My dear friends,
I want to thank everyone who wants to participate in my last little Tarot experiment, I didn’t expect this much enthusiasm! I’ve been thinking about the spread for a few days and mentally braided many threads, looking for the path of least resistance. As it happened, the three books I’m currently reading somehow merged into a perfect synergy, so behold, here’s my little musing on the Hermit, Temperance and Death.
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog
In these strange times, I’ve been returning to the oceanfront almost daily. I’ve discovered my own little hideout, beyond cliffs of moist sandstone and driftwood. I stand there, exposed to the elements, with only silently swaying barnacles beneath my stone bed, pondering. The natural majesty of the limitless horizon reliably drowns all traces of my everyday anxiety and self-importance. On top of that, the west-facing coast of Portugal enchants every day with those ridiculously stunning sunsets, kitschy Caspar Friedrich style. The sea rumbles, my velvet coat blows in the North Atlantic winds, and I’m enjoying the solitude.
But despite my temporary infatuation with such romantic notions, and the comfort of wallowing in a soft melancholy, let’s dispel the wistful sea of fog.
I am not alone.
We are never alone.
As was suggested by a beautiful paper, We Have Never Been Individuals, the idea of biological individualism is a reductive simplification that might be useful in hermetically sealed laboratory conditions but is a mere shadow of the blooming wilderness of the real. Our bodies consist of thousands of different organisms living and dying every moment, entangled ecosystems of a multitude of genomes.
Our physical vessels are intertwined, but even more so are our spiritual and emotional bodies. The thoughts, little obsessions and curious attentions each belong to a different soul that ingrained them in me - that one friend who always collects pebbles, and seashells, and the other who points out a colour standing out in the landscape. So it goes for all the anxieties and fears.
In each of my hand gestures and facial expressions, there’s someone I love. Specific words and phrases, the mould for my thought, they are also the hours spent with my teachers, professors, writers. In each chord I play, little melodies I noodle on my guitar, there is the weirdest assemblage of my favourite artists, half-forgotten themes and progressions heard in half a dozen other places. The life-affirming voice of Henry Miller, Vonnegut’s playfulness, the despair of Cioran. Abstract presences, made-up characters, mysterious strangers. Not an island, but a continuation. Of our parents, ancestors, friends, culture. They are in our every movement.
The curious, the surreal, the melancholic, the perverted, the frantic, all these reels unwind in my mind without cessation.
Which of them are mine?
Which of the voices are essential and which are accidental?
What would be left of us if we took all that is not essential? Apple is still an apple, in a plastic bag or on a tree, but how far does this simplistic Aristotelian logic stretch? Am I me without my favourite hat? Without my bookshelf? Without my upbringing? Without my idiotic sense of humour? (oh, that one surely not)
So, where do you draw the line? The sound of the rain on the roof of a concert hall or a muted cough in the front row, are they part of your musical experience?
We complain about repetitions, routines, daily looking for new ways to spice things up. But when you look at the experience mindfully, the illusion of duplication and permanence crumbles under your gaze. There are no two identical days, no strict categories of your personality, immutable adjectives; I am this four-letter Myers Briggs type, I am that trauma from a decade ago, here I start and, here I end.
Once you embrace your dynamic multitude, you see yourself conducting all these voices, a delightful, polyphonic, sometimes dissonant choir. You need to make sure all of them, everyone you absorb into yourself, is taken care of - because those oppressed and hurt will demand the centre stage so eagerly you might even fall for the illusion that they are you.
We are much more than any static, binary category, a set of points on a one-to-ten-scale, more than any measure can ever capture. More than someone’s memory of us. More than your parents’ expectations. More than a list of juicy fuckups. All models are wrong, mere simplifications that reveal as much as they obscure. And they create this illusion of individuality, separateness, a silly them vs. us survival game.
Kill all you think you know.
Kill the Buddha. And kill your parents. Kill the society. Kill yourself in the mirror every single morning. Cut through the multitude of spectres through which you arise, step back and see the merry, complex company you are. You will see a new gush of vitality pouring into your life, the joy of being alive and free, swirling in every glimpse of beauty.
Always learn anew.
Related reading
Hope you enjoyed my little musing; let me know what you think!
I’m looking forward to seeing how some of you tackle this bewitching spread in your writing - I quite enjoyed myself!
Stay kind and cherish the day,
k.