I was talking with an old graduate school friend last night. We’re recently back in touch after a long, prolonged absence filled with lots of life happening to each of us. I will see her in just a few weeks when I head out to Arizona to work on So Far Appalachia.
Truthfully, we weren’t very close in school. Berkeley is a grind. And it’s segmented. People in the news track spend very little time with documentarians and filmmakers. You spend hour upon hour with the people in your sequence. Seven days a week. For two years.
All that is to say we were not in the same track. And our personal lives had little reason to cross.
Still, we found each other briefly just before we both parted ways: she for the East Coast, me for Austin. We would meet with our friends in Oakland, share a few drinks, talk of stories and films and plans. She is – from the outside looking in – the kind of women who sweeps by, who makes you want to grab Gatsby and head to the gardens of England.
She told amazing stories. And she shot a beautiful movie. And she was gentle with words.
At least this is what I remember of her. It’s been almost 8 years and the mind plays with facts and feelings. But I look forward to meeting her beautiful family and drinking coffee under the Southwestern sun.
***
I forget that I am watched. I have lived my life publicly and online since 1984. I have spread myself across the fabric of the Internet far and wide, which is to say that hidden in the very tiny cracks of this massive communication network are bits and pieces of me from 26 years ago.
Longer than my students have been alive, if I stop to think about it. But I digress.
I ride the network to and fro, rarely stopping to worry about who sees what I do, who thinks about what I do, who has opinions of what I do. This is my world, my space, and there is little reason for me to care. I am a native – insomuch as one is a native (respects to Bill Drummond, who reminds me that we are all native to only one place: Earth) – and don’t put much stock on those new social mores so many modern users cling to and sell as “New Ways to ___ on the Web.”
That is not my Internet. Not my life. Not my experience in this digital world.
I say this because I’m reminded again – and again – that the words I write here about addiction and recovery and depression and destruction and Life Anyway resonate beyond this page. Because people lurk and read and forward and sometimes they respond.
In my friends case, she simple said this about me: “I envy the way your digital life seems so full/you don’t seem to compartmentalize/it’s all hanging out”
***
Years ago, I interviewed George Carlin for Wired News. I sat in his office making small talk for a few minutes, describing what we hoped to do with the piece. Getting as comfortable as you can get with George Carlin smiling at you.
Famous people do little to me. They are, after all, just people. Nothing more, nothing less. I have never found myself stumbling over my words on the few occasions I’ve had to speak with them.
Except this time. Without thinking, I blurted out (and I will never forget this exchange, but take the quotes with a granularity of salt):
“I have to tell you George, I was raised listening to you. My father loved you. He’s a pretty conservative guy, but he really loved you. I remember watching your shows and listening to your albums with him. I just think you’re a pretty great American.”
“Brad, I appreciate that. It’s odd because I hear that all the time and I don’t know what to say. I travel all across the country and I hear some version of that everywhere I go. You know when it gets weird? I was doing the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle one day and I was an answer.”
Without a word, he hopped up and grabbed Brain Droppings off his bookshelf and signed it.
“Your dad will like this.” [My dad, as it turned out, REALLY liked that.]
He asked about them. At the time, my parents were traveling the country in an RV. Part of the Wal-mart recreational vehicle masses.
“Here’s my number. If they come to L.A., have them call me.” [I love my parents. I did not give my parents his number. I think, sometimes, that was a mistake.]
On the day Carlin passed away, several years later, I remembered that day in his office. How he moved so seamlessly between his private life and his public life.
Today I wonder if he was actually moving.
***
Today a former girlfriend – or near girlfriend – or a girl whom I dated – called me “annoyingly positive.”
We laughed. I liked it.
Because I am, and yet I don’t know how to not be broken. I don’t know how to fit in. I don’t know how.
I am bad at the Game of Life. I am not good with people, the complexities that drive us to each other and away from each other. These subtleties escape my understanding.
I am annoyingly positive because of these things. The faults are my freedom. I have nothing left to lose in my life that hasn’t been lost already. Un-returnable.
All that I have is a life lived proudly fierce. My broken-ness and failure mine. To have and hold. To share and teach with. To remember with.
This intensity has proven a hindrance in my personal life. I know this because of what I’ve been told.
What I have lost, though, can at least be filled in by that which I have gained. The emails, the phone calls, the texts, the visits. The words from across the networks, both real and cyber. The other broken people – sometimes in public, sometimes in private, sometimes anonymously – who thank me for being broken in public for them.
***
I currently feel weird because I am writing about me.
***
I continually tell my students to remember one thing: They will not remember any lessons or assignments or projects when they leave college. This is not what college is about. They will remember the people, their friends, and the moments when they realized – through hard work – they could do something.
The moment the confidence arrived. The clarity set in.
In the digital world, I have the chance to watch that happen. Through blogs. Through Twitter. Through Flickr and YouTube.
As a writer and storytelling, though, it’s most humbling to watch it in their words. When people find me and praise me for my open-ness, I point them to these students. Because they are young and raw and fierce. They are more fierce than I ever was at that age.
They are not pretty or perfect or profound in every post; they are broken and confused and real. They are the kinds of people you think of when you think of the kinds of people you want to know. Sometimes maddening. Sometimes not. Sometimes brilliant. Sometimes not.
[You can see some of them: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here]
These are the places I turn when I am feeling weird about writing about me.
***
There is only one escape from this post. One truth I’ve been working towards slowly over the last few days. One emotion that creeps upon me with every compliment, every story shared with me, every kind word of encouragement.
I am, of course, a fraud.
Trapped between the frailties of my human-ness and my inability to navigate my own emotions. I am not fierce. Maybe more honest than some, certainly less honest than others. I live in solitude, mostly. Sometimes happily, sometimes not.
I have only started one more time than I have stopped, which is what continues to make all the difference.
When I add it all up, it’s not particularly note-worthy.
In the end, this is as fierce as it gets.
