When The Magpie first saw his reflection, he was completely lost. He stood in front of the mirror and stared long and hard at the bird looking back at him. He didn’t know what, or rather who, he was looking at. The bird bobbed his head, flapped his wings, and moved back and forth in front of the mirror. He tried puffing up to make himself look bigger to scare the other bird, who simply mimed every action. The Magpie thought, “Who is this magpie looking at me and what is it doing?”
Bemused, The Magpie tried another approach; it decided to try courting the copy-bird. It brought it an offering, a piece of food held gently in its beak. When he saw the copy-bird immediately do the same, he got mad. “Why is this bird beyond the glass mocking my affections?”
Enraged, the bird dropped its food and began jumping back and forth, flapping his wings, screaming and yelling. He told the copy-bird, “Go away, beat it, scram,” he said, “or else I will tear you to pieces.” But, as before, the other bird didn’t change its behavior; it did exactly the same thing as The Magpie. Suddenly, The Magpie stopped dead still, as if spooked or jolted by some new thought or sensation, and stared intently at the other. Then, ever so slowly, he started to move his body again, and watched the simultaneous echo of its movements in front of him.
“What is going on here?” The Magpie wondered to himself. “Maybe,” he thought, “there is something wrong with my perceptions.” He continued, “What I am seeing in front of me is not another animal. It is me…me, with my wings, feet and head.”
“This is my reflection!” The Magpie suddenly exclaimed, for this was the first time that he had actually seen himself in a mirror, in his environment surrounded by his objects. A great joy and a sensation of freedom welled up inside of The Magpie. He was filled with the sense that this experience was some kind of threshold, like the first time he tasted a
blackberry or the first time he saw the ocean. “Then, this is how I must look to others,” the bird thought. “This is how the other magpies, the other birds or all the other animals must see me.”
“Ha,” the bird laughed as he began to play with his reflected image, making strange faces and very serious gestures. He acted in ways that he had seen others act, acting how he wanted other magpies to see him act, and The Magpie even tried its best to act like himself—or rather, acted how he thought his natural self would act. And while he watched himself, he imagined other birds looking at him, and imagined he was one of them watching him. With each performance, the bird understood a little more about his representation. He thought, “If others can understand me through the presentation of myself, then, whether conscious of it or not, I must always be performing.”
The Magpie played some more. He bent his head and lifted his tail in the air, waving it in front of the mirror just to see it move. He stretched his neck out and twisted his body to one side. He crouched down and tried to make himself look small. Then he jumped in the air, spreading out his wings as if taking off. He flew back and forth in front of the mirror. Then The Magpie began to strut from side to side with legs outstretched like an avian Fred Astaire. He stopped and thought, “If my performance constructs my appearance to others, then my identity is, in a way, an act of performance.”
The Magpie looked down at its feet, deep in contemplation, and as he thought harder about this, he began to smile. The Magpie had a revelation: “If I perform my identity, then my identity is not predetermined. I have choices and possibilities.” Although always a magpie, he realized he could be whatever he wanted to be. “Sure, I am limited by how others see me and their interest in my performance. But because my actions have meaning, and because they are performed, I can act any way I want, and others will take my actions as examples of my personality. Therefore, nothing is written or set; I can choose to be any character in this play… In this play,” he thought. “What a funny way to think of life, especially the life of a bird.”
