A new detente
Jun. 8th, 2005 04:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
abbandonoRecently I've had an unhealthy tendency toward isolationism. Not as a political ideal, but as a personal strategy for coping with overwhelming stress.
Fortuitously, a number of completely unrelated recent events have inspired a new detente, one of which is this: I've been digitally befriended by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
imomus.
If this is the effect, the cause is all too easy to deduce: I befriendedimomus first, and he chose to reciprocate the gesture.
It transgresses an interesting boundary, though, because not only are we not in fact friends, we're not even acquainted. But it has me thinking about the nature of friendship.
When I befriendedimomus, it was a gesture of convenience. The thought process went something like this: "I read my friends' journals daily. I would like to read imomus's journal daily because it's thought-provoking and fun, and because I secretly like to pretend I am him, living in Berlin and wearing interesting outfits as I go to museums, make music, and probably have fabulous sex. Therefore, I will befriend imomus."
What happened here?
1) The desire to emulate or incorporate some resonant aspect of a stranger
2) The attachment of a signifier - "friend" - to this desire, for the convenient purpose of making our social networks intersect, thereby increasing proximity to that longed-for resonance
3) The politesse of "good" society intervenes, and the signifier applied unilaterally is made bilateral, whether the resonance is bilateral or (more likely) not.
But most importantly...
4) The designation ofimomus as a "friend" effectively makes him one. He becomes privy to any private thoughts I may reserve for "friends only"; he gains access to my social network of other friends (should he choose to explore them by linking onward from me),etc.
I have, in effect, made a friend. And this process is not at all unique to Livejournal. It is the way friendship works.
Even ifimomus does not reciprocate by befriending me, I have already made him "my friend". I have been intentionally vulnerable.
My many months of isolationism have sprung primarily from a not-entirely-logical desire to protect that vulnerability, which is an innate aspect of who I am, by avoiding its exercise.
Friends are made, and friendship is an inherently collaborative creative act. In denying my vulnerability, I deny my own creativity. I shut down those parts of me that make music, go to art museums, and have fabulous sex - all creative and collaborative acts in their own way.
And this is above all the most enlightening conclusion of my Stendhalian rambling (On Love is a smashing good read, by the way): Friendship is a medium for personal change.
Friendship is a transgression. It crosses lines, it infiltrates borders. It resettles, it reinvents.
Like the modern-day Europe, we make our borders porous. Permeable. And the consequence is freedom: the freedom for the inhabitants of the nation that is my identity to travel, or even emigrate, to the nation that is yours, and vice versa.
When I am vulnerable, when I am "making friends", I am open to the immigration of everything from Momus's predilection for wearing an eyepatch to Donna's unabashed fandom of Rick Astley.
I can be changed as a person.
It's a new day, and I can be the person I am. And by befriending others, I can be the person I want to become.
Friendimomus, welcome to my country!
Fortuitously, a number of completely unrelated recent events have inspired a new detente, one of which is this: I've been digitally befriended by
imomus.If this is the effect, the cause is all too easy to deduce: I befriended
imomus first, and he chose to reciprocate the gesture.It transgresses an interesting boundary, though, because not only are we not in fact friends, we're not even acquainted. But it has me thinking about the nature of friendship.
When I befriended
imomus, it was a gesture of convenience. The thought process went something like this: "I read my friends' journals daily. I would like to read imomus's journal daily because it's thought-provoking and fun, and because I secretly like to pretend I am him, living in Berlin and wearing interesting outfits as I go to museums, make music, and probably have fabulous sex. Therefore, I will befriend imomus."What happened here?
1) The desire to emulate or incorporate some resonant aspect of a stranger
2) The attachment of a signifier - "friend" - to this desire, for the convenient purpose of making our social networks intersect, thereby increasing proximity to that longed-for resonance
3) The politesse of "good" society intervenes, and the signifier applied unilaterally is made bilateral, whether the resonance is bilateral or (more likely) not.
But most importantly...
4) The designation of
imomus as a "friend" effectively makes him one. He becomes privy to any private thoughts I may reserve for "friends only"; he gains access to my social network of other friends (should he choose to explore them by linking onward from me),etc. I have, in effect, made a friend. And this process is not at all unique to Livejournal. It is the way friendship works.
Even if
imomus does not reciprocate by befriending me, I have already made him "my friend". I have been intentionally vulnerable.My many months of isolationism have sprung primarily from a not-entirely-logical desire to protect that vulnerability, which is an innate aspect of who I am, by avoiding its exercise.
Friends are made, and friendship is an inherently collaborative creative act. In denying my vulnerability, I deny my own creativity. I shut down those parts of me that make music, go to art museums, and have fabulous sex - all creative and collaborative acts in their own way.
And this is above all the most enlightening conclusion of my Stendhalian rambling (On Love is a smashing good read, by the way): Friendship is a medium for personal change.
Friendship is a transgression. It crosses lines, it infiltrates borders. It resettles, it reinvents.
Like the modern-day Europe, we make our borders porous. Permeable. And the consequence is freedom: the freedom for the inhabitants of the nation that is my identity to travel, or even emigrate, to the nation that is yours, and vice versa.
When I am vulnerable, when I am "making friends", I am open to the immigration of everything from Momus's predilection for wearing an eyepatch to Donna's unabashed fandom of Rick Astley.
I can be changed as a person.
It's a new day, and I can be the person I am. And by befriending others, I can be the person I want to become.
Friend
imomus, welcome to my country!![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-06-09 01:17 am (UTC)And, again, good to have you back in the digital world again. You are someone whose words I have missed, but whose real life friendship wasn't one I felt gave me the right to butt in and say, "Dude, where the hell did you go? Are you okay?" Please know the sentiment was there.