Sociability, Art, and Loneliness
One of several things I appreciate about the Midwest is how friendly people are. In turn, I have become friendlier - here I've learned how to smile and nod at people when I encounter them in the public sphere. In southern California, I was mostly locked into my own world, as are most southern Californians; a state of mind reflected in our unfriendly eyes and faces chiseled in arrogant molds, while striding with imperious gaits. Perhaps I ruthlessly generalize southern Californians, and perhaps I've read too many Bret Easton Ellis novels or watched too many L.A.-based reality TV shows. Perhaps. But there is at least a minimum of plausibility in what I'm saying. I lived in California for 32 years, seven (so far) in the Midwest. I have enough anecdotal experience to make these claims, I think.
On a related note
regarding sociability, I've been thinking lately that I feel lonely, sometimes, because I am not able to discuss the literary, visual, and musical artifacts that absorb my attention. I get excited about a particular phrase, concept, image, musical movement, or dramatic situation--chuckling with pleasure--only to look up and realize that I have no one to share these moments with or the content that triggered them.
I am not antisocial or a stereotypical "geek". In fact, I can literally adapt myself to any social situation (except perhaps one involving the Flat Earth Society) and most people in my life would affirm that I am effective in managing social circles so as to maximize cohesion. I like being in the role of gentleman host. I'm good at it. Though an introvert at heart, I enjoy moving through the social world but only if I know that this social movement is calculated to occur within specified (meaning, delimited) times. Knowing that there is a (specific) time and place for social
vibage enables me to expertly moonwalk and do the locomotion, so to speak, at these events.
This is all to say that I'm far from being a book nerd or social misfit.
Why do I feel lonely? Because as much as I gamely enter into other individuals' experience and ably gear groups toward smooth social interaction, few people venture to try to enter my literary and cultural worlds. It's not that I wish to constantly hold court with respect to my literary and intellectual interests. It's that I sometimes want someone to engage me and ask relevant questions, even questions having little to do with content, like, "So, why do you like Charles Dickens?" or "Why are you drawn to stories of revenge?" It's not so much that I want a fellow reader of classics to ask me questions: I merely want people to express curiosity about my internal world. I honestly attempt to do exactly this with other people.
Perhaps it's a self-generated perception, but I have the impression that intense interest in intellectual and 'high' cultural artifacts is considered pretentious at worst, odd at best. A friend suggested that people may be intimidated by these kinds of interests and my ability to cogently discuss them. If this is the case even part of the time, the distance between my love for people and how they perceive me, would be great indeed. It's almost tragic.
I'll conclude with two thoughts. One is a scenario that came unbidden to me and that satisfyingly responds to this experience of loneliness but in the context of romantic love. I suddenly thought, after looking up from my happy reading of _Anna Karenina_, "The woman I marry will be the one who smiles happily while entering the room where I'm reading Tolstoy's novel, and eases herself into my arms, lays her lovely head on my chest, and asks, 'Why do you like that book so much?'"[I can almost see this cinematically, the camera pulling slowly away from this intimate moment lit by the glow of a shaded lamp as she giggles at something I've said and she tucks her legs under herself more comfortably and I laugh too. Then I lean slightly forward to quietly kiss her forehead as the scene fades to black.)
The other thought is simply that writing helps to ease the constant and poignant reflection on this special kind of loneliness - special because I don't feel depressed and I like my life and don't feel lonely at work or in my church community; and as I've stated, I like people and can fit in mostly everywhere (except maybe at a party thrown by a Pet Rock Club). Yet this singular mode of loneliness is activated by reminders that there are few--close to none--people who care to enter my literary innerscapes and intellectual avian park where ideas of all kinds fly overhead, cluster in the shrubs and trees, and tweet in my ear and perch on my shoulder and trill haunting otherworldly music. (There's also a Victorian gazebo with spacious seating and an air of thick pastness.)
Overwrought - like the intricate ornamental designs in the circling trellised gazebo walls, I should add - though these metaphorical descriptions may be--I note that at this precise moment in time, as I type, I like them!--the larger point is that writing about this loneliness in a way administers a healing balm.
I plan to do more of it.
On a related note
regarding sociability, I've been thinking lately that I feel lonely, sometimes, because I am not able to discuss the literary, visual, and musical artifacts that absorb my attention. I get excited about a particular phrase, concept, image, musical movement, or dramatic situation--chuckling with pleasure--only to look up and realize that I have no one to share these moments with or the content that triggered them.
I am not antisocial or a stereotypical "geek". In fact, I can literally adapt myself to any social situation (except perhaps one involving the Flat Earth Society) and most people in my life would affirm that I am effective in managing social circles so as to maximize cohesion. I like being in the role of gentleman host. I'm good at it. Though an introvert at heart, I enjoy moving through the social world but only if I know that this social movement is calculated to occur within specified (meaning, delimited) times. Knowing that there is a (specific) time and place for social
vibage enables me to expertly moonwalk and do the locomotion, so to speak, at these events.
This is all to say that I'm far from being a book nerd or social misfit.
Why do I feel lonely? Because as much as I gamely enter into other individuals' experience and ably gear groups toward smooth social interaction, few people venture to try to enter my literary and cultural worlds. It's not that I wish to constantly hold court with respect to my literary and intellectual interests. It's that I sometimes want someone to engage me and ask relevant questions, even questions having little to do with content, like, "So, why do you like Charles Dickens?" or "Why are you drawn to stories of revenge?" It's not so much that I want a fellow reader of classics to ask me questions: I merely want people to express curiosity about my internal world. I honestly attempt to do exactly this with other people.
Perhaps it's a self-generated perception, but I have the impression that intense interest in intellectual and 'high' cultural artifacts is considered pretentious at worst, odd at best. A friend suggested that people may be intimidated by these kinds of interests and my ability to cogently discuss them. If this is the case even part of the time, the distance between my love for people and how they perceive me, would be great indeed. It's almost tragic.
I'll conclude with two thoughts. One is a scenario that came unbidden to me and that satisfyingly responds to this experience of loneliness but in the context of romantic love. I suddenly thought, after looking up from my happy reading of _Anna Karenina_, "The woman I marry will be the one who smiles happily while entering the room where I'm reading Tolstoy's novel, and eases herself into my arms, lays her lovely head on my chest, and asks, 'Why do you like that book so much?'"[I can almost see this cinematically, the camera pulling slowly away from this intimate moment lit by the glow of a shaded lamp as she giggles at something I've said and she tucks her legs under herself more comfortably and I laugh too. Then I lean slightly forward to quietly kiss her forehead as the scene fades to black.)
The other thought is simply that writing helps to ease the constant and poignant reflection on this special kind of loneliness - special because I don't feel depressed and I like my life and don't feel lonely at work or in my church community; and as I've stated, I like people and can fit in mostly everywhere (except maybe at a party thrown by a Pet Rock Club). Yet this singular mode of loneliness is activated by reminders that there are few--close to none--people who care to enter my literary innerscapes and intellectual avian park where ideas of all kinds fly overhead, cluster in the shrubs and trees, and tweet in my ear and perch on my shoulder and trill haunting otherworldly music. (There's also a Victorian gazebo with spacious seating and an air of thick pastness.)
Overwrought - like the intricate ornamental designs in the circling trellised gazebo walls, I should add - though these metaphorical descriptions may be--I note that at this precise moment in time, as I type, I like them!--the larger point is that writing about this loneliness in a way administers a healing balm.
I plan to do more of it.