it’s a matter of whether words limit reality or create it
I usually try not to post anything too revealing. but I need to do this for myself, so my mind can rest. here we go.
in high school- when I started this blog, actually- I believed that I could create my own reality. I figured that I could walk away from a situation either thinking about it in a positive light or in a negative light, so I might as well think about it in a positive light. taking this to the extreme, I twisted some frustrating times in my life into this upbeat, happy-go-lucky, blissfully ignorant kind of existence. my life was only what I made it out to be. it was all in my head. reality didn’t matter, only what I believed about it.
growing up in a conservative community with even more conservative parents, I couldn’t bring myself to accept the reality we all shared, the reality to which I was supposed to conform. so I lived at a distance from everyone and everything around me. when someone tried to tell me to see how things “really” were, I didn’t care. I lived in my own world, and had no desire to get out. I saw rainbows in everything and filled the air with the sound of glockenspiels. I was a sheep floating in the clouds, surrounded by imaginary butterflies. I thought it was awesome. I could fly.
I don’t know exactly how it happened, but going away to montreal kind of muted this extreme escapism in me. maybe its because the world around me was no longer so threatening to my sense of self; maybe its because I could actually accept what I saw around me, I could actually be myself for who I really was. I didn’t need to create a good situation because it was a good situation.
while at university I developed a passion for art. studying art history allowed me to confront the world we all share, to confront politics and history and crisis and pain. it was a perfect balance between seeing the world as it “really” is, and seeing the world through pretty representations, from a distance.
don’t get me wrong, I still see rainbows when I look at lights. but instead of thinking that I created the world I began to think that the world was just creating me. I attribute this to art history, actually, because the discipline arrives at the meaning of a subject by looking at its context. as art historians we’re conditioned to see the artwork as the product of its social, historical, political environment, the product of social constructions of the world rather than an individual construction of the world. it is our circumstances that shape us, not the other way around.
it’s kind of a relief to think that we’re not really responsible for creating the world around us, that who we are and what we see is just a result of our environment, the assumptions that have been so deeply ingrained in us. i understand why you’d want to think this way. in some ways, it takes the pressure off. it helps you get outside of yourself. it helps you see yourself as inseparable from other people. seeing from this perspective gave me a real, incredible sense of connection to everything and everyone around me, as if there were no barriers, as if they were me, and I were them.
art allowed me to get in touch with the world again.
but art also made me skeptical of words. I questioned the ability of words to express something so big, something so intangible, this reality that I was finally confronting. I began to feel that words were only arbitrary, that they were just imposing some sort of unnatural structure on the universe. I felt that they could never do an idea justice, words could never express everything as I saw and felt it. my words were only funneling my experience into something smaller than it was, fragmenting it. they were limiting- if something was this, it couldn’t be that. I began to feel that words were always futile, that communication was always futile. there was so much in between words, if you feel me, that art helped me see.
where did that girl go who thought that words were everything? who thought that words were powerful, that thinking happy thoughts could actually make a situation better? that it didn’t matter if they carried truth or not, that words were worthwhile… they were all she had…
I miss her. at the expense of “growing up”, I think, she decided she couldn’t live in her own little world anymore. while she was, perhaps, too far into neverland, there was something valuable about the strength of her imagination, her way of thinking. it is, in a sense, more true. after all, we’re all living in our own little worlds. none of us are understood. who is to say that one’s world is more “real” than another? what is reality anyway, or rather whose?
if we see words as limiting, then they will be. despite what politicians or the law might say, people, events, and memories have no intrinsic meanings themselves. there is no “true”, no “real” way to look at something. after all, it’s not like we can transparently access or share our deepest memories by popping them in a dvd player or downloading them on a computer. this gives us an incredible amount of freedom, an infinite number of ways to look at the same event. each and every day, we order our lives ourselves, and recreate them to other people. unable to include it all, we selectively choose which information is significant enough to resurface and which is insignificant enough to leave out. we add descriptions, too, making life more exciting than it is, building a narrative like the writers of our own stories.
if you are the author, I wonder, why not make it a great story? why not make yourself into the character you want to be? why not make the world your canvas? why not?
as I go forward in my life, my writing, my relationships, I see two different ways to address the dilemma of communication. I can either allow myself to be alienated by my inability to share exactly what I think or how I feel, to be defeated in that I can never know another person completely, or I can revel in the beauty of trying, by delighting in the joys of creating something out of nothing, pinning down the slippery world with my words. and believing in them.
like that girl in high school, I once again see that words are an opportunity- my most everlasting opportunity- to create myself, to reach an ideal. but I don’t want them to become my trap again. in a healthier place in my life, I no longer want to use words as a shield, I no longer want to live apart from everyone else.
I realize that while words are what allow me to be creative, and thus happy, they are also what keep me grounded. that’s the beauty of it. they are what keep me relevant, what give me agency. for they are the only thing that exists between me and everyone else, the best chance I have for making contact with the world outside of my own mind. to put it simply, I must use words, not magic. I must structure the world in a way that other people will understand, in a way that correlates with a shared reality. I must give up a bit of myself, sure, to make sense to everyone else. but otherwise, what difference will I make? who will I really know? who will really know me? how could I fall in love?
now more than ever I am ready for my exchange with the world. I accept that it involves some risk, some vulnerability and some compromises- but getting to know others really, truly, is the greatest exploration of life, the one journey to which there is no end. I’m beginning to think it’s a beautiful thing, that we can’t ever see exactly what another person is talking about, or know exactly what we’re talking about ourselves, because it means we have something to keep talking about. after all, is it not what makes life worth living when you can finally look someone in the eye and feel you’ve made contact? when you are finally assured, if only but for a moment, that you are not alone? that someone can actually feel the way you feel, know what you know? that your feelings are real? it is in the exchange of words that you see who you are. it is in the exchange of words that you can access something outside of, something greater than yourself. through words, we find answers. we make answers.
it is conversation and conversation alone which connects me to all of you. and, unlike high school, i want to be here with all of you. I want to be in our reality, not only mine. in making this happen, I can either see that words are never enough, or I can see that they are my only hope. this post commemorates the fact that my faith in words has been restored. it commemorates my appreciation of the structure that words provide, for it is through this stabilizing process that we have the power to make things what they are, and ultimately, to make things different. I should not, I cannot, give up on words, for words are what create the world!
I can fly! I can fly!
shout out to professor carney
today’s featured artists: max gregor and christine kim
