There's Twitter, Facebook, LinedIn, Digg, Yelp, Flickr. There's email (sign). There are blogs.
Everybody frantically trying to connect with somebody else, even just for the briefest of moments. Signals sent; signals received. Signals misread and misunderstood.
Connection is not our social problem. Alienation, confusion, loneliness, and fear are our problems.
A counselor friend of mine often repeats the mantra, "The most radical thing you can ever do is connect with another human being." I know she's right, but in my experience, connecting is far easier said than done.
Of course, one may be an especially clumsy connector, erratic, odd. Different people have very different senses of boundaries. I try to comfort myself that I am (in my own eyes) a gentle, sensitive, sweet, loyal person with only the most honest and kind intentions.
But then there is that other part of me -- the one with a knack of holding up mirrors and drawing out reflections that a friend may not wish to see. Of course, I make no pretensions that the mirror I exhibit is reality, that it is true. It's only a mirror and we all know mirrors lie.
Plus, any journalist worth his byline learns that there is no single eternal Truth. Rather there can be as many different truths as there are voices to tell the story. Everyone's perspective is unique. And thank god for that; the world would be a boring place, as my Mom used to say, if everyone agreed with each other about everything. (I think she usually said that after my Dad and I had once again disagreed about something.)
And when it comes to looking into our own mirror, we never will see what we hope.
There are other things a journalist learns. No matter how accurately we notate a person's words, we will always be accused of misquoting them. Many reporters use tape recorders just for that reason.
Personally, I hate tape recorders. My goal is less to strive to capture an exact quote in words but an honest sense of meaning. Meaning is far different from literal truth, naturally.
And since I do not subscribe to the notion of literal truth, anyway, everything for me devolves into symbols. Clearly, my own private world is an utterly silent place, where no sounds can enter, I need to shut all out if I am to create my music, even if it's a bad sort of music that no one wants or needs to hear.
But, still, the voices say:
Reach out.
Connect.
Take risks.
Tell another how you feel.
These are all great pieces of advice to help somebody fight the evils of alienation, confusion, loneliness, and fear, except that they often do not work. Often they will backfire and therein lies the dilemma.
Maybe it is safer to stay well within your own fortress, and not risk reaching out, where an angry world lies in waiting to scorch your tender parts. There is nothing like a simple gesture like the dismissive wave of a hand, the turning away of eyes, or the disruptive words of defensive anger to pollute what moments earlier felt like a safer world, a place where peace just might be attained.
Of course, these are only my incoherent ramblings. There is nothing based in current reality here, only a lifetime of observations and experiences, all of which boil down to a lot of noise that adds up to nothing whatsoever.
Utter silence.
You might wonder about the small photo of a child's art tenderly placed at the head of this strange post. I was thinking that maybe someone somewhere out there is feeling lonely right now, sad about something, confused, disconnected. If so, this photo is for you. I hope contemplating a child's attempt to create her own beautiful objects gives you at least a fleeting sense of peace as you rage on against the machine.
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