Autonomy

My philosophy (pretty much conclusively, actually) is that if you're not busy doing or saying something important, you should be concentrating your efforts on listening, and learning. So I'm always "learning", even when I'm supposed to be busy doing things. And I say things more or less by accident, except for when I force myself to write, like here.

This is going to be one of those tangential posts I warned you about in the title of this blog and in the introductory post but then never really delivered. I am a total mess, and I would like to now try and explore this mess, in as unmethodical a way as possible.

William Wordsworth wrote a poem once. It was called Ruth, about a six-year-old of the same name, and a stanza from it got me focused for a while the other day on what was upsetting me:


"Beneath her father's roof, alone
She seemed to live; her thoughts her own;
Herself her own delight;
Pleased with herself, nor sad, nor gay;
And, passing thus the live-long day,
She grew to woman's height."


I like the fact her whole childhood is spent in this reclusive independence - that she never recovers from the insult (her mother's just died and been replaced); I like the matter-of-fact way in which it's presented. To me she's a heroic figure, a little reminiscent of Vincent (bottom of page) in terms of her blunt unwillingness to "accept" reality at the price of rejecting parts of herself.

Edgar Allan Poe himself (who features prominently in Vincent) seems a very good example of what I'm talking about. His claim to fame was, apparently, his mastery of the recurring themes of the macabre, mystery, and melancholy in his stories. But, read today, his terror tales are quaint, his whodunnits frankly stupid, and his stories of human misery, though not exactly unaffecting, more noteworthy for their general grandiloquence. Or maybe that's just me.

In any case, he gives the distinct impression of a young boy very excited about his ability to use big words, show off his deductive skills and tell scary stories over the campfire with the flashlight half under his chin. In other words, he gives enthusiastic voice to what most of us adults only secretly want to do, both by what he conveys and by what he occupies his time with, much like Vincent, and Ruth.

These people, more often fictional than not, truly inspire me. And the thing is, it's not so obvious that I shouldn't be one of them. I was a prime example of everything this represents until about the age of 14. I had something of a crisis of identity when I discovered that other people and my effect on them are part of what makes me who I am, and have spent most of my time since trying anxiously to make sure I notice people, and their reactions to me, hence the "listening" I mentioned earlier.

But the truth is I can't do it. I don't particularly care about "people". I'm not talking about misanthropy - or I guess if the previous sentence was misread the way I mean I'd actually be implying sociopathy, so not that either - but about the level of attention and place in my heart for the reactions of the anonymous collective, of strangers, of "the general public", of any group. I couldn't give a flying fuck. It's probably inborn. I can't help not giving two shits about facile appraisals of my character and conduct. That's why it never makes any impact no matter how positive and is so extraordinarily simple to deflect when it isn't. It's all just a mental construct, with no impetus of its own, kept alive purely on my stupidity.

The idea behind writing this blog was to inch in the direction of presenting myself - of introducing myself, really - through what makes me who I am rather than what makes me easy for other people to deal with. I think the mistake was in the decision to go in inches. It's not a question of balance, like people keep telling me. You don't divide your life between being alive and pleasing other people. The situations that require outright fakery are rare and extreme. A lot of the time you'll obscure the truth or embellish it because it seems useful to get a certain reaction out of people, but it's almost never something you owe them. You do and say what you want and refrain from doing or saying that which you don't.

Basically, fuck everybody.

Image

This is sort of new. I'm restless, so I'm trying to write it out to get myself back together, rather than with a real idea of what I want to say. The newness is that it's going to the blog rather than to another of my overwritten notebooks.

I was speaking to a friend yesterday, about the usual topic - individualism vs. others' perceptions and expectations - and at one point, presumably when I was beginning to bore him, he said "I reckon you just choose a personality and stick to it."

Which I thought then was a kind of bland "stay true to yourself" statement - because how can you "choose" a personality? You only have one in the first place - but later what I thought he meant (and it doesn't even matter if he didn't because it's an interesting thought) was that you choose an image and cultivate it exclusively.

This is a very new concept to me because pretty much since I remember myself I've been in denial of the fact that my image - people's perception of me - matters to me. It always felt like an affront to my indepedence; "What do you mean I need people to approve of me? No I don't!"

And I'm still not sure I do, but if I care about people at all, I care about their relationship to me, and if I care about their relationship to me, I need their perception of me to be representative, even if it can never be %100 accurate. I need to be recognised, in both senses of the word.

And I think, or I guess agree, finally, that this effort to represent yourself needs to be, if not exactly engineered, then deliberate. You have to stop and ask yourself "how am I being perceived by people right now?" which is an idea I still find deterrent, but which I think I'll need to try and get used to. The idea is to exaggerate your own characteristics, as it were, so as to both facilitate your relationships with people and strengthen your sense of identity. If people knew, for example, how embarrassingly much I loved Neil Young, this would make me an immeasurably healthier and happier person. And this is probably news to nobody but myself, but I'm still having trouble swallowing the concept.

In relation to this, or possibly not, I noticed today - or it bothered me today - that I have no professional pride, and no professional excitement. It is true, of course, that I am not exactly a professional, but even just the other guys in the apartment, who are also only doing one or two years of qualification-less national service, seem very anxious to do what they're doing well, because - I think - they perceive their work as being part of who they are, which kind of makes sense, considering that it is completely fucking voluntary.

It's not even true to say that I'm bored at work. I've been finding it very intriguing, but I feel more like a passive observer of a sociological experiment (it's a kindergarten) than an active participant, even when I'm actively participating.

It's to do with considering what I do with people as separate from me. The work I'm doing is terrible? Okay, it's just work I happen to be doing - it couldn't possibly say anything about me as a worker. I'm as good a worker as I feel I am. Sure.

Your image is the rubber of the balloon. While it is true that it's mainly about the air, if there's no rubber to contain it then it's kind of a futile exercise. Just walking around breathing on people isn't nearly as pleasant. The air is the content, but the fact that you choose to pack it inside of the rubber is what tells the person you're giving it to that you love them. It's like the gift and the gift package. Saying it's only about the gift is kind of cold.

If you care about people then you owe it to them to attribute meaning to your interactions with them, and to consider who you are with them who you are as a person. It's not about trying to impress them. It's about respecting them enough to recognise them as part of your life. It's not about what they say or even think about you; it's about how they experience you. Less good/bad than real/fake.

And after so much inane babble, you deserve some Neil Young.