Becoming Invisible

It isn't bad. It certainly isn't what I imagined. Considering how much of my life has been consumed with a fear of being mediocre, being consumed in anonymity is actually almost reassuring. I thought it would be like drowning, but it's just the opposite. I feel free. Invisible but free.

As a kid I was paralyzed by shyness but craved attention. Both my parents worked and we moved often enough that I didn't have many friends. I've never made friends easily. So I was alone a lot and lived more in my imagination than in the real world. This was fine until those chemical changes started and my drives shifted.

The shyness and desire for attention both became stronger, but so did the poignancy of my being alone. Luckily this was about the same time that we settled down for a few years and I came into a group of friends who accepted me and encouraged my imagination. My shyness was removed from the equation and I was getting attention.

But it was adolescence and I was on my way into young adulthood. Sadly I believed things I was taught and so was ill-equipped when it came to love, romance, sex and the general melee of the man-woman paradigm. Love was all I needed but no one explained that it's only the beginning of what a woman needs to stay with a man. If anyone had told me as a boy that stability and ambition count for a lot more than being a great lover or being a poet, I probably would have just focused on my art and not wasted what's amounted to decades in pursuit of what has only been a satellite to my own life.

Don't get me wrong: the women who've been in the picture have brought color, depth and resonance to my existence. I am grateful and appreciative that they were a part of things for the time that they were, I just wish I'd know that none of them would be sticking around.

It also would have been nice to know that the pain of a woman leaving would always be fresh and brutal.

So now that I've landed in middle age and stepped away from the fracas, removed myself from most social media, I'm left with simplicity. My shyness dissipated long ago and attention is about the last thing I want. A few years ago there were thousands of people following my interweb and career efforts, posting to my pages and reaching out to me constantly. I would get hundreds of notifications daily about things. Women from all over the world thought me interesting enough for all manner of banter and some even broached the possibility of starting something in the real world. My ego was overfed and glutted. I had carved a niche for myself in the musical community and was being invited to perform and to speak in addition to holding down a couple of jobs.

How could I let that go? Why would I??

It was easy. And it was time.

The internet can be lovely. For someone like me who will never make an entrance like Cary Grant, it was a goldmine. One can craft the image he or she wants, develop an entirely different persona than what people see at the day job and there is the luxury of being able to filter communications. Distraction and entertainment are everywhere. Porn is more accessible than data and appearance is more significant than accomplishment. It's a Fellini-Dali dream come to pass.

And it was too much for me. "Be careful what you wish," the wise man cautioned, "for you will surely get it."

I did. And as is the case so often, it wasn't what I thought. All that attention left me more painfully alone than when I was a confused teen. The flirtatious words connected with the enticing photos, real time chatting and the flurry of activity to try and keep up with it all left me cold. I'd shut down the devices and look around me to find no one there with me. Those who moaned and rallied when I announced it was time for me to leave the zoo rarely made any effort to keep up with me. Maybe that last part is what's amazed me the most.

My friends dragged their feet when I embraced social media. By the time they began to find in it what I had, I was over it. I didn't need or want to play games, take surveys or find out what character of (fill in the TV show or movie title) I was. I knew who I was and I know who I am.

I don't have conversations about what's happening on Facebook. The latest wave of hate has no more interest for me than whatever video of a cat or child is making the rounds. People are talking politics and it's getting heated? That's fine.

Maybe someday I'll return to that milieu. I think if I can tone it down and stop the notifications, there might be a time I resume a virtual presence. But until then I will glory in no one writing to tell me what an awful being I am or to demand I give them free things. In real life most women don't initiate contact of any sort so I don't have to reject anyone.

And I'm good with this. No one takes a second look if I'm out walking or standing in line. My phone isn't ringing and the number of texts I get in a month is nominal. It isn't a point of contention that I don't do hands-free calling while I drive. In fact no one is curious when or if I drive. My whereabouts are of no interest to anyone but me. No one seeks out my relationship status. Those things about me which are broadcast to the world are not from me and are all but overlooked.

On some level it would be nice for this blog to find an audience, but I'm simply glad that the documentation exists. That satisfies my vanity and insecurity more than anyone 'liking' something posted online. Let this be an archaeological anomaly, some odd token stumbled upon long after I'm gone.

In the meantime I'm gonna be in the world, wandering unseen between beauty and horror, waiting for sunrises and counting blue moons. It turns out invisibility is everything it's cracked up to be.

The Death of Empathy

I don't know when it happened. No idea if this is a global phenomenon or something unique to the States. I have survived the 'me' decade of the 70's and the cocaine fueled self-centeredness of the 80's, but never have I witnessed anything like what I see daily around me.

I suppose it's one possible outcome of humans being subjective creatures, an illogical inevitability of short-sightedness and conspicuous consumption. Even having changed my life to minimize contact with my fellow bipeds, giving up TV and walking away from mainstream social media, I see it every day. Every fucking day.

I see it in the way people drive, in how they act at coffee shops, in the things I overhear where I work and live, in so many communications I receive. Empathy is gone and compassion is on life support.

This doesn't mean there aren't incidents of loveliness or heroic acts, but these things are becoming more and more rare. I can't remember the last time I heard someone or read about an individual putting him- or herself into someone else's shoes and trying to understand their feelings, choices or actions. No, we live in a time of hair-trigger judgment. Preconception is now as valid as fact. Opinion is king in the land of the self-important. Cruel statements are lauded as brilliance, especially if worded cleverly. And worse, I am now seeing people made fun of for trying to be kind.

As a boy I was cautioned that kindness would lead to people to take advantage of me and ultimately take me for granted. For a long time I never cared because I liked making others happy, seeing them smile and if it was possible, making their lives easier, even for a few moments. But in the last several years I can count on one hand with fingers left over the number of people who have asked how I'm doing. This is not an exaggeration.

Do I think there's a solution? Not one I can imagine. Making the world less pleasant has got to be one of the strangest trends I've seen. This from a man who remembers pet rocks and Billy Beer.

None of this is to state I'm a particularly pleasant individual. Ask anyone I've dated. I'm moody, intense and prone to all manner of less than lovely things. But I try and keep my mouth shut when I could spew bile. Venting spleen now is something that happens only when I'm alone or with my best and closest friends. I don't meltdown in public and online. I don't attack strangers. When I'm attacked, if I can't rise above it or confront it with reason, I walk away.

Am I a pacifist? For the most part. But I was taught to fight. And I have friends who tell me I should be in the world and fighting every day. From their perspective this makes sense. From mine it's alien. This is partly because I'm alone and damaged, and partly because I have fought so much. I'm no longer a young man and I'm not wealthy, so I want whatever time I have left to be of quality. Once I reveled in triumph, in victory. That was an accomplishment. But for someone to win, someone else must lose. I don't deny that there are times for conflict or that there are things that are wrong. But I'm an artist and a lover. If people don't like what I do that's fine. It makes me sad for them if they feel the need to belittle me or mock me, but that's their choice. I'd rather just make music and write. If I never perform or publish again it makes no difference. It feels good to me, even if no one hears the sounds or reads the words.

And we live in a time where people don't read. I have a Twitter account mostly as a barometer of what's going on in society. It's getting to the point where I can make neither head nor tail of what people post.

But as I've stated, I'm old. I'm from another century. The values instilled in me are antiquated, anachronistic. This realization has not escaped me. But it saddens me that to be a hacker or an anonymous bully is somehow a badge of honor. In fact, I'm no longer sure the word honor has a place in my country.

Every day I see fewer and fewer decent things, decent in the sense of treating one another like fucking human beings. People make fun of the homeless and lose their minds when it takes two minutes to make their obscure espresso drinks. I don't recall the last time I saw two people holding hands. This is a time when people put their children on the roofs of their cars to open the doors and drive off without putting those kids inside the cars. There are more and more things I just can't grasp in human behavior. Does anyone remember the word humane?

It's heavy-handed and outdated, but there's an episode of the original Star Trek entitled "The Empath" and I encourage every biped who claims to have a heart to watch it. If possible watch it with someone significant to you. It's as simplistic as so much is that attempts to tackle something substantive in a short time, but it's worth the watching. Even if just to plant a seed.

There's an expression I was taught long ago: don't mistake kindness for weakness. As a culture we've lost sight of that. People give compliments as the overture to manipulating and exploiting others. Some days I feel I walked onto a playground where all the kids are pulling the wings off flies. Others I literally wait to see any sort of kind gesture between strangers.

What floors me about this is that all the people who are callous or even cruel will bitch about how no one is kind to them. But I think kindness is not something done for the expectation of reciprocation. That isn't what it is. Giving is giving. Giving to get something in return is something else, something darker.

Maybe I'm weak. I don't think so but I'm wrong a lot. But this may be one of those cases where I don't want to change something in myself. I still feel good when I can make others smile or laugh, if I can ease things even for a moment or two. I will keep trying, even in a world where no one asks "How are you?" anymore.

I'll keep asking.