more on loneliness

I wrote this in an email to the loml this morning:

The realization of outsider loneliness takes it to what feels like a core place. Whenever I get these insights, and there have been several in the past, I eventually emerge wiser and more functional as a result. The first crushing blow to my ego was probably in my 20s, when I realized I was nothing all that special, artistically-- in particular that I completely lacked the resilience, willingness to suffer and pay dues, and belief in myself in the face of rejection that it takes to persist, either in writing or music. The next crushing blow to my ego was when I realized I was alcoholic, probably as early as about 1994, but it would take 10 years for me to get sober. It was also a real immolation when my persona burned down to the ground at Desert Academy and everything I was pretending to be proved to be transparent to the Board and almost fatal for me. The next crushing blow was when it slowly began to dawn on me that I was not skilled at romantic partnerships, intimacy or communication. I had always felt this weird pride about all of that. As the disasters continued even after I got sober, I realized au contraire, lots of humility to develop there. 

This one shoots through all of the above, as you can see easily in a second's reflection. What is the least tolerable part of working on being an artist? Loneliness. Core of alcoholism? Loneliness. Motive to develop a ridiculous strawman hollowman scarecrow public persona? Loneliness. Thing that gunks up relationships? Loneliness. So this is the kind of thing they mean when they say, okay, those other things are symptoms, This is a core issue. Causal, not conditional. 

So it's good to face it, it's just challenging, of course. It's not like one can encounter the monster under the bed of 56 years and be blithely aha! welcome, how nice that I know the shape of you. 

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So I'm reflecting more on that existential identity. "I am a lonely person." It's been true in many settings. And it's all bound up by also feeling like a weirdo. I have sometimes tried to romanticize or revel in the weirdo status, but I have never or rarely gotten to a place of acceptance with it. I don't know. Is this the wrong country for me? The wrong era? The wrong planet? 

There are plenty of ways that I also have valued my outsider feeling. I think I have intentionally exacerbated and magnified it at times. In Santa Fe, being intentionally East Coast raw and skeptical of New Age things. In schools, being rebellious. Etc. It's a way of managing the constant feeling of not belonging, for sure. Just make it so that you obviously do not belong. Why not? Nothing to lose, since you already feel that way. 

The thing is that I have long yearned for belonging. I think this is just the way we are. Community is a beautiful thing. The brief stretches of time when I have felt connected and like I belong have been glorious. Even if it is just one facet of myself that rarely gets connected up with others, but finally finds a forum for a little while. The botany part of me, for example, in conversation with botanists. This is a good example, because the vast majority of the time, people seem to find my fascination with cacti to be weird. And now that I have been in the PhD program, they often seem to find the research that I do to be utterly either inscrutable or unimpressive. 

I have not intentionally sought areas of culture that are outre or obscure merely to seem interesting or whatever. I love Cecil Taylor's music. I love weird art. It loves me back. Etc.