It's SO Nice to Know You

If you can tell a writer by the amount of time he or she spends trying not to sit down and write…I am most definitely a writer. I spend an inordinate amount of time walking around, listening to podcasts, watching TED talks, and reading books/articles/blog posts in an attempt to keep myself from putting my butt in a chair and my hands on the keyboard. I tell myself that these are the things I have to do before I can feel special enough to write whatever it is I want to write, but really it’s just a very effective stalling tactic.

  

Why am I stalling? Because I am just now beginning to see myself as an artist. And the story I’m telling myself is that true artists bare their soul and so that’s what I need to be doing. And I’m stalling because YIKES.

Why on earth would you want to bare your soul?

• I could give you a phony reason – I have a book and/or screenplay deal and a deadline. (This is the dream.)
• Or a sarcastic reason – I have an illness that causes me to seek emotional suffering.
• Or you could make up your own – I’m desperate for attention…I have delusions of grandeur…take your pick. Be creative.

But the real reason is that I am a human being and all human beings have an unspoken and real desire to be seen. We want others to see the genuine article…the thing that makes us who we are. We want to connect with our squad...hell, we want to know that we have a squad. We need to know that we aren’t alone in this world. That’s why babies die if they aren’t touched by other humans. We are born with a need to communicate…to connect…to be known. Some of us use art to forge that connection.

When my daughter was about 4, we were at the playground with some friends when another mother showed up with her daughter. We had met them before on one occasion and so we struck up a conversation. My daughter, remembering the previous encounter, asked the other little girl if she remembered her. The little girl said no and ran away to play on the swings. Well, my daughter fell apart immediately and I empathized with her.

There was this girl in college who never remembered me (or anyone else as I later discovered). I was introduced to her at least a dozen times and had full-on conversations with her only to be reintroduced to her at another party two weeks later or at a retreat the following year. Not once did she remember any of the previous meetings nor did she even appear to have a glimmer of recognition. Being a mostly-polite Southern girl, I always did the same thing. I extended my hand and said with a big smile, “It’s so nice to know you."

One time I was at a party talking with someone I had just met when this same girl walked up with two other people, one of whom attempted to reintroduce her to both of us. She got that same confused look on her face and said, “I’m sorry, I don’t think we have met,” to the girl I had been talking to. And I will never forget her response.

“Well I don’t know why you would remember me, we’ve only met 14 fucking times.”

I would have stood on a chair and cheered for her. She said aloud what I had thought but left unsaid so many times. Would have, that is, if she hadn’t immediately stormed off and left me standing there awkwardly. Naturally, I broke the tension by extending my hand and saying with a big smile, “It’s so nice to know you.”

But because of the experience, I knew how my daughter felt that day on the playground. I pulled her aside and tried to console her by telling her that it was normal for people to forget faces and we hadn’t really spent a lot of time with them. I tried my best to make her feel better by saying that the other little girl might have face-blindness or a head injury that resulted in short-term memory loss…like 10-Second-Tom in 50 First Dates. (This is, incidentally, the exact same rationalization that I settled on to explain why that girl in college never remembered me.) But my daughter would have none of it. The words she used as she cried into my chest have never left me.

But I want her to KNOW me!

It would be easy to dismiss this with semantics…maybe she said “know” but she meant “remember.” But I don’t believe that’s true. I believe she was merely speaking with the wisdom of a 4-year-old who hasn’t yet accumulated the baggage of deeper rejection that keeps us from revealing too much of ourselves.

“You like the wrong color.”

“You wear the wrong clothes.”

“You love the wrong person.”

“You believe the wrong thing.”

Because these things are expressions of self, the rejection of them serves to suppress that basic human need to be known…and loved...for exactly and precisely who we are.

As a result, we adults spend a lot of time avoiding this connection that I believe we truly want. It's why I spend more time preparing to write instead of actually writing. But the stalling tactics aren’t about fear of revelation. They are about fear of the crushing blow of judgment and rejection of who we are. We care what other people think. We always care about what other people think. Even when we say we don’t. You can’t erase the fundamental human need to be known any more than you can erase the fundamental need to eat. You can temporarily suppress these needs but doing so is detrimental to our health.

Inside, we are all just a 4-year-old crying into someone’s chest because we want to be known. 

Why do you think Facebook is constantly tweaking our status-sharing options and, most recently, our ability to react to posts? This need to be known and loved is the basis of any “like” or “follow” button that exists in social media. This is a somewhat superficial way to identify a virtual squad of people who “know” us. We can amass likes (or hearts or smiley faces or thumbs-ups) and from this feedback we can construct our online persona. But this is not true revelation and it is certainly not knowing. It’s connectivity without connection.

I am most befuddled by the use of social media as a vehicle to share art. This is a daily struggle for me. How…where…when…what…how much…who…these are all questions that I ponder as I’m grappling for special-ness. I am far too concerned with the ratio of hits to likes. I cannot stop myself from checking...like the actor who cannot NOT read the reviews. But I also cannot stop myself from ultimately sharing whatever I am thinking. I know enough artists to know that I’m not alone in this.There is a tension between wanting to be seen and wanting to remain pure potential.

No one ever critiques potential and it is a warm and cozy place to live for a while. There is comfort in the idea that I COULD which completely evaporates with the reality of I DID. Once I DO…once I put something out in the universe…it’s subject to opinion. And opinion is not like art…people feel completely free to share it with absolutely anyone and are oblivious to the story that it tells. It seems the only art that we all engage in creating is the story that our opinion is fact.

And you can’t critique facts.

There is no such luxury with art. So we as individuals remain hidden beneath shells. Instead of making art or experiencing as much art as possible, we expend our creative energy diminishing the art we hate -- and couching our opinion of that art as fact. But when we make art and enjoy art we are closing in on our squads and becoming known to them as they become known to us. If I wanted to get really existential, I might say that this is the meaning of life.

But I’m not that bold. Yet.

I almost made a mistake at the beginning of this post by trying to send some of you away -- those I thought would not appreciate it. I told myself that if it’s not meant for you, I should save you from having to experience it and allow you to look for something else that is for you. But what I was really doing, was attempting to protect myself from criticism...or worse...unresponsiveness.

Because I care what other people think. There…I said it.

I almost forgot that art is inherently valuable whether it is crafted from prose or poetry or paint or clay or wood or music or dance because each creation is a tangible expression of someone’s soul. And just as you surely wouldn’t presume to judge another person’s soul, you don’t get to decide what art is good or bad…you only get to decide what speaks to you and what doesn’t.

No, not all art is for you. But avoiding the art that isn’t for you is not the answer. We should all be seeking as much art as we can. Read it all, listen to it all, watch it all, and then make some of your own. You will of course be exposed to things you don’t like and you will make things that other people don't like, but that just helps us all find ourselves and each other. And, if you are brave enough to make your own art…to put a little bit of your soul out there…you might not be so quick to cut someone else’s down.

I hope that by putting this out there in the universe, I’ll be able to spend less time trying to be special and more time just being me so the rest of my squad can find me. And if you, by chance, don’t like me once you get to know me...if you realize that what I create just isn't for you...feel free to look confused and pretend you don’t remember me the next time we meet.

I’ll still extend my hand, smile, and say, “It’s so nice to know you.” And I promise I won't be thinking anything else when I say it.