It's Always More Complicated

Several (or maybe it just seems like several) plaints by Concerned Parents anent their Offspring who is not Doing Young Person the way they think Young Personhood ought to be done coming up via agonyaunt -

(And honestly, isn't that probably totally anachronistic by now, if they're hearking back to the days of their own Yoof? though in some instances they cite Offspring's Sibling/Schoolmates as what they are Not Like.)

And this is essentially being quiet and keeping themselves to themselves and dare one suggest, sitting at home stodging with a book, or reading on their mobile device, anyway -

Me, personally, myself, and this may be a very fringe thing, think that just maybe it would be a good thing to encourage those bouncy extroverts who must always be in a crowd and the thick of things to embrace the possibilities of Being Alone and Doing Stuff By Themselves?

Is this shockingly subversive? (Vague recollections of 1953 dystopian novel by David Karp called One: 'the new regime frowns on individuality and encourages a hive-mind-like sense of being absorbed in a community. Conformity is king; the more alike everyone is, the better.' Review here.)

I was given to think about this, looking back over some previous entries here and came across this commenting upon an interview with Bill Nighy about liking to sit alone reading in restaurants and people thinking 'awww, he must be lonely, poor thing'. And I am sure I have oft quoted Katharine Whitehorn's desire for a chain of restaurants designed for the solitary reader, with decent table lights and bookstands.

Apart from the 'go out in the fresh air, why, when I could be at home READING' side of things, in my long bygone youth I used to do things like going to movies and long walks on my tod.

Anyway, as somebody said in the responses to one of those parental plaints, perhaps the people around their offspring are not Their People and later on - maybe when they leave home - they will find their Kindred Spirits if not Bosom Friends.

Sara Maitland: 'Savour solitude - it is not the same as loneliness'

Admittedly, this is somebody who was a favourite novelist of mine (I probably would still enjoy her novels) and then I read A Book of Silence (2008), and see I concurred with Ursula Le Guin that there was an awful lot of privilege involved in her search for elected silence to sing to her.

I felt it was possibly at this particular moment a bit off, tone-wise, to say woez people are incapable of appreciating solitude when so many people are probably desperate for a small amount of alone-time, being banged up with family/room-mates for an indefinite duration and unable to get away for more than (possibly) a very limited period.

I'm personally finding it a bit scary that I'm hunkering down rather like the being in Kafka's 'The Burrow'. Though not, of course, entirely solitary.

It is particularly ironic that insofar as I had a New Year's Resolution, or an intention for this year, anyway, it was along the lines of trying to be a bit more social. Hah.

Can a friendship app, a digital neighbourhood noticeboard or Facebook really help me discover a new bestie?

Well, I'd think probably not, but what do I know, also I am a cynic that thinks that those cuddly friends groups that are always hanging out together and organising parties for one another are a sitcom/romcom trope and probably very seldom to be found in the real world or else are very particular situation-dependent.

I am not sure that one can just tout court search for friendship online - speaking as somebody who Has Online Friends All Over The World In Several Timezones, but I made them through being active on listservs (at one time) and LJ/DW, which are, do admit, the ideal venues for introverts to put themselves Out There.

While the author of the article (who, dare I admit it, once contacted me about a matter within My Sphere of Expertise...) ultimately wonders

if my existing social media connections may be the most fruitful source of friends. They have already expressed an interest in me as an individual, and I should have some sense of them as people and be confident that we have something in common.

Also, it may be the Ol' Introvert Boogie thing again, but I was just somewhat beswozzled by some of this recently on Captain Awkward: Birthday Blues Bulletin Board: Advice + Open Thread. Though I do get the more general principles of wanting things and not being sure whether it is okay to ask for them, only my things are not so much about people holding me a birthday bash (even if I do have a significant year coming up), but more along the lines of 'I would really like some mark of esteem along the lines of a festschrift but it seems massively egotistical to go around murmuring about this to one's academic colleagues'.

And mileage may vary on this, but I like what I understand some people dismiss as factitious and automated social media birthday greetings. And give them, including to people I am not sure are even around on DW any more.

Today I did, in fact, go out for lunch to meet up with a friend whom I have known for A Very Long Time, and it was lovely. All the same, it required a good deal of scheduling!

Apparently solo dining is becoming A Thing? (scroll down, it's the last thing)

In New York, there’s a rising trend for eating alone and some restaurants have amended their menus and tables to cater for this. The restaurant booking site OpenTable has also reported a rise in solo dining.

Perhaps I am a grumpy ol' misanthrope who has had one or two too many group meals which have involved going, finally, to some place that is nobody's first choice but will fit everybody in and accommodate everybody's dietary requirements/a person turning up late and keeping everyone else from ordering/that person who either takes for ever deciding what to order or is too busy chatting to address the matter/person who takes an inordinate time longer than everybody else to finish a course/ - yes, I am a grumpy ol' misanthrope.

Also, I have my book/e-reader/phone/laptop for company: I do not want a giant teddy-bear vis-a-vis. I should not have to come over all Greta Garbo 'Vant to be alone' at a teddy-bear. At least, one may hope, the bear will not attempt to engage one in lively conversation ('What are you reading/is that a good book?').

I was rather perturbed by reading this account of the production of Julius Caesar at The Bridge Theatre at which 'The production is staged in promenade, with some of the audience invited, in the words of the production webpage, to ‘become part of the action'. Count me an old fuddy-duddy that would rather watch than participate - it was quite bad enough that time before a production of (I think) The Tempest when the thesps mingled and chatted with the audience, not to mention various things where I have felt that not sitting right at the front of the stalls was a wise decision...

This seems to me open to the same objections that I have heretofore expressed about the concept of interactive fiction: that actually, one wants to sit and let the tale/play unfold, and if one wanted a different experience, one would be doing a different kind of thing. (Re-enactment, perhaps.)

Presumably those spectators in ye Jacobethan theatre who sat on the stage didn't actually anticipate being dragged into the action? Okay, can think of plays that bring ye meta with this: though in Knight of the Burning Pestle isn't it the rambunctious audience member who insists on intruding his apprentice into the play?

But am also not sure I am missing much by not seeing 3D versions of movies...

Is this notion of the 'immersive' a literalisation of metaphor?

But I really don't think it's a uniquely millennial thing to dislike/shrink from making chitchat to random people such as hairdressers, taxi-drivers, etc.

Whatever Stuart Heritage thinks.

(Presumably he self-identifies as a millennial - opens by saying he is now going bald - is there now a post-millenial generation coming up - )

On the chatting to hairdressers thing, this is so very much not a new thing that the recesses of memory tell me that there is an Ancient Roman, or possibly Classical Greek joke:

Barber: How would Sir like his hair cut?

Customer: In total silence, thanks.

Boom! Boom!

I expect you had to be there and it was all in the telling.

I'm not sure the dislike of these forms of interaction is the result of automation, as Heritage posits: I think automation was what a lot of people had been waiting for. One of the first manifestations possibly being the manifestation of preference for ATMs over interacting with a bank teller, even during bank opening hours.

Also, Heritage is so out of order on the condom vending machine thing as millennial development: these have been around for a very long time. Pictorial evidence c. 1930s.

Horseshoe bus seats introduced to encourage passengers to talk to each other.

(And I really don't think it's going to discourage people putting their bags on the seats: in fact I envisage them building a defensive redoubt of the things.)

People don't want to talk to one another on public transport, or at least, not to random strangers. I am moderately amused that this is being put into practice in one of those parts of the country which one vaguely assumes is not like the Anomic Metroples, full of atomised sad lonely individuals who can only be brought to exchange words in the face of disaster, when Blitz Spirit kicks in and we all start singing London Pride.

Though, honestly, Wiltshire and Dorset? are we not then in Hardy Country? would you want to get into conversation with a Hardy character on a bus? We think not. Who knows what it would lead to? (even if they were not clutching a boar's pizzle.) Also, they would be on the wrong bus going in the wrong direction.

My dearios will know that oursins do not tend to deal well with having to participate in social events involving strangers, because a) we are introverts and b) we have difficulty hearing conversations in loud crowded spaces.

So, yesterday my niece had invited me to join her and a group of friends who meet up monthly for socialisation (it's connected with the series of feminist events she's organising), and I might have bailed if I hadn't had other reasons to go to the Town Where I Was Born yesterday.

I was also given pause by this meetup being held in a pizza restaurant.

And I had a really great time with good conversation and feelings of connection and energisation.

Also - although there did turn out to be non-pizza things I could have eaten - the place was quite happy to make me a pizza without cheese on request. WIN.

Perhaps I really should get out more?

On the one hand we have Introverts! Get Over Yourselves! Get Out There And Socialise! (do we think that the writer thinks that MANNERS would also require submitting to unwanted embraces from relatives, etc? because it would Hurt Their Feelings if you didn't.)

This intersects just so much with the standard female obligations to grease the wheels of social life.

On another, we have these people who want small talk to be banned. Well, I am no great fan of small talk, which I am very bad at, but I also resist the ukase to speak only on those topics traditionally Banned in the Mess (sex, religion, and politics, as I recall).

Also, this reminds me all too much of Mr Mybug going around asking women 'do women have souls', which he presumably thinks makes him look DEEP.

***

And in other news, have spent far too much time over the past day or so endeavouring to give my mobile phone provider moolah so that I can have a new phone with more memory and, I hope, a better turn of speed, and I keep getting a transient message saying 'Please check the page for the following errors', without, you know, actually describing what the errors are, after I have put in my card details and clicked continue and it shows all the signs of transaction going through.

Several attempts, tried different cards, different browsers, and if doing it via tablet made a difference. Also ringing my card provider to confirm that their initial security block had been lifted.

I tweeted about this and so far the response has been, does your local store have the model in stock? (they do, but I can't even do click and collect. Also, I was rather hoping not to have to trek to a physical shop.)

Tell me again that this is a society of instant gratification.

Go Hadley! Sure, it’s nice to feel you have a literary alter ego. But the idea that you need to find one to enjoy a piece of art is one I only ever hear in relation to women.

It is as true as it is a truism to say that books written by women about women are generally seen as niche fluff while those written by men about men are big manly literature... As Emily Nussbaum wrote on Bridget’s contemporary, Sex And The City, “while The Sopranos has ascended to TV’s Mt Olympus, the reputation of Sex And The City has shrunk and faded... The assumption that anything stylised (or formulaic, or pleasurable, or funny, or feminine, or explicit about sex rather than about violence, or made collaboratively) must be inferior.” Emphasis on the feminine, I’d argue.

And let's embroider this on our samplers, laydeez:
when I read a novel, I want a story, not a mirror

(Though I think the idea that MENZ don't identify/wymmynz do is complicated by that pervasive supposition that BLOKES won't read GURLEE books/watch meedja that foregrounds female protags but women will. Perhaps the supposition here is that when wymmyn read about wymmyn it is for a mirror and to understand The Real World of Real Stuff they read men?)

I find this piece on writers, shyness and introversion not entirely satisfactory. Partly because it starts out with the writers making copy from their (somewhat assumed) social anguishes, and only then moves to people who write about people different from themselves. I'm also Y O Y no mention of Arnold Bennett?

And on a beloved and enduring work of gurlee-fic: Evie Wyld [Who she?] on I Capture the Castle.

And further on 'there is nothing wrong with cheering people up': this by Steven Isserlis is addressed to composers, but I think has wider resonance:

Don’t think that in order to be profound you have always to be dark and depressing. True, terrible things happen in our world, and the music of our time is likely to reflect that in some way. But terrible things have always happened – as I write this book, in fact. Although these times are undoubtedly scary, much of the world is in better condition than it was a hundred years ago. And nature is still beautiful: sunsets are as stunning as ever, mountains are still awe-inspiring and the sea is still wild. Of course, write as you feel, and try to move beyond mere entertainment (unless that’s all you’re aiming for); but don’t think you are being superficial if your works fail to cast their listeners down into a pit of gloom.

Though not sure 'entertainment' is not a valid end in itself.