Seeking, verifying, making, keeping and supporting friends happened a long time before Facebook ever hit the internet but social networking seems to have ruined friendships for me. I’m rubbish at anything media based but gingerly started trying to explore this new platform a few years ago. I hoped I’d be some kind of star whose words became legend and that millions of people would adore. Truth is the well of interesting chat is much, much drier than I predicted and I’m still rubbish at making friends. I spend a lot of time ruminating about my own personal Interzone (a place between my and others’ worlds where everyone else seems to know in a rather disdainful way what the fuck is going on, though William Burroughs discovered a very different version). I turned over two pages at once and missed out the life lessons on how to understand subtext, ‘do’ social play and repel criticism. But facebook promised to let me in on it all and let me live happily ever after when I mastered it. But no, I have few friends, I freeze before posting everything as I am scared of offending / looking stupid / being boring / doing it wrong. So I’m behind, out of the loop and even more paranoid as I haven’t actually managed to find and take down the site where everyone shares information and jokes on me. So I am hitting back, furiously typing my interpretations and incredulity of/at coincidences and the massive hypocrisy that is social ‘support’ for socially induced pain. Its going into the void, into oblivion, but better out than in.
Family
I have one, I love them, they love and look out for me more than I could ask. And I have seen the abyss that exists inside when family is absent from someone’s world. Love causes stress though (or there’d be no missing them or draw towards them). ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad, they don’t mean to but they do’ as Philip Larkin pointed out. I’ve always wanted to write about my life (in the hope I could make it sound interesting by forcing it through my mental processor) but I think I’d have to wait until I was dead so I could no longer be grounded / disowned / disappointing. Lots of my family have extreme emotional needs which have changed the course of their lives. Though the Irish heritage sees to it that we are a large extended family, the sad death of a much loved lynchpin of a grandmother and long-grown divisions and distance mean we seldom meet in fuller numbers. But I know we tend to share a sense of humour and a predilection for radical acceptance (eventually) of the less pleasant aspects of the lives we’ve carved out. Still I’ve gone on to have my own family whom I love dearly. Though I’m convinced I’ve screwed the kids up already and would much much prefer to live their pain than for them to stare into the void. I’m trying to hold onto the notion that love heals more than pain can hurt.
Fashion
Fashion has never been good to me and I’ve never really courted it in response. It’s always seemed unflattering or far fetched. I’m usually lagging behind by the time something seems wearable or affordable. The ‘fashion is what you look good in’ vibe is my only consolation, or would be if clothes were ever designed around tall, overweight middle aged women. Until recently however, I’ve always been able to see some good in what the kids are wearing. To belie my age however, how can retro designing 80’s pieces ever be new ground? My eye is so off I can’t even tell when someone’s outfit is now or just ill thought out. If its a new way of promoting gender equality then its a quiet revolution. Or am I just impervious to the collective unconscious? People seem to take it really seriously, though its very much a first world concern to my mind. If we have the space, time and money to worry about what we shield our forms from humanity with then we’re doing ok. As an indulgence to help us distract from the stresses of a capitalist and fame focused society, fashion might be somewhat hypocritical, given the conspicuous expense often involved in following it. It’s tempting for me to think of people as shallow for taking so seriously something so loosely connected to any of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (overheard on a bus: ‘I’m not really feeling AW 2012’) but if you have so few other worries, or the pain on the inside really is disguised by an expertly assembled outer coating then that’s all good. Its probably design 101 but why do we need fashion? To mark the development of technology, morality or industry? To stop history books looking muddly? To prevent boredom? To sell more widgets? To showcase evolution in design? If so how do revivals fit in? Have we run out of options? Of course fashion isn’t just clothes, but furnishing, food, hobbies, causes all diversify over time. Lots of people, me included, think society influences how we make sense of the world. It’s a short leap to the possibility that ‘unshared beliefs’ vary over time as well as between cultures, in the dark ages we were concerned about spirits, now it is often surveillance and technology people get caught up in worries about, though not exclusively. Is this social fashion exerting its influence over our innermost thoughts or vice versa? As a way of preparing us for the future, our unshared beliefs may be forming the sense in sensitivity. Creative leaps in other areas wouldn’t be considered madness but genius, its a fine line… With new forces being discovered in the discipline of physics, is there space to consider social forces connecting the fabric of consciousness together in unseen but suspicious ways? Could life force, synchronicity, folie a deux, deja vu and other shared mental experiences have some explanation? Answers on a post modern card please…
Forever
I’ve promised this and desired it – I thought. It might exist (time being finite is a concept I cannot fully comprehend in a manner that enables me to deploy it with any conviction). The word has come up in two main realms in my existence thus far. Predictably, love and life (length of). The struggle to accept the actual impermanence of the two forms the deep turbulence that devastated my early adulthood, and has caused tremors warning of my impending redundancy from life. Well at least the bit of my life that food, fashion and advertising court the attention of these days. I want love to last forever, though I really don’t want to live forever – possibly a slightly selfish wish then. But I don’t want to assume that love (at least of the type for and from my significant half) will carry on regardless. That way solitude lies, the closest I came to (involuntarily) decoupling from my soulmate was when I got complacent and thought I didn’t need to manage the maintenance. And living forever doesn’t appeal if I don’t know what happens later on, if we’ve nuked the planet or the sun has collapsed I’m not too sure I’d want to be hanging on and on. I’m pretty sure I’ll get sick of life at some point and will stop being avoidant of risking it. But until then I’m still glad neither of my suicide attempts have been successful, I’m still interested in what happens over the page. The kids are a shot at forever, and carry the most hope in that relatively shortly, their rockets will continue venturing forth whilst my baggage will separate off and fall back to the Earth – them venturing on alone.
Frenemies
Yes, people who I have felt obliged to pass time with that I’m not entirely sure I like. Of course I want them to like me – even though I don’t value their principles I hypocritically desire their admiration / respect. It seems neither are assured, and (nobly but ill advisedly) outing myself as a nutter has delighted the real housewives of my locality who seem to see it as a talking point. This may have kinda been my intention but the talking was supposed to be to with me and enlightening rather than between themselves and frightening. But ‘cos of the kids I kept rolling up to the parties and playdates despite a felt sense of not being welcome and definitely not having fun. It took a while for the cogs to turn into place but, eventually I decided I’d rather not have my kids see and learn hypocrisy and fakery. I mostly don’t want them to learn to be cruel which to my mind is what happens when you switch off to what another person is thinking and feeling. Rocking up to events people don’t really want you at because they can’t have a real conversation with you leaves an empty space ripe for occupation by self-loathing and thinly veiled lies about how good it is to see you. Imagining what is going through the other’s mind at this juncture is not recommended. But fatally addictive.
Future
The far off place you never get to, which I seem to spend too much time trying to improve anyway. Delaying gratification, denying rewards and comforts in the now so that they;ll be sweeter, juicier and more appreciated in the distant time that’s out of reach of now. I don’t deserve to rest on my laurels and stop working to build it up just yet. But I’ll probably know i when I get there…though it meaning that my life is done might just take the shine off it now I come to think of it. Am I sacrificing the present for that?
PsychCoblog 