Have you ever seen a spirited conversation of hand gestures and agreements in a crowded, noisy restaurant, and then suddenly had the realization that that conversation is not happening because it's actually impossible for either party to hear? You suddenly find that both parties are essentially talking to themselves, but loudly pantomiming agreement, while maybe capturing every third word in their partner's parallel monologue. And you find that they are both doing little other than grooming dances and pretending to have a conversation, and that instead of accepting that all the noise makes human connection virtually impossible, we as human beings feel compelled to pretend everything is alright, and that we're making real in-roads in another person's life, and that someone else is making in-roads into ours, even though such in-roads are impossible.
Similarly: Have you ever gone to a bar or a party and found that no one was actually talking to one another, that people were drinking purely to get drunk, that the whole "social" experience was just cascading shouts and laughs, was not a comfortable conversation at any point, was not even an uncomfortable conversation, but simply a place to go and exist with other people that are also existing?
No? Maybe you've never had these experiences. If not, I'd kindly advise you to smile and nod and pretend you have for the rest of this piece.... Go on, I'll wait for you to pretend to have these experiences. Look, this paragraph is a really high-concept joke, so let's just pretend I deployed it correctly, and in return you can call me a sociopath for this and the prior paragraph, and move on.
But I do have a point. No, I'm not saying all social experiences boil down to cheap facsimile, obviously not. And I love to have a good conversation with people. But I've also learned that if social experience doesn't take place in a reasonably quiet or individually actualizing setting, it's little better than joining a cult for three hours, subsuming your will to the big, dumb collective which inevitably forms in the absence of individual voices. Now, don't get me wrong, there's something to be said for simply existing, but in a social way. But it also feels like what is being placated more than anything else in larger groups... is the illusion of loneliness, is the illusion that you're apart from others... And the solution is itself an illusion... is the illusion of direct social contact, the illusion that you're together with others, even if you can't hear them say a word. It comforts us to know that they're alive and so are you and that you're in a space together. And all the rest is window dressing on this experiential fact.
That's kind of beautiful, but it's not my thing. And yet, I feel like I'm introverted, and (according to friends) anti-social for feeling this way all the time... that it's not alright to kill time, that it's not alright to just exist with others, that when you're in that precious confluence when people could potentially connect, you have to try to build something with or for them, even if it's only ephemeral jokes or ideas, or you should leave and individually create something. In short I find insufferable most "going through the motions" social interactions that extend past a minute or so. When someone says "This is a lame party." or "This is a good party." I honestly don't even know how to react! See, I don't even know what a real standard for a party is, because my standard is... "This is somehow actualizing and validating and creative" or "This is hell on Earth... everyone's wasting my precious time and I'm wasting theirs." How can it be a good party if I haven't heard about someone else's experiences or shared me own? How can it be a bad party, how can the people be lame, if I can't even hear them share their lameness with me, if I can't even hear their terrible jokes?
Anyway, when I was in high school we'd have LAN parties, and I'm starting to realize that while I had a great time, it was only because there was time and space and it was reasonably quiet, so that we could have a good, collaborative (and competitive!) experience. And while I always had a great time, there was a nagging wrinkle in these parties that I'm suddenly brought back to: After about five hours I had to actively decide to shut the hell up, because at some point a conversation with me is so eerily substantive and filled with the impulse to create... even a dumb joke... and suddenly, I was starting to wear on other people. I was too direct, too wordy, too filled with in-your-face loud substance that I'd demand others engage with, and finally people would snap or they would ignore me. Granted, it's not like it bugged me, because (just like a walk-on player in sports) playing time is playing time, you know? That didn't bug me and still doesn't. And guess what, it's not the end of the world if you wear on someone after 5 hours, and before things wore down, it was a great time, so great that I still remember some of it. But... what does bug me is the nagging feeling that a lot of people want to live in many of their social interactions at that past-five-hours point, when suddenly we're too tired and too drunk and just a bit irascible, to the point where we just don't want to engage creative thoughts, where we just want to have unengaged, banal conversations so insipid that they might as well just turn up the music wherever you are, because you're not saying anything worth hearing, because the most important part of the conversation is that there is a conversation at all. That has always bugged me whenever I've seen it. And I don't think it's so uncommon.
Most people have a story to tell, have things to tell that make them interesting, but the more I talk to people, I start to wonder if a lot of us aren't really suffering with how we deal with people - no matter how normal and social I've been trained to see others as - feeling that we truly don't have a story to tell, or that our story is not worth hearing, that other people are more interesting than we are and that we are frauds. That we totally lack authenticity or coolness or are awful people to be around. But, despite this, we need other people to be around (even if they're just as insecure as we are, under the surface) or at least we need the facsimile of social contact. And so the equilibrium point is to go through the motions but never to cut too deep. To laugh at and with others but never to engage them as individuals fully (or, if we're being honest, to engage so little it barely qualifies as engagement). To have that facsimile and have it convincingly, dammit!
Look, I'm not any happier than other people (and I'm not writing this out of bitterness but because it's genuinely mystifying to me), and I've always been way more insecure than maybe you guys have picked up on about my ability to communicate and the substance of my writing. I've felt like throwing up after writing pieces pretty frequently, even if they're pretty good, just because I'm worried about their reception. I'm hardly some sort of unvarnished or indifferent writer.* I love to write and edit and re-write and all that, but everything after that is the stuff of vomit and caffeinated nerves. But in the end, I do put things out there.
(*For example, this is making me sick to read through a second time, because I'm sure I'll come off so hopelessly neurotic and different from others and judgmental that no one will ever want to talk to me again that reads this. Every time I try to talk about this someone points out how different I am from other people. Every time. But then, so what? Why am I so afraid of that conversation? Why am I so anxious about whether I come off as smug? Who really cares? The truth is that there isn't any reasoning behind the anxiety. It's just irrational.)
And the more I talk to people, the more I realize that a whole lot of people write a whole lot of things and are afraid to share them even in a private setting, or, worse, think a whole lot of things and are afraid to write them, or, worst of all, experience a whole lot of things and are afraid to think about them. And suddenly I don't feel so anti-social. Suddenly I don't feel so creative. Suddenly I don't feel so introverted.
Suddenly I don't feel so different.
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