are you a 'specific' person?
Maybe "particular" is a better word. Of course, you are a particular kind of person, you are a you. But aren't you also like everyone else? And do you sometimes fear it?
The question I am asking is whether I am fighting to carve out specificity because that is the human project or because there is a prize at the end of it. The drive to be unique. The fanned out "short" bio. The personalized web-page vs. the template. All of it coming from the myth of greatness?
Can a drive towards specificity – and, at the same time, a self-conscious fear of losing it – be compatible with the project of building solidarity? I am trying to define these words and answer this question. One answer is "yes," another is "no," and a third is stickier.
My understanding of the world (of people in the world) could be boiled down to the trueism that everyone is the same. On a good day this is called "empathy", and on bad day this is dismissed as "generalization". Still, for most of my life, I've believed in my sense of people, in comprehending what motivates their actions and words, in adjudicating portrayals as realistic or unrealistic, and in peeling back incomprehensible action (incomprehensible hurt, usually) and finding the why. I have understood – or, perhaps, claimed to have understood – every single person who has ever hurt me, and this has been a victory. A victory of clarity over the clouded field of human action. "I understand" sets something free.
But the line between this kind of understanding and pathologization is blurred. Sometimes it's a matter of language. Is your "understanding" just that or is it a trail of symptoms that leads to an origin? She is this way because of this. Red string. Diagnoses. A condescending pat on the shoulder or a sympathetic smile. Maybe: pathology is closed, and understanding is open.
I struggle with details. This is an unspecific particularity of mine. I too easily float away. When I write stories, I have to fight to ground them and give them texture and character. It is real fight. Writing is a kind of suffering. I'm like an oxymoron. The colourblind painter. The deaf musician. The unspecific writer*. (But these contradictory people all exist?).
*Doesn't have the same ring to it. More specific word TBD.
The whole "writing is suffering" thing isn't a play for the title of "tortured artist" either, I swear. It's more that, alongside the questions about the utility of art (I may write something soon about the myth of art "changing" the world), I am always wondering why strive to create if it is so painful. And the question always answers itself.
This thing about details and specificity is all a great blindspot for me, as it may be for you. I know my anxiety about it comes from the fact that I cannot see myself as others see me. Even more so, I cannot value myself as others might value me. But then, mixing all of this in with late-stage capitalism and attention economy and the entrepreneurial ethic and the cost of living crisis, you get...
If I cannot carve out a tessa-shaped space on "the world stage", then [insert anxiety here].
Anyway, I am wondering if you think about these things. I am wondering if you sometimes find yourself in periods of vagueness, where you cannot recall or conjure, when you seem to be the summary of a blank page.
And to return to my question at the beginning, I have a suspicion that the antidote to all this is more than just a "re-framing" (what they might suggest in therapy) or a commitment to the project (i.e. you have to just play the game, kid). I have a hunch that this is a psychological symptom of our material conditions and exploitative system. ;)
Feel free to leave any thoughts on vagueness in the comments ! I am writing a story tangentially connected to these thoughts and I am (always) wondering of the world outside my own head.
xoxo
tessa