The Outsiders

"... In every generation there are a few souls, call them lucky or cursed, who are simply born not belonging, who come into the world semi-detached... without strong affiliation to family or location or nation or race.. For those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainty, change, have erected a powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness, that disruptive, anti-social force, so that we mostly conform, we pretend to be motivated by loyalties and solidarities, we do not really feel, we hide our secret identities... But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds (because we are all alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves), we soar, we fly, we flee.  And in the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the non-belongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks.  What we forbid ourselves we pay good money to watch, in a playhouse or movie theatre, or to read about between the secret covers of a book... The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveller, the gangster, the runner, the mask: if we did not recognize in them our least-fulfilled needs, we would not invent them over and over again, in every place, in every language, in every time." - Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet

I'm not quite sure what to make of this.  For someone who loves the fact that music, art, and literature binds people together, who loves the fact that technology is embarking on a social adventure... who loves the human relationships in most actions.. the idea that separateness is the true nature of our collective expressions is a big downer.  But Rushdie, for all his pomposity, has a point.

Kerry and I was talking about this when we saw Passing Strange the other day; there were lots of suits in attendance and we wondered why they would attend a show when their career and life decisions obviously are so different from those of the performers on stage.  Kerry, an actor, tossed out a sound-byte (sort of). "I suppose, that for a few moments of their day, they want to feel alive," he said.

(Huh, I said. Not willing to concede the moment to such a frivolous and anti-establishment statement.)

Theatre, art – music – they're the blood and guts of life. Isn't that why we watch a movie? See a play? Listen to our favorite song nestled between the pillows and sheets while the rain trickles outside?  I get so self-involved with my own currents sometimes – find a job, write a paragraph, etc. – it's like a waking sleep.  Most of my activities have become habits, physical reactions to stimuli – but to escape from that, to take a bird's eye view of myself, of my life, now that's universal.  And the arts reflect that yearning.  They crystallize our abstract machinery, the things that make us go.  Love, what is that? That's in a song.  Joy, what is that? It's in dabs of paint.  And so on...

So your comment is a bit funny to me, because I consider you one of the outsiders, along with myself, but maybe you don't see it that way?

Posted by: vinny | June 05, 2007 at 09:00 PM

OH - I definitely agree with you. I've always felt like the outsider, but in a good way cause I like to observe things. Actually, sometimes, I like to immerse in a large crowd or just chaotic conversations cause I feel more non-descript that way. I like to observe connections but that doesn't mean I'm comfortable with them.

Posted by: j.fisher | June 05, 2007 at 09:39 PM

Thought-provoking.

Posted by: c.h.ha | June 06, 2007 at 03:04 PM

I've been reading Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov which addresses just this issue. (In fact, I encountered it last night in going back over the Grand Inquisitor!!) According to Dostoevsky, if you take the western philosophical idea of solidarity out to it's logical extreme, all that is left for us is suicide (the murder of the self). It's not that it is incorrect logically because it is perfectly rational. But in terms of creating a viable human existence, the acceptance of our solidarity is no more helpful than the acceptance of a herd mentality which, if taken to its extreme is also loss of the self. Both are ultimate disdainful of humanity. There is another alternative in terms of community, etc. that we westerners have a difficult time grasping and is what he felt the earliest Christian communities had going for them. And it didn't defy the laws of physics or chemistry, either. But I'm still working through my understanding of what this is. :)

Posted by: Laura | June 09, 2007 at 11:47 AM