are an accumulation of all our life experiences -- and make our meaning in life based on how we interpret those events -- but we *lose* all memory of those life experiences, who are we? Is the person revealed in wake of this kind of memory loss a representation of our "essential" being or what?

This guy's personality apparently changed dramatically. Where once before he was a rich, and perhaps snotty, party boy, his family and friends said he had become more reflective. His sister said she liked her new brother, but also said she missed the old one, that he had an "edge" that was gone.

It's got to be frightening not to know who you are, but there are some ways in which this guy received a tremendous gift. As an adult, with his skills and procedural memory (he might know how to golf, for example) still intact, he got to experience the world with completely fresh eyes. His memories of eating the various foods of the world, of going to the ocean for the first time, of seeing snow and being in London (where he had lived) were all gone, and he got to experience them anew. It reminded me a little of traveling to foreign countries, especially Third World ones, and seeing how dramatically different the way of life is, so much so that it's stunning at times. There is nothing I have experienced quite like that surge of absolutely *new* information about life as when I travel, and yet this guy was getting that all the time, a whole new life. So that actually prompted a little feeling of jealousy in me.

Over dinner, Dr. R asked how I might feel about such an experience. I said, "Lucky, because I would forget the whole lot of you and start over." I was being sarcastic and totally disingenuous, of course, but when I do think about that experience of seeing the world with such new eyes ... wow. (Of course, it's important to note that there's no way to even make the smallest conjecture about how I'd really feel under the circumstances because I would, essentially, not be myself.)

All together, this is a pretty fucked up thing to think about. Just a mind-blowing film because of how I conceptualize the Self. For our Family Therapy class, we are asked to write journals about "something relational." In one such journal, which I wrote a couple weeks ago and turned in tonight, I said the following:

When I think of Nietzsche’s notion of the Eternal Return – that the life you should lead is the one that, should Death come and tell you that you must live it all again exactly as you did already, you would gladly do so – I look at it from the light of self-acceptance. I am a culmination of every moment, good and bad, that has passed since my conception. If I take away any moment, I might very well not be myself. There are things I want to improve, but I generally am pleased with myself. I’ll keep me. But at the same time, I keep an eye on what I’m doing, where I’m going, with whom I’m relating and how.

So that's what I wrote. What's amazing about the situation portrayed in "Unknown White Male" is that he lost not just "any moment" but *all of them.* Say good-bye to your emotional baggage. And wouldn't that be something incredible? But, as Dr. R wisely noted, say good-bye to all your personal connections, your sense of belonging to something. And wouldn't that suck? (Probably, although as one of this guy's old friends pointed out, it's a good way to clean house of the acquaintances you no longer want to deal with: "I'm a different person now, and I don't really like you, so piss off.")

As I said, there's no way I can conceive of how I would *actually* behave under the circumstances, but this is one thing I'd like to think: I like the friends I've been making in grad school. They are all incredibly decent people. I'd hope to still like all of them. I like The Clairvoyant (OK, TC, it *is* love, I admit it) and The One. I like Jelly Girl. I like The Good Witch and Cartman. And, yes, XGF. I adore The Asian and always have. I like my aunt and my two uncles. I like my sister (at this time anyway, because she radically changes with some regularity but without the fugue state and amnesia that might help it all make sense). This list could go on for a little, but I'll stop here. That said, there are a few people -- and a few wretched moments of violence and crushing character assasination -- in my life I might *love* to forget.

But then again, maybe not. Because perhaps those moments or those people I think I could've done without have had the greatest effect in shaping the person I am today. Could I bring as much generosity of spirit to the people I like and love if my spirit had not been so amply tested? Would I understand how big my heart can be for others if it had not ached so profoundly over the loss of my brother? Would my sense of humor be so keen if life had not, at times, fairly well forced me to *find* something funny in it?

My, oh my ... how a simple movie can get me to thinking. Listen to me, people: See this flick. You won't regret it.