“Is it because you know
that what you present to the world is a persona, a mask, that it is a
very fragile disguise, that God alone knows what is underneath since you
clearly do not, perhaps nothing less than the self itself, and that if
the persona fails, what is revealed is unspeakable (literally, because
you can’t speak it), like what was revealed when the Phantom of the
Opera had his masked ripped off, a no-face, a vacancy, a hole that is
much worse than the ugliest face—so frightening, in fact, that remember,
as a child, crawling under the seat in the movie.”