Fan Club
Voice, the thing we struggle with. A pose that communicates our intent, without giving us away. A secret measure, some incalculable distance from our missions, hobbies, kinks and loves.
When I started writing this blog I was feeling dubious and depressed. Yet somehow, speaking to the vague reaches of cyberspace (the word makes me cringe even as I type it) seemed like a good idea. Days in, I want to peel the onion and expose a fresh skin, a new voice – one that doesn’t betray my softness, outing me with unbridled enthusiasm.
A friend commented:
“You’ve got my permission to do it the old-school way, suffering silently before a mystifying note-less suicide, or at least developing a roaring eating disorder. Much classier don’t you think? I’d go to your funeral, send the good flowers, and shoot accusatory glances at everyone.”
Laughing at the screen, I felt a familiar pang of knowing guilt. Drama-queen embarrassment. Geek fear.
What is it about this format that makes it so easy to gush, to perform? Years of discouragement at the hands of intimacy-phobic nerds – in the name of SCIENCE and OBJECTIVITY and LOGIC – shouldn’t it leave me scarred and incapable of such vulnerability?
“Maybe blogging is like getting up on stage for a rock star? It’s a more easily artificialized persona, after a fashion. I’m not so sure. My theory has to do with diffused responsibility… This works in a positive kind of way in the case of blogs- you can dump some heavy personal shit and since it’s a web page as opposed to being sent to a specific email address, no obligation to respond is thus necessarily entailed by the posting. Anyone who doesn’t want to respond can hide out or pretend not to have seen it, and you can correspondingly deny that you were waiting for anyone in particular to reply. Nice. Kind of like those anonymous glory-hole bars. Just kidding.”
Again, I contemplated. How does this blog reinforce me and my hang-ups about personal interaction? As email and chat become a regular part of my daily routine, how does this new (self-consciously one-way) communication serve my need to be heard, supported, and loved – from a safe distance?
Does it give me an excuse to vent and feel sad without having to feel guilty for imposing? Does this read-at-your-own-risk format unleash my “female complaint” – acting as a holding tank for displaced anger, biological ranting and emotional confessions? Lulu springs to mind here. From the cozy nest of my room, I’ve studied her relationship to her gender, her sexuality, her experience of food, menstruation, depression and abortion. Typing this, linking it, I acknowledge the pain and beauty of her life, without contact. Without touching.
. . .
I’ve been reading The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem. The first part of the novel follows an experimental filmmaker-artist (Abraham) and his son (Dylan), a soul singer (Barrett Rude Jr.) and his son (Mingus) – exploring their relation to race and culture in 60’s/70’s/80’s Brooklyn. Mostly, the book chronicles how they immerse themselves in obsessive, push-pull relationships with fine art, pop art, comics and graffiti; drugs, punk music, black music and heroism.
Early in the narrative, Abraham resorts to painting sci-fi paperback covers to pay the rent. Later, in part two, Abraham begins to tour sci-fi cons, a source of geek-obsession, wonder and fascination. Delighted and disgusted at the same time, Abraham wears his tortured relationship to the field, its products, and fans as a badge – flaunting his remoteness to an ovation:
“I’ve wasted my life.”
This was the last thing I made out before my father was drowned in the ovation. A two-way masochism was at work here, made possible by the total insularity of the gathering. The bohemian demimonde, as Abraham called it. My father was their pet heretic, their designated griever for lost or abandoned possibility. The way he brandished his failure thrilled this crowd, and they’d obviously known it was coming. By accepting his contempt like a lash on their backs, the Elk Lodge of ForbiddenCon 7 could feel ratified in their unworthy worthiness, their good sense of humor about themselves and their chosen deficiencies.
And yet I felt his not entirely withheld affection too. Through his eyes I could even share it. I thought of my namesake’s “Chimes of Freedom” – tolling for the aching whose wounds cannot be nursed, for the countless confused accused misused strung-out ones and worse, and for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe! Certainly I’d witnessed gatherings of rock critics or college-radio DJs, on panels at the South by Southwest conference or the CMJ, which were no less self-congratulatorily marginal. Only the costumes were different. I flashed on a vision of a world dotted with conferences, convocations, and “Cons” of all types, each an engine for converting feelings of inferiority and self-loathing into their opposites.
This struck me so hard, and so deeply, in so many ways, that I put the book down, powered up my laptop and started writing – to you.
Does it peel your onion, too?
