machine gun brainstorm on solitude
1. to begin with, in a kind of hardcore sense, ~absolute~ solitude is mostly not really possible. we grow up in groups, and we think our thoughts with language that we inherited. so even when you're alone with your thoughts... you're not
2. yet of course in the regular, everyday sense, solitude is a real and achievable thing. even spending a day alone by yourself feels different compared to being around other people. it's probably healthy and good to experience a range of social states. it's interesting, anyway
3. there are layers to this. you can feel isolated even when surrounded by others. one of my loneliest experiences was also one of my most social ones, in '07 at a music festival. friends recognized me, a band onstage even thanked me for sth by name
somehow still desolate af
somehow still desolate af
4. and one of my most profound moments of communion, a sense of being deeply connected to everything and everyone – was when I was sitting alone on a beach halfway across the planet from where I live + was born/raised
5. looking back on my life, there are many moments of solitude that I cherished. late night cigarettes, when the world is dark and you can hear the night. those moments felt like punctuation, like the mostly-empty page between the end of one chapter and the start of the next
6. one way of surveying my personal history is to see it as a sort of yin-yang cycle between solitude (S) and companionship (C). I was born in a big family (C), but the youngest child by a long shot (S). I loved books (C), but had nobody to share them with (S).
7. This repeats itself infinitely. In my experience, it almost starts to become a matter of perception. You can almost choose whether how you want to experience a particular situation. It becomes a matter of *drumroll*... framing
8. The Internet is of course the great portal of our time, where you can "isolate" yourself IRL in any moment to seek communion through the eerie blue glow. I am personally incredibly thankful to have had the opportunity to do this. Easily one of my favorite things about life
9. it used to be significantly harder to go online – you'd have to disconnect the landline, and you'd have to sit at your desk. now you can be on your phone, so you can somewhat multi-task. Perhaps future interfaces will be even more seamless. Seems likelier than not
10. I started blogging as a way of connecting with others. I wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself, share my thoughts, etc. I semi-intentionally, semi-accidentally ended up becoming a Local Political Blogger... which turned out to be quite an isolating experience
11. while I said earlier that every person inherits language, thoughts and ideas – I think it's also broadly kinda true that each person has a sort of "neutral" state. if you scrutinize this closely it breaks down, but it can be discerned in contrast to forced/modified states
12. being in a forced/modified state is, generally speaking, unpleasant. having to smile in a customer service role, for eg. some people are better disposed to performing these roles, may have personalities and psyches that are well-calibrated for it, even thrive off of it...
13. but putting that aside, I think most people can broadly relate to the idea that "having to put on a show" is a tiresome business. and it's kind of isolating. there's a sense that you're hiding your "true" response, who you "really" are, to "serve others"
14. being in a sort of public performer role, willingly and voluntarily, is an interesting version of this experience. if you're lucky (or unlucky, depending on how you experience/frame it), you start to interrogate the meanings of "public", "performer", "willingly"...
15. for me personally it's kind of funny – and I don't mean this in a dismissive way, I mean it in a sort of cosmic/divine/human sense – to witness people arguing about things like age of consent. I get why it has to be done, because we live in a society, crimes must be punished,
16. but the thing that people write novels about, the thing that meditators and chronic diarists discover – is that a simple question like "did I mean to do that?" or "is this what I want?" can have an infinite fractal of complexity that might take multiple lifetimes to grok
17. of course, nobody (afaik) has multiple lifetimes to explore a question. Da Vinci supposedly said "art is never finished, only abandoned". I feel like something similar might be true for figuring out intent. It's done when you decide it's done, or you are no longer able
18. what does intent have to do with solitude? it's about framing again
when diogenes was sentenced to exile, he allegedly said "and I sentence them to stay at home!"
when diogenes was sentenced to exile, he allegedly said "and I sentence them to stay at home!"
19. I personally love twitter
but I have to ask everyone who says they hate twitter... why are you here?
you can log out any time you like... but you can never leave
but I have to ask everyone who says they hate twitter... why are you here?
you can log out any time you like... but you can never leave
20. haters have a persistence and intensity that lovers struggle to match
21. what I wanted to say about public performers is... it's not entirely clear to me that people who do it do it because they want to do it, and even if they "DO want to do it", it's not entirely clear that that want is rooted in something that isn't a disorder or pathology,
22. and disorders and pathologies are themselves offshoots of a very specific way of making sense of the world, ie they are themselves, in a funny sense, "symptoms" of a very specific "disease"...
23. 🤔 
24. what I'm still circling around – when I was blogging about politics, I felt myself being swept up in something larger than me, and I found it very, very difficult to maintain a sense of perspective. it absolutely felt like a sort of inebriation. you do lose your mind
25. and it is the most intoxicating mix of isolation and communion all in one. I was absolutely addicted to it at some point. I imagine it's some version of what bloodlust must be like. I suppose you can catch a glimpse of it at sporting events
26. the communion bit is obvious, you're with a bunch of other people and you're all doing a thing together. the isolation bit is less obvious: you have to isolate a certain part of yourself. simplistically, the "rational" part, the "measured" part, the "questioning" part
27. and while I sought out communion – thinking on this more this has happened to me multiple times, online, in my local music scene, doing local political blogging – each time I found that what brought me close to others eventually became a sort of farce I had to get away from
28. each time after I get really deep into a community – and i'm never just a casual participant, I typically get as deeply involved as I can – I end up needing to take a big and long break away from the whole thing. In 2013? I unfollowed and unfriended *everyone* on social media
29. the first interesting thing about getting away from it all is the afterimages. weeks after I left, my brain was still composing tweets and fb posts, looking at things and thinking "that would be a good post". took months for that to wither off
30. And if you read about the experiences of people who do silent retreats, and of hermits, it’s interesting what else can wither off. Practically everything. The idea of a coherent self is itself a kind of social construct, a sort of set of posts for socializing
