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“Men look at women
Women watch themselves being looked at”
The writer of these words is being looked at by the artist who sketches him
John Berger is being looked at
Is he watching himself being looked at?

“Men act and women appear”
Is he acting or is he appearing?
What is the difference between acting and appearing?
Aren’t they both one layer removed from authenticity?
From simply being?

They are ways of seeing
And being seen
But they are not ways of being
An act can mean to take an action
But it also means to act
Which is what an actor does on stage
Pretending to be someone else
A character

Appearing is what apparitions do
Conjure themselves into space at any time or place
Conjure themselves into being seen
To make an appearance sounds like one will arrive and stay briefly and just as quickly disappear
And if one should appear to be something or to look a certain way
It suggests the quality of an illusion
Which is not real
Like acting the part of a character on stage
Which is also not real
And anyway
These days everyone is watching themselves being looked at
It’s what we do
It’s all we do
Watch ourselves appear and act
Watch ourselves being looked at

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This poem is was inspired by seeing a sketch of John Berger by Fred Williams recently at the NGV. It got me musing on some of the concepts from John Berger’s TV series and subsequent book from 1972, called Ways of Seeing, and how these concepts have shifted and changed in recent times with the advent of social media and greater gender fluidity. The quoted sections are from his book.