Some practices I've been trying to abate my sense of alienation from others:
- Write others words onto parts of my world, make them present in my room
- Feel my heartbeat, and remind myself that others have one, too
need more
I feel like I've spent a couple years kind of intellectually or emotionally bankrupting myself trying to appreciate the sensory and immediate world at the expense of my internal world, and so it is through the particular that I've sought to understand the world around me, often to the expense of understanding the general: A fascination with cooking and the appreciation dishes, the textures of textiles, bark, leaves, scents of tea, eucalyptus, sounds of guitars, voices, birds - music is the quickening art - a warm fire, a cool breeze, stale rain in the air; moongazing at 2 AM.
My manner of speech can be laconic, quiet, restrained, I'm too focused on falling into a trance, observing certain things, finding ways to dance around the environment I inhabit, but forever as an observer, never an actor, haunting spaces as a ghost does, half of a presence, never the weight of a real body, only it's afterimage. I think this is a product of my approach to things as primarily sensory.
I used to recede into my thoughts a lot, before this, I think. I became like this because I hated feeling so dissociated, but I have all these methods of escaping that and feeling present in the world that it should be safe to feel again.
It's central effect on me, I worry, has been an intense solipsism, because to experience the world as a kaleidescope of senses is a very personalized experience, and whilst one may include others in those experiences, I did not have that, and so I have often felt alone in my sensory experiences, and alone generally.
I was reading the wikipedia page about Simone Weil today. I felt I wanted to be like her. I worry this desire is somewhat performative, because I'll see something like Camus' comment about her being a great spirit, and I feel that is something I want to achieve, and so I am playing into the idea of someone I could be, and emulating this character or narrative about something, rather than that simply being a quality or virtue of my condition as it is, of the way I have chosen to conduct myself.
I worry this permeates a lot of how I conduct myself in the world, and the ways in which I pursue them, and the narcissism of that approach. It doesn't mean I can't admire someone, but I want to do so in a very other-centered way that emphasizes their traits and qualities without making a narrative of it. I hope I can do so.
It seemed like every song we listened to spoke to every experience had, no matter how awful or beautiful it seemed, there were lyrics for every single thing we said to eachother, no matter how abusive or loving.
I'd call it magical thinking when you told me that the coincidences seemed scary, and I'd know obviously that these people had their own lives, that the world and it's art didn't coalesce around us, no matter how much it seem that it did, but I saw the same signs you did, the songs spoke to me just as they spoke to you, and I would think of how strange it was that fragments of what happened here had happened elsewhere, between a thousand other people, how it would come to lyrics-- as that animal magnetism, that electrochemistry, that spark, everything between us that short circuited, in a way, wasn't all that special; that things fall apart, that people hurt one another in familiar ways, that people hurt themselves in familiar ways, that love dies in familiar ways, that I wasn't alone in this, no matter how romantic it seemed to think that way.
Maybe you thought that I simply didn't notice the lyrics, but that's not true. I heard every word, I just didn't want to listen.
https://teensuicide.bandcamp.com/track/death-wish
We held hands and stared at eachother. All the lyrics swirled around. Love is a beautiful thing. I might never see you again.
art nurtures empathy
because i dont really experience the things that people in fiction or film or music do
but sometimes i experience those things
so when i see the things i dont know, then i can know people who do
and when i see the things i do know, then i can know the person i am
i read a long time ago that art was a form of seeking recognition
and more cynical people might call it a form of seeking attention
but recognition is different because we are all very lonely in our heads
since we are severed from others, and so it is hard to know them, to be with them
and so emotional connections are ways in which we repair this fracture
if only for a short while
and just being seen is not enough to connect with someone
i think that love is not just to be seen, but to be touched
in a way that makes you lose yourself
because when we are in our heads, and are lonely, we cope with our daydreams and fantasies, like really big movies
and when someone else pulls us away from this, we can't just be in ourselves, and are then helpless but to be drawn into another
like an oasis in a desert, I drowned
For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.