Connection

There, he mounts a high tower in his mind, and looks out far and wide. Many solitary figures he perceives, creeping through the streets; many solitary figures out on heaths, and roads, and lying under haystacks. But the figure that he seeks, is not among them. Other solitaries he perceives, in nooks of bridges, looking over; and in shadowed places down by the river's level; and a dark, dark, shapeless object drifting with the tide, more solitary than all, clings with a drowning hold on his attention. 

     Where is she? Living or dead, where is she? If, as he folds the handkerchief and carefully puts it up, it were able, with an enchanted power, to bring before him the place where she found it, and the night landscape near the cottage where ti covered the little child, would he descry her there? On the waste, where the brick-kilns are burning with a pale blue flare; where the straw-roofs of the wretched huts in which the bricks are made, are being scattered by the wind; where the clay and water are hard frozen, and the mill in which the gaunt blind horse goes round all day, looks like an instrument of human torture; — traversing this deserted blighted spot, there is a lonely figure with the sad world to itself, pelted by the snow and driven by the wind, and cast out, it would seem, from all companionship. It is the figure of a woman, too; but it is miserably dressed, and no such clothes ever came through the hall, and out at the great door, of the Dedlock mansion.

(Charles Dickens, Bleak House, end of Ch. 56.)

 ("Eleanor Rigby")

("Another Hundred People")

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I admit to visions; oh, not of the kind where burning wheels-within-wheels accompanied by freaks of nature tow in a God with the dramatic sensibilities of Andrew Lloyd Webber: They are, rather, image-dramatic responses to my thoughts, my ponderings; I am nothing if not metaphorical. Two common visions I have are concerned with connections, one of a dispersed web, the other of a central focus. The first, the older, is of some nondescript transportation network (why yes, I am fascination by such systems). Frequently, though, I will give this network a more definite form as I imagine the layout of the St. Louis area, seeing from aloft like a satellite image. The other vision, even more abstract, was born out of both my thinkings-through of certain current projects, and an interest in astrophysics: it is of some kind of astral matter, circling, writhing, and throbbing around some unknown center. They are imaginings of two kinds of connections, one of links between more-or-less separate points, the other of links from several points to one center; the former of independent identities, the latter of interdependent ones.

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We're the other nation anthem, folks,

the ones that can't get in to the ballpark

Spread the word!...

There's another national anthem, folks,

for those who never win: 

for the suckers, for the pikers,

for the ones who might have been.

(Stephen Sondheim, "Another National Anthem," Assassins)

Bifil that in that seson, on a day,

In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay,

Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage

To Caunterbury, with ful devout corage,

At nyght were come into that hostelrye

Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye

Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle

In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle,

That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde.

(Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, Prologue 19-27)

("La Vie Boheme")

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To this day I remember a little line from a hilarious TV show that was on, I think, when I was in middle school: Titus, a vehicle for the comedian Christopher Titus (if you don't know him or the show, check them out). He would interpolate commentary between the scripted action, and in one of them he said "normal people scare me." To be a bit frank, all people scare me, to varying extents, though confidence in its different forms, such as "liquid courage," have helped. What is "normalcy?" We can speak of normative behaviors, for example, and mean objectively behaviors that can be observed and defined across a broad spectrum, but when we say "normal," it is a subjective stance, usually with the implication of what should be observed and defined; even more so, when used in the negative, as in "that's not normal." Too many people, even today, run around like Old Testament gods, interchanging "abnormal" and "unnatural," condemning any and all behavior that is seeming condemnable. This cuts off sectors of people from each other, obviously, but this is more than missed connections: unsuccessful people, seen to be at fault for their state, are cut off, disenfranchised; they can't get into the ballpark, if for no other reason than they can't afford the tickets. Then there are the "freaks," "weirdos," "monster," those who are what they are, and they are cut off from those who are not what they wish they were. It is this separation, this quartering, that is "abnormal," "unnatural," for the scatterings of the universe, to have made the universe as it is, interacted in bump-'n'-go fashion, another billions and billions of particles colliding endlessly.

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From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were—I have not seen

As others saw—I could not bring

My passions from a common spring—

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow—I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone—

And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—

Then—in my childhood—in the dawn

Of a most stormy life—was drawn

From ev’ry depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still—

From the torrent, or the fountain—

From the red cliff of the mountain—

From the sun that ’round me roll’d

In its autumn tint of gold—

From the lightning in the sky

As it pass’d me flying by—

From the thunder, and the storm—

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view—

(Edgar Allen Poe, "Alone")

Let's let the world go its own way. If you, my dear love, want things as I do, let's not allow anything to drag us away from the path on which we know we must go. I mean the direction of my art. Let's leave the competition to the others. But let's grasp our art with a tremendous grip.(Jean Sibelius, letter to Aino Sibelius, November 10, 1911)

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,

ché la diritta via era smarrita.

Halfway through our journey through life

I found my own self in darkened woods,

The path straight-forward having been lost. 

(Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno 1:1-3)

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If The Shining taught us anything, it's that Stephen King should not be trusted with movie adaptations of his books—Kubrick's version is much better than the King-approved TV one. More to the point here, it shows what nutters isolation(ism) can make of us ("All work and no play make Jack a dull boy."). For example, a person long enough on their own will likely reach the confirmation of their own infallibility, and that dammit, they're the only ones who can fix, say, healthcare, of the "Jewish problem" [note: there is no "Jewish problem"]. Prolonged solitude is a flood plain of egotism, solipsism, and delusions of grandeur—but this is hardly news. Technology has given uf the wonderful predicament of public displays of loneliness, allowing us to waste time on listicles of cats making listicles about the meat-workings of internet denizens, and then share this with our adoring crowds of barely remembered Facebook friends, who are too busy themselves with blog posting about the possibilities of casting Breaking Bad with cats. I wax a touch cynical, and think we will find a balance once we learn to handle this technological onslaught. But I bring up my own sarcastic ramblings as an example of the fogeyism du jour, tirades against technology, though this is an incredibly long jour, as I'm sure the first tool-using cavemen were denounced as heretics. Why should social media receive especial scorn and scrutiny? Because we use it too much? Well, okay, but too much of anything is bad for you. Maybe because that's not how it was done in the old days? Certainly, we are bound by things originating in time immemorial, like a need to eat and mothers guilting us for not calling them, but successive generations add and remove as necessity sees fit, and I'm afraid, folks, that social media are here to stay (for a while). Yet, so should old media: books, letters, this thing called a date in which people speak to each other using the circuitry in their heads and not in their overly-priced iPhones. The human body seems to love more tactile interactions, and unless you have an incredible sensitivity to light waves, the digital realm comes up lacking. But I'm going on a long tangent to get where I really want to be, so I'm just going to jump there. Art and literature and music. So much is said in our diversion-hungry culture about losing ourselves in, say, a book or a song (if we lose ourselves in even these things anymore); I'm more interested in finding oneself, but even more intrigued by doing both. All journeys are truly taken alone, and wind up with a return home, but a home retrieved with a certain alienated majesty; that's a glorious way to say "experience casts the things we use to take for granted in a different light and we therefore appreciate it anew, should it be worth appreciating at all." Which brings me back to Poe. Youthful angst tends to hitch our tastes to works whose earnestness masks their shoddy and dreadful quality; nostalgia in later years will then either take the form of defiant embarrassment, an avant-garde triple-dog dare of shield against anyone presuming to point out that we were once young, because we fear, and indeed know, they are right; or such fond remembrance will prove that "absence makes the heart grow fonder." Wait—you still like Pokémon? Never mind, then... Whatever the case, character is a constant episodic agon, stepping from one monument to the next; here, a monument may be an event, a thing, a work, any hinge upon which new doors are opened. Any embarrassments we have suffered are permanent marks, and add to our definition: we can no more expunge an offense from our record and claim our record was then never affected than we can remove an arm and claim our body was never altered, that we always had one arm. Poe was an awful writer, but I once admired his works because they met the needs of my childish emotions. Then my heart grew, my mind grew, and like stepping stone to stone as one tests a stream, I moved on with strength to better works. (By the way, if that makes me seem like a pompous, pretentious ass, fine: I think any English-speaker past puberty can find any number of works more appropriate than Poe, who never met an obscure and deadening synonym he didn't like.) In trying to cross this current, one may take advie, one may follow another's path (indeed, may need to on some parts of the way), but the stones are not such that more than one person can use them simultaneously. I may be open to my friends' suggestions on books, music, etc. (well, more open), may try some or them out, may even like some of the works, but close to all of the things I hold most dear I found on my own, or refound alone after an initial flirtation with one of these suggestions; perhaps more correctly, the works found me. I don't believe in fate, that I was meant to happen upon, oh, The Divine Comedy, because of preordained expectation. Rather, memory and crisis are co-conspirators, the latter creating an opening that needs to be filled, and the former insinuating what might achieve that. That is why one should accept advice but rarely follow it: there will come a time, maybe, when the situation will arise when you will need it, and there it will be, filed under its appropriate catalog. Like Joshu' fittin' the battle of Jericho, these things that people tell us, to try x solution or try y band, need to circle around a bit before our defensive wall will fall. And they need to fall by ourselves. Character is journey, and since journeys are essentially alone, character must be forged out of solitude.

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 ("Means the right to expect that you'll have an effect, that you're gonna

connect! Connect! Connect! Connect!")

Spent the evening with the symphony. The disposition of the themes: with all its mystery and fascination, this is the important thing. It is as if God the Father had thrown down mosaic pieces from heaven's floor and asked me to put them back as they were.

(Jean Sibelius, diary entry in April, 1915)

"All roads lead to Rome."

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To get to Rome, I must go to Rome. Should I be in Venice, I cannot say I am in Rome because there lies open a direct connection between the the cities; that would like saying that since today leads into tomorrow, that it is already the next day now. I must travel, and in traveling I make the connection

Romance can be only with incomplete information; it blossoms out of an engagement with discovery. Knowledge/wisdom is like romance in the latter sense, but needs ever more and clearer data to thrive better. Love and thought are—must be—linked, and so with art and science. Philos and sophia are united only by active engagement, not by passive acceptance, and certainly not through prideful divorce. 

It is not as important how connections are made, but that we are either open to them at all, or should we be forced open to them, that we meet them matched and directly. The relationships I have—with friends, family, art, and food—are more or less accidents: life jostled us together, and like a solar furnace crafting elements, a bond was made. Yet, I myself—so reticent, shy, rather inept at conversation—so understandingly internalize this unopenness to connection that these connections I have I feel the strongest when they are at their most tenuous, and I feel them the most tenuous when they are the strongest. In the former case, romance trumps reality as we desperately wish for a relationship with intriguing strangers; in the latter, the honeymoon ends in Rome, and we long again for the fantasy of travel—but there remains, one, plenty in Rome, and two, the return home.

What are connections? Are some forms better than others? Does tangibility outdo the indirect? Is it the end? the means? both? What balance is good between solitude and company? What is it to connect? Truly, you: what is it to connect?