Tight-lipped style
July 12th, 2023
There is a whole series of those spectacular paintings that were painted as grave ornaments in the early 2nd century in Egypt (then under Roman Empire occupation). They are amazing since they depict how regular people of that era looked and give us an idea of how people of the New Testament looked like — Fayum is in Egypt but still within a broad range of the Middle East/eastern Mediterranean area. And there are no blue eyes nor blond hair there, the way Jesus and the apostles were painted by artists who depicted biblical scenes through the ages — funny that…
What is common to all those paintings is the way the mouths were depicted — closed tight so as to not let any sound out or an unnecessary breath in. It looks like those closely joined lips were a defense against something — anxiety of daily life or anxiety of upcoming death — since they were painted after the subject was already dead. And that grimace is also very common to people living in the current era — tight-lipped is the way to go through life in pretended obliviousness of anxiety and as a defense mechanism for an average person to hide behind the wall of repressions.
That is a mind-boggling blending of normalcy (as expected by society) and neurosis (as the soul yearns to be free to scream). Being tight-lipped can be considered a character trait, but in reality, it is just a lie about the nature of the reality we all live in. It is only a pretense that the person in question is invulnerable to worries and anxieties and presents that face outwardly for the world to see. Showing off the true internal turmoil is frowned upon — and it seems that it was the same millenniums ago. I guess we developed this behavior as an evolutionary trait — don't show too much of yourself, because others will use your perceived weakness to their advantage. It is a mechanism of protection against cruelty that is as common as humankind and the constant fight to take advantage of the weaker.
