(The Secret Worlds Inside)

　　Sensuality and sexuality, naturalness and artificiality, innocence for good and innocence for evil – these are all present in children – these beings, which have not yet entered our world but are already judged by its standards. Of course all of the above are adult concepts, this is what adults see from the outside, so the child is in fact hidden in a cocoon of meaning, of the existence of which it only gradually begins to be aware. The child is different from the idea of the adult of what the child should be, and the adult himself does not know exactly what he/she wants, but the child feels that something is needed, and tries to guess what it is, to please the adult. Thus, we slowly turn from children into adults. On one hand the child is inside a fantasy world with no clear boundaries and logic, on the other – the world of boundaries and logic is presented by the adults, and every child’s journey is from the endless and timeless magical land, towards the one-dimensional life we all live. And yet, within each one of us, no matter the age or the temperament, there is a secret world, a world which was hidden, submerged, before we entered puberty, but which keeps reappearing in dreams, in romantic relations, in daytime fantasy.

　　Dreams can not be video-recorded, fantasies can not be weighed, fears can not be dissected with a scalpel or examined with X-rays. When talking of our thoughts and emotions we are dealing with events and functions which can not be examined in a laboratory – if we concentrate on measuring brain-waves or heart beats, we only end up with many recorded brain waves and heart beats, and not much useful knowledge, if we are trying to find out ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ concerning the inner experience. Formal rational science is good for measuring what happens in the outside world, including our body chemistry, but the inner worlds of which this body chemistry is an outer sign, are the territory of art, music, philosophy, psychoanalysis. Rational science can observe and explain the outer behavior and structure of people – the arts can show that which can not be observed by science, but what holds together all the phenomena observed by science, that thing, or event, which stands behind. Philosophy and psychoanalysis are based on words, which is good if you want well structured systems, but words can only describe one part of the inner experience. A rather small part. Art and music are better suited for describing that, which words can only hint about, with their endless chains of metaphors, the complex attempts to explain the unexplainable. Some things can not be explained – only shown – only your own experience when in contact with that being shown, can allow understanding to take place. Good art and good music allow us to experience the unexplainable - this well known feeling of an opening of the mind, of the flood of emotions, when an honest and high quality musical composition or a painting shows us experiences beyond language.

　　From birth we humans begin collecting layers of our individual Self, collecting them as years pass, leaves turn yellow, then green, the sky gets grey, then blue, things happen, events take place, each affecting us, shaping us, changing us. Each new layer of the Self based on the previous ones, standing on them, hiding them. Like the layers of older civilizations beneath the layers of the newer civilizations which the archeologists find. But also like the simpler and simpler layers of the universe which a modern microscope can show: after some magnification we see instead of the world of houses, tables and cars – a world of monsters and weird events, a world unsettlingly different from the one we are used to. After even more powerful magnification – we travel further into the far away universes - and see the primitive building blocks of which the monsters themselves are made. Our minds are much the same – the deeper you probe, the more ancient and more simple layers are discovered, with bizarre creatures and forgotten desires hiding behind conscious thoughts, the creatures and desires themselves made of simple mental building blocks, from when our infant minds were still slowly developing their basic fundaments. Nothing really disappears, every newer layer of the personality, rests on top of the previous ones, and all of them combined, influence our choices and acts. On one hand inside the adult is a teen, inside which is a child, inside which is a baby. Like an onion of personalities. On the other hand: below the conscious thoughts are the unconscious needs, behind the principles of logic hide angels and devils, and inside every professor there is an elf, looking through his eyes, listening through his ears, laughing at his life.

　　The ‘word’ approach of psychoanalysis offers certain models - in the first years of life the little human passes through many stages of development – ‘oral’, ‘anal’, ‘phallic’, ‘genital’. All stages are immensely important, our personalities are built upon them, our thoughts and perceptions to a large extent are their slaves, but perhaps the most important and influential stage is the very first one – the oral one. This oral stage itself is divided into an early half – in which the baby sucks – and the later half – in which the baby begins to bite. In this first period of life, the baby experiences the world mainly through its mouth. The mouth is the most important organ – it gives pleasure, satisfaction, security, comfort. To it are connected both pleasure and pain of the infant, as well as (later) the ability to destroy, to cause pain. This forms the basis of our earliest layers of the psyche, and unfulfilled oral desire follows us like a shadow wherever we go, whatever our age. We must smoke or drink or eat snacks or bite our nails if we think, if we feel. In romantic love, our attempts of closeness are closely linked to our mouths, our attempts to experience the other with the mouth, to taste, to devour, to swallow. And if we look closely into the media of ‘advertisement’ we will see – the eternally opened and busy mouth is all around us, licking ice-cream, eating chocolate, drinking coke, chewing gum. In different periods of our life, the oral desire takes different forms, which have different emotional values. Of course, there are worlds and worlds beyond the ‘oral trauma’ and the ‘anal stage’ as described by psychoanalysts – but these worlds can not be explained, only shown. They can not be caught in words, and this is where art comes in.

　　Adults have two sides of life: the official and the private ones. The private one is the sexual one, but this does not mean only what is being done in bed. The official one is the life of control, of control of one’s thoughts, desires, of one’s body. The hidden half of life contains everything else. It contains the baby and the child, the monsters and the demons, the desires to destroy and eat, to in turn be destroyed and eaten (to satisfy the guilt); the desire to be punished and forced to do things, like we all were punished and forced in certain moments in childhood, the compensatory desire to punish and force; and of course, the desires to be comforted and lost in relaxed unthinking bliss. This hidden half contains also the connections between mouth, anus, the genitals and the worlds of communicating, giving, taking, comfort, discomfort, seeing others as objects, seeing oneself as object. It follows the logic of dreams, and dreams follow its logic, and when we decide to exit the ‘official life’, we return to this half. Of course, for the adult this magical infantile world of sex is important mainly while it is happening – when the adult is back in the official life, the hidden part loses importance, it is seen as not even very real, more like a dream, a fantasy, not reality. It is an echo which quickly fades away, only to reappear again with urgent strength, when we can no longer take the tension of the official life, and need a break from ‘reality’. The baby and the child, the monsters and the fears are all alive in the forbidden half which we keep beneath the surface.

　　Loss of control, or experiencing control from outside, feeling comfort of discomfort, pain or pleasure, using certain organs of the body for pleasure or to influence other people, switching off the mind and relaxing into the chaotic life of fantasies and desires – all these are parts of the great puzzle which begins right after birth, and before ten years have passed – disappears below the surface of the mind, but until death continues influencing us and even reaches the surface of the mind on many occasions, which we afterwards quickly forget or experience as dreams. Art can show us, make us experience, that which words – the products of the ‘official life’, can not. The four girls by Yang Yang are exactly that – they show in one place perfect beauty, troubled souls, oral desire which is mid-way between childish and adult, and many other parts of the invisible experience, hidden beneath the surface of the lovely girls, looking back at the world through their wide open eyes.

　　(The Four Girls)

　　The girls are children - clean, pure, perfect, in the way in which the imagination of the civilized adult dreams of the lost garden of childhood. Nevertheless these girls are not enjoying mindlessly themselves, all four are busy thinking, concentrating on something, their mouths are also busy, trying to give them the feeling of comfort while they their minds are working – a hint of the adult future. There is already something missing in paradise, a lost something which pushes humans towards pondering, thinking and wondering, instead of being lost in quiet ecstasy.

　　The four girls are still children, but obviously leaving babyhood further behind with every passing day, and approaching nearer and nearer puberty, and then adulthood. Together with the babyhood is gone the mother’s breast, the bliss, security, unthinking comfort of suckling, and the four girls are already compensating, trying to cope with the loss through use of substitutes. The substitute of the mother’s beast is removed only by one level in the case of girls 1 and 3. The substitute of girl 3 is the official one provided by modern society – an artificial nipple - the ‘pacifier’, the substitute which girl 1 uses – her thumb – is the spontaneous discovery of all children. The substitute of girl 2 – her lollipop – is already so far from the original breast, as to be almost unrecognizable as a substitute, as is the straw for blowing soap bubbles of girl 4 – these two girls are with one foot in the world offered by the civilization into which they have been born.

　　The lollipop and straw are typical inventions of the adult world, unconscious attempts to satisfy the oral craving of us all, without succeeding, but giving a brief relief from the background tension, while in use. All four girls are already attempting to cope with a life away from the breast, trying to take it somehow with them in a magical changed form, of course not only the breast, but also the comfort and peace associated with it, and in this sense are preparing to be adults – to lead lives, the discomforts of which are attempted to be alleviated by magic medicines, which themselves are changed and twisted representations of the original source of comfort, pleasure and peace. The girls are still in a magical world, at least three of them, but fragile and very temporary, like the bubbles blown by girl 4, this world will soon end, a change will come. The future holds trials, accidents and wounds for the girls, and their freshness and beauty will inevitably begin to dim little by little, the world experienced by them will shrink and fold into itself, until they have firmly entered the tunnel of one-dimensional life.

　　Some future roles are already visible within the girls, in spite of their youth and perfection. Girl 1 is still a thinking child, carelessly sucking her thumb, but girl 2 seems to show purpose in the act of sucking the lollipop. It is not only for her pleasure – part of it is also an act for an audience – she knows she is being watched, her free hand is hidden from view. She is ready to be a teenager. Girl 3, with her folded arms and sorrowful look can, among other things, be a vision of motherhood, combined with despair. Something is cradled in her arms – an invisible infant perhaps - as she looks upwards with a combination of sadness and perhaps hope, a composition in which child and mother are combined into one. This despair is a ghost, a specter hanging above every woman, a situation which has existed in millions of times and places and has probably yet to exist millions of times more. Girl 4 represents the reverse situation. The glass in her hand can easily be a glass of champagne or a cocktail, the straw – an elegant feminine cigarette. A young woman, acting out with apparent ease upper class elegance, faking carelessness like an expert, with eternal questions hidden behind her wide open eyes: ‘what is happening, what am I doing here and why, am I doing this right?’ But these questions are not answered and they are frozen, put into the background as the endless act is continues.

　　The girls are shamelessly naked, showing the vulnerability to the world, equally open to good and bad things, to love and to attack, and soon they must learn to shield themselves, to hide behind clothes, words, and elaborate acts. But for now they are frozen in the time between the baby and the adult, showing their beauty completely, without being quite aware of it, far from comprehending the dangers of life, but already trying to adapt to new conditions. They do not hide their bodies, their need for oral pleasure, their simple sensuality, the need for touching, for embraces, which seems obvious in such naïve nakedness. This fills adults with confused, conflicting emotions, but adults are also former children, and the seed of such adults is already present in these four girls.

Jherek Cornelius

Sociologist

expert in gender psychology

Jan, 2007