Month: March 2021

Truth tellers

I’ve been watching a lot of stand up comedy lately; mostly to pacify my building anxiety about the masters thesis I’m procrastinating, and maybe a little bit so I didn’t just get my 3 year old a Netflix subscription. If I cancelled his subscription and spent that time working instead I’d probably be a much more functional human being right now, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about.

Maybe I should have been a comedian. I like attention, I’m pretty good at regurgitating my own words a hundred times over and not really getting bored of the sound of it, and I’m even pretty funny provided you give me a few months to prepare.

I’ve never actually even remotely considered the possibility of a career in comedy (if we discount this right now), primarily because I’m so terrible at improv. I often come up with hilarious ideas during conversation and proceed to convey them in the most bland, tone deaf way one could possibly imagine. And everyone falls silent, looking a bit perplexed. And then, three days later, while sitting on the toilet, I finally craft them into the masterpiece they were always destined to be. And the only one to witness it is the baby slug that has emerged from a crevice near my shower screen to be today’s sacrifice to the toilet gods. Because yes, barring written testimony, I will still be flushing it.

…Not because I care about the testimony, that would just probably demonstrate a level of consciousness I wouldn’t feel comfortable flushing down the toilet.

Maybe I should be conducting more thorough testing of the gastropods that find their way into my bathroom. Just what is the level of consciousness that I do feel comfortable flushing down the toilet?

There’s an idea of comedians as society’s truth-tellers. Because comedy allows us to broach difficult subjects in an accessible way, by relieving the tension of taboo with a punchline. It breaks our defenses so we can let new ideas in. Sometimes. Maybe. Or maybe not. Sometimes, maybe, the tension is relieved too quickly and we get to skirt around the discomfort entirely. Maybe the art of comedy is holding just enough tension to change you, without you actually thinking you’ve been changed. Transformation disguised as entertainment. What delicious subterfuge.

I’m crap at holding tension. I’m an all or nothing kinda gal. I’m either flirting with you with no intent to follow through, or I’m conceding wholeheartedly to make us all feel better. Maybe the art of comedy would be a useful hobby for me.

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Polaris

There’s a man walking around out there in the world who is, to some extent, responsible for all the good things that I am today, who I don’t know, who doesn’t know me, who doesn’t want to know me, and who never really even did anything to deserve the dubious honour of being my greatest teacher and guide.

This is the premise of the post that, when I didn’t write it, made my every other post optional.

My favourite author is Haruki Murakami. One of the things that is notable about Murakami’s stories is that the protagonists are not crazy, but when crazy things happen to them they just go with it. They don’t fight it. They don’t agonise over whether they’re going crazy. And they don’t create a load of drama around it either. They sort of acknowledge their unusual situation with an equanimous shrug, and that’s about the extent of it.

Murakami’s characters always kind of gave me hope that the fact that I was…not crazy, but, also, not quite not crazy either…wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

And then, when crazy things finally started happening to me, that hope probably predisposed me to go with them. Until the reality of the situation I had gone with started dawning on me. Because, actually, it does take a full-blown crazy person to go with it when crazy things start happening. So, upon realising that I was, in fact, a full-blown crazy person, I started thrashing. But it was too late; I had made my decision and gone past the point of no return.

The fine line between genius and insanity has long intrigued me. But, in my life, I have often been just courageous enough to find out how much of a coward I really am, and, instinctively, I feel like courage may in fact, at least in my case, be the line between genius and insanity. Because it takes a little bit of courage to pursue your crazy vision, but it takes a whole heart full of courage to hold true to that vision while simultaneously acknowledging the hostile reality surrounding it. And that’s when, if you choose to continue, it becomes devastatingly easy to buffer yourself with clever distortions. At which point you’re swimming in a choppy sea of half-truths and the shore you were heading for could be over there, or it could be over there, or it could be over there, or it could be over there.

This man, who I don’t know, who doesn’t know me, who doesn’t want to know me, for some reason, became my North Star. Not only did his existence tempt me into an ocean that looked cold and scary and objectively dangerous, with the promise of gold on the other side, but it guided me, from quadrillions of miles away, across that ocean. And the gold I found was not the gold I thought I’d find, because I hadn’t escaped the clever distortions, but it was fucking gold nonetheless.

For some reason that I have yet to comprehend, this man, who I don’t know, who doesn’t know me, who doesn’t want to know me, imbued me with the courage that I never thought I had when I looked at him. By orienting myself toward his light, I completed a years-long journey that I would have otherwise torn myself to shreds on after a couple of days. And, at this point, it’s safe to assume that ‘his light’ was illusory – just another clever distortion of my sea of half-truths – but The Light was really fucking there, because if it hadn’t been there, if it hadn’t been constant, if it hadn’t been the ever-fixéd mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken, then I would have been lost.

This man, who I don’t know, who doesn’t know me, who doesn’t want to know me, allowed me to glimpse True Love. And I feel bad that he had to be the one to do that, because it wasn’t a job he signed up for and I don’t think it came without cost to him. I owe him a deep debt of gratitude. And at the same time, I have to acknowledge the fact that he didn’t have any fucking thing to do with it anyway. He was responsible for his own good grace in the face of my agonised thrashing, and for that there is a separate debt of gratitude. But the deep mystery of what transpired for me; the numinosity of those years of pilgrimage – that is a sacred burden that should never be placed on another human being’s shoulders.

You’ll have to forgive me if this blog post leaves you wondering what the hell this madwoman is rambling on about. This is a long thread to pull.

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My post-modern brain

My brain got called post-modern in passing the other day.

My first thought was what actually is postmodernism? I know Jordan Peterson doesn’t like it but I’ve never really paid attention to its exact meaning.

So I looked it up and realised it is basically extreme relativism, but even its definition is kind of relative, so..?

Yeah, okay, that’s kind of my jam. And yes, I have found myself lately talking a lot about the subjectivity of truth.

Here is where I may diverge (or maybe not, what do I know?). I think there is such a thing as objective truth, I just don’t think we’re capable of comprehending it. And I think, even if we were, it would be so abstract to our human selves that we probably wouldn’t be very compelled by it. And so, for as long as we are still humans, I think we need to make the most of our subjective truth by moulding it to fit our purposes.

Floating amidst the chaos of no one true answer, we need to lay a path for ourselves that takes us to where we’d like to go. And maybe objective facts are what we use to lay that path, but the direction it takes ultimately comes down to how we choose to perceive and use the paving slabs available to us.

It’s not that there is no meaning, it’s just that the only meaning that can feasibly matter to us is the meaning that we make. And if we don’t accept that, we’re missing out on the opportunity to make a better meaning.

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Explicit instructions

I put a sign in my sitting room above my notice board saying “breathe air, drink water, give thanks”. Last month I put a sign above my bedroom door saying “strong back, soft front, wild heart”. That one’s more poetic because it’s courtesy of Brené Brown.

I can’t say I welcome many visitors, even when we’re not in a national lockdown, but it’s the kind of thing I feel a bit sheepish about anyone seeing. Like I’m one of those people putting inane inspirational quotes around the place. Oh God, am I one step away from “live, laugh, love”??

But, to bring in yet another cliché turn of phrase, ‘out of sight, out of mind’ is a pretty big deal in my life. I do better when I externalise things. If something is important, it’s probably better if it’s in my field of vision. So I’ve adorned my walls with explicit instructions, and there are probably more to come.

The first day after I put up “breathe air, drink water, give thanks”, something upset me, and I sat there glowering at it. No. I will breathe, but I will sure as hell not breathe mindfully, which I know is what you mean. And I will not drink water, I will drink coffee, and maybe cola, to wash down the chocolate. I will watch TV and avoid paying any attention to my emotions, and you can get fucked if you think I’m going to transmute them into fucking gratitude. So shut up. I’m this fucking close to pulling you down.

We faced off for hours this way, neither of us willing to give in, and then I went to bed. And then, the next morning, there it was again, as staunch as ever. I had to admire that. And, after some rest, I had to concede it had a point, and I probably should have listened sooner.

It’s a beautiful thing when you can get called out by your wall.

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