I’ve been reflecting on what it means to encounter another person.
Reason for thinking this: watching the music video for Living on a Prayer (Bon Jovi). Which reminded me of a blogger who really influenced me a decade or so ago, who I found the socials for. I started thinking about book authors who really influenced me through.. their beings (not just words- also social media).
Idk. I feel like meeting someone in person is… a certain type of experience. Soul to soul, body present with another body in the same location. You can also be physically in the same location as someone and not encounter the other person at all, and have them not encounter you- not who each person is.
So what is a person, and how does one encounter another person, and what are the myriad of ways a person can encounter the soul/essence of another person?
What happens when I see a painting by someone who is dead, but it still moves me? What does art do?
What is presence, other than art that is interactive and happening in real-time? Back and forth art? Dance? Language?
What happens when two people are together that does not happen when they are physically apart?
What happens when people text? What happens on the phone?
What are letters?
What is silence that implies intimacy, in-person? What is silence that implies distance, in-person?
I remember getting hit upside the head when I learned about how… just.. the reality that each of us exists within our minds, at some level. That our experience of life is what our brain senses. But what is the name for the phenomenon that is catching a yawn across the room? What about pheremones that get transmitted via the air? Via skin? What about cellular DNA from a growing fetus that leaves the placenta to mingle into the mother’s blood, its cells ever to help protect her (that happens!) ? What about sperm that trains a mother’s immune system to not reject the DNA of the baby that will form? What about the mother who’s breastmilk contains antibodies that match the exact needs of the infant, and the way her body changes to match the infant’s needs?
What do you call it when someone writes an emoji on the internet and… (ok…haha.. but).. ok but what if you really feel that emoji?
Atticus (my cat) just jumped up next to me and tried to lick my plate so I called him by his full name (Atticus Finch *my last name*) and got him off the bed. What just happened? Does he know his name?
Anyway I’m fine, everything is fine, I’m just contemplating all aspects of existance, and wondering and marveling about the many ways we connect when we’re physically present, not physically present, and even after our bodies are gone but our art remains. If our experience of another person happens within our own minds, then can people achieve a certain level of immortality by the art they create?
Art that is written, or music? Art that is a voicemail saved on someone’s phone? A book?
It’s terrifying to me to consider that.. that life is finite. I both accept and object.
We all want our lives to matter, and we want genuine connection, to be known for who we really are, and to connect with others as they actually are.
How can we do that increasingly? What steps can we take? How can we become increasingly safe spaces for our own souls to abide within? How can we become increasingly safe people for others to share themselves to?
How can we make the world a safer place for people to be their authentic selves.. so that community- actual community- can increase?
How can we limit the quantity of our inputs such that we notice what we are doing at a level that impacts our psyche?
I once left most electronic things (back when I could – before my allergies were nuts). I left just about all social media, wrote snail mail, and got a landline phone. Turned off my cell. I did that for about 3 years.
What I found was that though my nervous system was calmer, I was even more alone at the end of it than the beginning. The people who wrote letters with me, mostly, were friends before, during, and after, and it’s far easier to be their friend when we can message each other electronically. Other than a couple local people, and the people I wrote letters with, the vast majority of my world dropped away during those years.
Anyway I guess what I’m getting at is that the format of interaction seems to matter a lot less than the nature of it.
In person/ online/ letters / texting… the nature and quality of it are what change a person.
Back and forth art creation is peak humanity, I think. Dancing, making music with people, texting in a group where everyone is laughing.. moments like that are, at least for me, the moments I have felt most alive. And I’ve had glimmers in encountering people in more delayed ways- their art while we’re passing ships on the internet, or their art that I’ve encountered after they’re gone. Things that change neural connections- things that break through the level of “habit” to “this is new and special and I am changed now.”
Watching Bon Jovi does that for me, in the delayed sense. That hair. Gosh. I love his hair.
☮️
