Soundtrack

Walking back from lunch, I was thinking "is there an emotional equivalent of holding one's breath?"

Then I checked KP's blog. Funny how things go, isn't it. I was also thinking last week,

Funny how hard it is to think when you are playing hide and seek with your own thoughts.

I was also thinking, walking in, is there something like the way when you are hungry (hypoglycemically) that nothing is satisfying, and that you hyper-focus on something arbitrary, something that annoys you or that is a milestone (weight, bank balance, status of clothing being ironed), you focus on it not so much out of proportion, but out of value balance... boy, I bet there's a better word than that... like being aware you are in a dream while dreaming... being aware that your emotional reaction to things is not you, but is more a bio-chemical shift. Then you have lunch, and everything is normal again. But I was thinking whether there is an emotional version of that, not food affecting emotion, but emotion affecting emotion. Does that leave a control variable?

Read Life of Pi?

Hide and Seek.

So what other thing was I thinking last week? Family. It was this weekend actually. Something about family. Was rereading about differentiation last week. But the family bit? Gone now.

And audiences. Differention. I see that connection now. Funny how much easier it is to find the blog "voice" now. Is that the equivalent of "forgetting the camera is there" or is it knowing the audience? The early challenge of the blog, especially the audio blog, was finding/choosing the voice. Is it okay to write "f**k" or not (guess not)?

And now? Right now I'm not that character, or I don't have that voice, or call it what you will. The differentiation principle (for lack of a better term) says, talk anyway. Integrity is the ability to be yourself regardless of potential reactions. And in relationships, even virtual ones, it gets very easy to do and say the things that get you the positive responses and validation you want. Even if it means not doing and saying other true things. This builds comfort at the expense of honesty, and is (arguably perhaps) the long slow death of real intimacy.

Relevance? Well differentiation demands knowing and holding on to yourself. Hide and seek is a different game. So can you maintain an honest relationship with others while hiding from yourself?

I listened to a really interesting program on teaching children about media literacy. What a terrific idea. Included were critically watching not just news but TV shows, and learning to understand the storytelling rules in both.

Sometime individuals break these rules. "Company" on Broadway and "Seinfeld" on TV showed that a plot isn't necessary if the conversations are interesting enough. Blogs seem to be an interesting hybrid. They demand the Robert Altman-like authenticity of conversation along with a big-picture message. Those storytelling rules appeal to me.

I'm reminded now of Jeanne, how she used to have to have a (and now the anxiety over storytelling rules and audiences come back... do we like this anxiety, is it the pleasurable stress of intimacy, or is recognition of the fundamental danger of the virtual interface of public and private?) ... had to clear her mind of relationship baggage before she could concentrate enough to study for exams. I always thought that was very odd... why choose to live with that much emotional difficulty day to day? Wouldn't it be better to work through it, deal with it - not that it would be easy, but still.

Where does this story end? On a raft at sea, understanding a little better why one chooses to sail with tigers.