The Present is Monologue (Personas, Pt. 2)

We are all trying to find what the Greek philosopher Archimedes called a ‘lever and a place to stand’ so that we can move the world just a little bit. The world would be much worse off if we did not do this first and important task.

Richard Rohr, Falling Upward

This is part 2 of my persona series. You can find part 1 here.

Last time, we discussed the personas of characters seen through the lens of time and logue. (Logue is the totality of human interaction as recorded in the greater written narrative.) Personas are brutally difficult to capture, both in fiction and reality. The past is indeed a prologue, which bleeds into both the present and the future. While this blog series is segmented into three parts, it is impossible to fully differentiate between the harmonization of time and logue. Monologue and dialogue are creeping into the equation, as are present and future.

It could be said that a human being’s next words spoken are the beginning of the future that we control. In that same vein, the past is all that we have experienced in our lives. If that is indeed the case, then where does the present fall? Within our current thoughts, of course! The current jumble of information and perspective that fills our mind as we think is the unspoken and monologuing present. It lasts for the briefest instant, cataloging itself as the past after being experienced as a thoughtful monologue. If this sounds too neurologically convoluted for you, then imagine filling out a grocery list one item at a time. Racking your brain for the next item on the list (it’s probably milk) is the present monologue that you are proceeding to consciously catalogue!

The human ego prefers anything, just about anything, to falling or changing or dying. The ego is that part of you that loves the status quo, even when it is not working. It attaches to past and present, and fears the future.

Richard Rohr, Falling Upward

This is all well and good, but how does monologuing impact personas? It comes down to ego, which comprises a part of personas. Per Merriam-Webster, the ego: “serves as the organized conscious mediator between the person and reality especially by functioning both in the perception of and adaptation to reality.” As Richard Rohr states above, the ego is a strange beast that fears the future. Our personal monologuing is the ego negotiating with future reality, clinging to the past, and fighting in the present. This of course hugely impacts the trajectory of each monologue, presenting the persona in question with a choice: accept the truth of reality as it is perceived (perhaps with metaphorical baggage), or distort it through its own twisted lens to preserve the status quo that the ego so loves.

Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive series does an excellent job of capturing the monologuing persona. The first three books of the Stormlight series each center around one of the three major protagonists featured in the narrative, giving extra attention to that character through prologues in that specific book. For instance, the female protagonist Shallan is covered in the second work Words of Radiance. Throughout the work, her backstory is slowly revealed, bringing to light a very complicated persona that continuously monologues throughout the present. Shallan’s past constantly haunts her, but her ego clings to her experiences and fights in the present to warp the dreadful future. Sometimes her monologues are the most bizarre of the entire series, manifesting themselves as separate personas arguing with one another.

He’d once believed he had been four men in his life, but he now saw he’d grossly underestimated. He hadn’t lived as two, or four, or six men—he had lived as thousands, for each day he became someone slightly different. He hadn’t changed in one giant leap, but across a million little steps.

Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive)

The third book, Oathbringer, features the commanding middle-aged protagonist Dalinar, who lives in the past as much as he does in the present. Early on in the very first book Way of Kings, we learn that parts of his memory have been altered tremendously by magical forces, but by the time Oathbringer occurs his past is starting to return. Dalinar’s current monologuing and future dialoguing are always at odds with the people around him, as many of them have a better memory of his prior actions than he does. Slowly the book unfurls the layers of his protected and censored ego, which is completely fine with the status quo of blissful ignorance. By the end of the book, Dalinar has to deal with his dark and tragic persona or risk losing everything he currently has. It’s a perfect analysis of the aged ego that Richard Rohr describes as the dangerous “loyal soldier.”

Naturally, dialogue (and the future that it exists in) cannot be ignored even when we are in the past and present. The past contains what was once the future, and internal monologuing is often a response to external dialog. Much of our present comprised personas are also in reaction to prior dialogue, as superstructures of our identities are poured and molded by others outside of our inner little universe. Next time, we’ll discuss the clash of personas and the implications it has for the future that is one second away!

The Past is Prologue (Personas, Pt. 1)

‘Perfection is the enemy of perfectly adequate.’

Better Call Saul

The narrative of a story is a tricky subject that challenges every writer. How does one capture the real world on the written word, let alone a fictional one? While there are many attributes to every narrative, some are more high-profile than others. Detail, for instance, is easy to identify. Some stories use excessive amounts of detail, while others are rather sparse. No one is going to overlook the discussion of particulars in general.

Likewise, the verbiage is another high-profile part of the narrative. Quotation marks leave little to the imagination, highlighting the verbal logue that is occurring. Nonetheless, both of these narrative attributes come short in capturing a major aspect that can easily be overlooked: the personas of the characters. The observation of personas is far more subtle and difficult to qualify, their reach stretching beyond the written page.

Without getting too technical, a persona is a face a person puts forth for society. True or false, real or fake, personas exist for everyone whether they like it or not. While the soul is the infrastructure of a person, it is often difficult to discern and rarely seen if ever. In contrast, the persona is in many ways the superstructure that really holds a person together. While the phrase “what you eat is what you are” certainly has some truth to it, it pales in comparison to the idiom “fake it until you make it.” One could make the case that all of life is one big attempt to fake it until making it!

In fact, the word “hypocrite” is essentially derived from an ancient Greek actor putting on a mask that would serve as a persona. While this idea is interesting enough in the individualized abstract, it explodes in a thousand directions when applied to a specific society as a whole. Suddenly everyone in the room becomes much more complicated, as each person is playing a role both of their own making and of those around them. In many ways, the intersections of humanity are far more perpendicular than parallel, as we bounce off one another more than we walk side by side.

We belong to a Mystery far grander than our little selves and our little time. Great storytellers and spiritual teachers always know this.

Richard Rohr, Falling Upward

So how do we penetrate personas and accurately capture them? Is it even possible in a literary fictional sense? I would argue while it is difficult, it is indeed feasible. To do this, however, a writer has to be expansive in their viewpoint, looking beyond a certain moment in time. Past, present, and future must all be taken into account, especially the select moments (kairos) in the greater timeline (chronos) of life. As Richard Rohr references, we also must go beyond the granular to the grandeur of the Mystery of our existence.

The other major aspect that runs besides this is the story’s logue. Essentially, logue denotes a compilation of discourse in all of its forms: prologue, monologue, dialogue, etc. To put it another way, logue is the totality of recorded human interaction as best as we can see it (i.e. logic or logos). In a fictional literary work, this is essentially the greater narrative as it relates to all of its combined aspects like detail and verbiage.

The first half of life is discovering the script, and the second half is actually writing it and owning it.

Richard Rohr, Falling Upward

Linking this to time and character, the past is a prologue as it details where a persona has come from. A prologue serves as the foundation for an entire story, essentially providing the stage on which all personas parade across. In many ways, the past transcends time as it impacts the present and the future, at least when it is remembered and acted on. A skilled writer can capture such logue, integrating it into the greater narrative and specifically linking it to characters and their personas.

The excellent TV show Better Call Saul captures this concept perfectly, alternating between two different times in the life of the lawyer Saul Goodman. Every opening scene of the season focuses on the gloomy future of the man formerly known as Saul (after the events of the show Breaking Bad), then travels back to the past to his glorious heyday. While future Saul has changed his name and has adopted an entirely new persona, his past prologue has never left him entirely. Step by step, the audience sees Saul’s successes and failures, his magnetic charisma slowly leading to a downfall already revealed.

While the future blog posts of this series will tackle the aspects of present/future and monologue/dialogue as they relate to personas, these aspects are by no means excluded from the past and prologue. One of the great mysteries of life is the relativity of time, which is often a reoccurring plot point in storytelling. Storytelling and the personas within transcend time itself, encompassing far more than what the ticking of a clock can quantify. Ideally, the summation of logue is linked together in a cohesive fashion that feels just right regardless of the past, present, or future.

Next time, we will discuss those pesky monologuing thoughts in your head that constitute the present persona!