Ten entries about the ten best songs of all time.The Weakerthans - "This Is a Fire Door Never Leave Open"I've been reading Tyler Cowen's
Discover Your Inner Economist. In the fourth chapter, this pops up:
We use our cultural decisions to support or help create stories about what kind of person we are, what kind of marriage we want, or what kind of job we aspire to have. The most important of these narratives concern--can you guess?--ourselves. My personal story is that of a curious intellectual nerd polymath, loving husband and stepdad, and music lover and collector of Mexican Outsider Art, among other qualities. For better or worse, I've never much bothered with "pillar of the local community," "ardent political activist," or "suicide helpline operator." Sometimes I change or bend my narrative, but for the most part I invest in the stories I already have and extend them. Even when I pick up a new cause, I look for continuity with previous interests and commitments.
Does everyone else do this too?
The closest thing I've ever had to a crisis came when I lost my narrative. I was pacing back to my apartment on campus, mildly drunk, burned out and disappointed about the whole night, and I realized: "If this were two years ago, my stomach would be on fire."
Everyone knows the story, right? I spent most of my life with horrible ulcers. Anything that made me nervous made my stomach catch on fire. So did Thinking Unhappy Thoughts. I was in constant pain, an uncomfortable child and a wasting-away teenager. (I still get the same treatment, you know: "You only weigh
what?" "You should wear clothes that don't make you look so skinny." "You eat food now, right?") I reached a pinnacle at which I could control my stomach as negative reinforcement, when I thought or did things I decided I didn't like. I wrote a huge Thing On The Internet about it all, ulcers as an overarching narrative for my life--maybe you read it? It was kind of juvenile but it was cute. Right?
By my own narrative, that night, I should have been doubled over in pain. I wasn't. This, my friends, is the most despairing thing I've ever experienced. The ulcers were long gone, leaving only a lingering after-effect on my personality. I had to build a new narrative and I didn't know where to start.
I'm at a point now where I do, having broken pretty much every promise I ever made to myself. And that's the problem. How do you deal with conflicting narratives? In high school, a classmate explained to a teacher the joy of pulling our senior prank: "It brought everyone together," he said, "from the jocks to the nerds to the stoners to the preppy kids to. . . whatever Tim is, I don't know, a computer guy or something." Maybe it was that I didn't hang out with anyone else he knew. But I chuckled. It was so fitting. So then:
How To Construct a Narrative or
The Weakerthans Are Totally AwesomeMost of my friends know my mother's medical history by now. Some things are genetic that really shouldn't be, curse you biological mechanisms. Some days I think about calling her and asking how to fix it, but I always decide against it. Instead I sit and stew--I probably have too much confidence in my brain or my luck. Meanwhile, Bomb the Music Industry! lyrics repeat over and over--It's never gonna stop until we're dead. I know. We'll get there.
It's a stupid game. When I'm well-rested I can cope, when I'm tired I feel like driving my car off a bridge. I'm a nostalgic kid, but like my ulcers I can see that dying--I just don't care about WCA anymore, and I sure as hell can't express things well in livejournal anymore. So I take to rambling. Word association. It's kind of what I've always done, hence people thinking I was always on drugs. Look, you don't need drugs to be messed up in the head, some of us are like that to begin with.
I see things I know I didn't see. If I'm in the right mood I run with it, yes that man really was a lumbering vulture. What I don't see is people--or I do, as "in a mirror dimly," because--well, because that's how must of us construct others, as functions of ourselves.
Our model of others is quite often our model of ourselves, which is why the
symmetry thesis has some truth to it. This becomes more of a problem the more contradictory or complex your narrative is. You become completely unable to model other people properly. You get distressed. You get lonely. You connect with people only on superficial levels, only in ways you don't understand. You become convinced that interpersonal communication is a lie--especially once you realize a few simple truths.
The trick is to put all that away. If you were wrong in the past, you will continue to be wrong if you use the same model. Adjust your model, do your best to make that mirror a little more clear. This--yeah. It's not easy. Personally, I have to find something certain, something to never let go of, no matter how trivial, something unassailable and unquestionable.
The other problem is that I remember everything, no matter who you are. People don't expect you to be such a good listener because that's not how they model others--because they aren't themselves. I react to things I remember from months before; "Well I don't remember that." That off-the-cuff remark you didn't mean at all? I've taken it to heart. This isn't to say I'm sensitive--I am, yeah, but I mean that I think about what you've told me, whether it's hurtful or sweet or unintentional or witty or an interesting or dull observation. I remember your friends' names--you don't have to tell me who they are every time! If I say I don't remember something, I'm either being briefly absent-minded or I'm lying; it never ceases to amaze me how I can keep getting away with that. Frankly, I catch other people doing the same thing all the time. From here out, follow this guideline when dealing with me, it will force us both to be more honest:
I did not forget.
The rest is daydream stuff, but I'm getting better at that. Thinking about more concrete things (he said as he stared out the window and watched the woman walking by). Economics, videogame theory. Last night I went to bed angry at people who try to justify the Great Leap Forward. (There's that tired thing again; I really lose all composure.)
I had a long talk with my dad on my last visit home. Most of the conversation was about signaling, how complicated but wasteful it was, how I've never been good at it, never been interested in dressing like a punk or doing drugs, never wanted to jump through hoops I didn't think I needed to, never wanted to playact to impress people. Now, uh. Well. It's mostly still true. Yeah--I'm still angry about this. When people tell you that society is "fucked up," this is what they mean, or should mean. That's a rant for another day. In fact. . . that's an academic career, if you're willing to be outspoken and scientific enough.
This is all part of an honest metanarrative. Awareness of signaling--where do I engage in it, where do I not, do I do any of it well? When I want to show dominance of one narrative over another, what do I do? Which narratives have thus far gotten the special treatment, and which ones have only gotten lip service? How do these signals flow in the channel of someone who's constantly and dangerously depressed, inquisitive, arrogant, thoughtful, tactless, awkward, wishy-washy, a good ol', all-around Bad Person?
And why bother making such a thing? A postmodernist might say, give up, live with contradicting narratives or with no narrative at all:
The cat is not there. The short answer is that, as quietly and with as much patience as possible, I'm angry. It won't go away as long as my storyline is cluttered, as long as there's no way to explain why.
I told someone, once, after we took a trip to Waffle House at 3 in the morning to dance to Prince on the jukebox--ok, she was the only one who danced, I was too shy--that I would write about it some day, which she took as an amazing compliment. Well: here you go. I think it's my new favorite memory. If you read this, maybe that will mean something.
