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Monday, June 10, 2013
Friday, June 7, 2013
Some thoughts on solitude and art.
There is this troubling phenomena which I have noticed occurring at a greater rate in my life over the past two years or so. Without getting overly ornate it is like people are removing themselves from my life. Even friends that are close by are hard to get a hold of or see and friends that are far away might as not exist. This is not terribly unusual for post-college from what I have heard and in many instances being removed form certain people is not a bad thing. Toxic friendships after all are great to see go. What is troubling though is the way in which people tend to snub these little attempts at connection or reaches out that I try to make from time to time. I try not to take these personally and it may be a PNW thing, but it happens so often that I can't help but get at least a little concerned. I think this has hit me a little harder since I lost my job and spend most of my time at home writing and may in large part my trying to get over the large amount of solitude that I have now. Many of my friends have at least mildly demanding jobs but it has come to the point that getting a hold of some friends at any time is nearly impossible.
It occurred to me yesterday that so many of the things that I love about the world (nature comes to mind first but there are surely others) are enhanced to a great degree by other's exposition on them. In this case I was thinking about nature, and the beauty of woods or mountains and how I also like reading about the beauty of nature. It then occurred to me that many times the actual beauty of nature is actually less than the description or exposition of the beauty. In that way the writer's (or filmmaker's or whatever's) description is what is really beautiful. So in this way a large portion of the things that I like about the world, specifically those things which i have only read about or experienced through media or art, are actually just filled in by others. Since I consider these things that I admire or find beautiful to be a large portion of what makes up my identity then by extension a large portion of what makes up my identity is in fact fully formed by others, but in this sneaky round about way.
Is this increasingly small social world just part of the shift to adulthood? It again just seems like a lot of people are ignoring me and I have it in my head that if it seems like rest of the world is ['something', like 'insane', or 'rude' or 'ignoring you'] then it means that you are in fact the one who is insane. With this shift I am getting more and more friends with whom I am connected only through the internet. Every time I call someone and it does not get returned or an e-mail goes unanswered or a message unacknowledged i feel like I am sinking deeper and deeper into this pit of nonexistance.
There are kind of two separate ideas here but there are connected in my head to a certain degree. It's just this kind of growing solipsism which is connected to a correlated loss of my own identity or myself. I wouldn't say that this in pathological (yet) but it feels sort of Kafkaesque, this reaching out to people and being ignored with no explanation. Again I admit it is most likely a combination of my neuroticism, some coincidences et c. but solitude does wierd things to your head, namely pushes you further into it and going to art to solve solitude can be a mixed blessing as you are often escaping through other isolated people.
It occurred to me yesterday that so many of the things that I love about the world (nature comes to mind first but there are surely others) are enhanced to a great degree by other's exposition on them. In this case I was thinking about nature, and the beauty of woods or mountains and how I also like reading about the beauty of nature. It then occurred to me that many times the actual beauty of nature is actually less than the description or exposition of the beauty. In that way the writer's (or filmmaker's or whatever's) description is what is really beautiful. So in this way a large portion of the things that I like about the world, specifically those things which i have only read about or experienced through media or art, are actually just filled in by others. Since I consider these things that I admire or find beautiful to be a large portion of what makes up my identity then by extension a large portion of what makes up my identity is in fact fully formed by others, but in this sneaky round about way.
Is this increasingly small social world just part of the shift to adulthood? It again just seems like a lot of people are ignoring me and I have it in my head that if it seems like rest of the world is ['something', like 'insane', or 'rude' or 'ignoring you'] then it means that you are in fact the one who is insane. With this shift I am getting more and more friends with whom I am connected only through the internet. Every time I call someone and it does not get returned or an e-mail goes unanswered or a message unacknowledged i feel like I am sinking deeper and deeper into this pit of nonexistance.
There are kind of two separate ideas here but there are connected in my head to a certain degree. It's just this kind of growing solipsism which is connected to a correlated loss of my own identity or myself. I wouldn't say that this in pathological (yet) but it feels sort of Kafkaesque, this reaching out to people and being ignored with no explanation. Again I admit it is most likely a combination of my neuroticism, some coincidences et c. but solitude does wierd things to your head, namely pushes you further into it and going to art to solve solitude can be a mixed blessing as you are often escaping through other isolated people.
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