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About specters: the illusion of mirrors and reflections

Specters act not only as reflections of humanity, they also function as our illusion of endless existence. They stand high, as one of the most precious inventions “reality” has ever created: The final life insurance for mankind, the masterpiece that allows us to resist the abominable sensation of death as a culmination of all rational life.

By themselves, specters and all their paraphernalia do not posses the ability to sustain as a valid platform of existence, to exist they need imperatively to appear in our reality; meanwhile, they are just emptiness.

When the ghost manifests by briefly showing its foggy embodiment in our domains, they ignite a certain flirting action between these two worlds. This entanglement is about the illusion these phantoms provoke in our reality, not necessarily produced by the shock their apparition generates, but for the reach their reflections extends in us.

As references of mirrors and reflections in popular culture, two particular tales stand and link to the specters scenery: Lewis Carroll’s character of Alice (“Alice in Wonderland” and “Beyond the looking glass”) and the legend of Narcissus. Any specter has in its composition these two elements. The transgressor vibe of Alice whom in contact with the mirror, started to merge while the glass dissolved in her hand as if it was clear silver haze. Narcissus tale narrates the story of a man that looking at his reflection in the water, tried desperately to merge within the image of his dead sister. This very same effect turns on humanity when approaching the notion of specters.

While we observe the ghosts scenarios we stand still in front of a mirror that diffuses fervently in that reflection our own illusions, not only the ghost itself  (the one we try, as narcissus, desperately to relate to our long gone relatives) but also that superficial abyss we see in the mirror’s glass that absorbs us into the creation of a scenery in which this ghostly characters exist and invade us. This is purely seduction, we identify in a mimetic manner with that that we have lost, right in front of a mirror which operates as much more than a reflecting devise, it actually is overflowing that reflection, it exceeds its common purpose to one more intense: the production of specters, our own illusions.

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