Month: January 2016

Speech is civilization. The word,
even the most contradictory word,
preserves contact — it is silence
which isolates. (Thomas Mann)

Of these three — speech, contact and civilization —  I would say that contact is the most important and essential one.

We need not necessarily speak, and “civilization” is a dubious thing. As a sharp observer asked: Is it civilization if a cannibal eats with knife and fork? Much of what goes under the name of civilization is cannibalism with fancy make-up, and table manners, and tie.

Contact, however, seems more and more essential to me. This can be a question of human intercourse, umgänge, and such. Nice enough. I love to sit at a sidewalk café and chat with friends and strangers about all kinds of things.

But what seems even more important is a more general contact. When I look at you, or you, or the room I am in, or the small bottle of Metaxa I just bought, or my hands, or anything else, then I can have contact with you / it /me . Or not.

I can be there — or not. Present, or not.

When it comes to big city life one always hears that because of the great masses of city folk flowing like lava in the streets it is necessary to screen out impressions, sounds and people. One couldn´t survive otherwise.

I am no longer sure about that. I definitely suffer from street noise and big crowds and the rush hour energy. So I withdraw and retreat into myself.

But is it really myself I retreat into? Behind that train of thought lies the premise that I end HERE, just where the big noisy world starts. Within a radius of maybe two meters (including my aura) live I, beyond that lives the rest of the world.

But what if I am bigger than that? Then I am cutting off something that in a way belongs to me, or that together with me is part of something bigger. Maybe we are two fragments of a Whole, and in that case contact between us is not only inevitable, but also something that is desirable to recognize, accept, affirm.

While FULLY looking and establishing actual contact with you, the room, the bottle of Metaxa, or my hand, I am perhaps not shrinking at all, but the opposite. What I feel when looking earnestly at you — really bringing you into myself as an impression and “taste” — is possibly my greater self. Of which you are a part (?).

There is a wonderful saying that mirrors this train of thought.

Or sit  I.  Here is an interesting variation on the same theme.

One could say that the question is about being personal. Impersonal means denying any connection between us, certainly any kinship.

We (I) often look at waiters and chamber maids with an impersonal look. That is “normal”. What is maybe worse is to look with an impersonal eye on friends, acquaintances, even our lovers. Nobody home, vacant eye, no contact….

No eye contact, and no I contact. Looking inwards into “I” is at least as important as looking out.

Besides, we live with ourselves 24 hours a day (some of us 25), so if we have a poor relationship there, we will have lots of sad drama, all the time.

One more thing we can have contact with is time. This time, this hour, this second.

You, my dear, might still be here tomorrow, giving me a chance to be real and present, which I wasn´t yesterday and today. But the yesterday moment will be gone, floated far away on the river of merciless Time.

As the Incredible String Band sang: “If I don´t kiss you, that kiss is untasted, I´ll never, no never get it back…”

[I was trying to be funny when I came up with this headline, but actually it´s quite fitting.]

What does it mean to play a role in life? I am not talking about theatrical roles or “life roles (whatever they are) but about people adopting different roles towards each other. These can be short-lived and incidental, or long-lasting, as in marriages or between parent and child.

Roles we play with colleagues at work or waiters at our favorite restaurant are short-lived, though regularly recurring. Predictability is the keyword.

Roles we play with a partner can be more chronic. A usual variation: one person playing the parent role, the other the role of an irresponsible child. Such roles fit each other like hand and glove, which makes it hard, and rather uninteresting, to abandon the roles. “Why should we, when we fit each other so well…?”

But what happens if one of the persons leaves her/his role? Then what is the other to do? Where does the hand go when the glove is gone?

It very probably finds itself another glove, often very similar if not identical to the old one. And so the beat goes on — the same beat, same tempo and same  (dis)harmony — identical roles hiding behind different faces.

This new glove makes it difficult — and, again, uninteresting — for the hand to change. Why should it, now that it has another fitting glove…?

However, if the hand is abandoned and left alone, glove-less, it might radically revise its role playing. No well-fitting glove-partner reinforces its old patterns, thus it is more free to find new roles. Or, radically, no roles at all.

(Of course, even if takes a long break from gloves (= pattern-reinforcing partners) it can still fall back into the same pattern when it meets a new partner, even after years of lonely life.)

I imagine that if it manages to leave its old roles behind it will be like a spontaneous actor — no script but all the freedom in the world. It can choose, in the moment, from millions of temporary mini-roles, all based on honesty of the moment (which is more than whim of the moment), instead of being weighed down by one or two roles that hijack it for for their own agenda.

A role, it seems to me, is a collection of habits, almost a syndrome. “This is how I usually act, react, think and feel.” Situation A leads to perception/ reaction B, meeting person C leads to reaction D, E to f, etc.

Habits are predictable and based on the past. Perhaps I, to be frank, would like to go from A to F, but I am so damned used to go to B… so I will probably just go to B!

Going from A to F (or J or Z) is what I would call “rocking” (the boat).

In a way roles are close to what we call “identity”. What people recognize as us is possibly just lingering roles and stubborn habits. When they see us acting “our way”, they think “Yes, that´s him all-right”. They could better say “Yes, there goes his old habits, his encrusted roles again.”

Habits are sometimes called “second nature”. Which leads to the question: What is first nature? and to the scary follow up question: IS there a first nature…? Or are we mainly a bundle of cohesive habits that are fused into roles, non-changing (or very slowly changing) patterns of practical, mental and emotional behavior?

Habits can be changed, with much persistence, and much desire to change them. If habits are changed, roles can be loosened, leaving more place for real spontaneity and in the moment-responses, instead of memorized reactions and reflexes. In short, more Now and less reruns of the Old, less sinking feeling of “There I go AGAIN... for the nth time!?!”

Desideratum: second-nature of roles and habits giving way to first-nature of the Real Actor. Aim: rocking the boat so as to get rid of “well-fitting” gloves.

Blah blah. It is quite obvious to me how abstract all this is.  I have not fully digested these ideas; as yet they are mainly in my head, intellectual.

But it´s a start, if not yet rock´n´roll.

Hoochie Koo: To live a rock and roll lifestyle, free from worry and anxiety. Being a true free-spirit.  (Urban Dictionary)