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opinion
Till death do us apart
Victor
Paul Borg muses on the reasons why friendships never die –
and is the notion of the suffering artist a metaphor for life or
an illusion?
The other week I fell out with a friend. It started from a minor
difference on plans for one night out, and soon the dissenting agendas
gave rise to childishly nagging indiscretions. Then an argument
erupted: we accused one another of being intolerant, arrogant, judgemental
(perhaps the blaming one another of the same aggravations is an
illustration of the similarities that makes us friends). After a
week of silent contempt, we called each other again, the argument
and the accusations forgotten. We never mentioned the incident again
because we didn't need to; it was simply a one-off event, like going
to the cinema.
With friendships it's easy to forgive and forget, but with relationships?
If the same argument had taken place with a lover, it might have
dragged on endlessly, sapping the energy out of each other, or,
worse still, petrify into a dormant grudge, ready to erupt at the
next minor injury.
This made me reflect on how friendships are different from love
relationships. We are endlessly analysing the nature of relationships:
in memoirs writers draw out their relationships in hairline detail
and with long wit, but what about the nature of friendships? Perhaps
the lack of simmering emotional conflict makes friendships a non-issue?
Also, it's hard to jostle friendships into a story line, because
there is no pattern, no beginning and end. Relationships have a
definable beginning (usually starting with a kiss) and a discernible
ending (usually with a phonecall or weeping confession in bed),
but friendships have a hazy beginning (when does a new person become
a friend?) and no clean-cut ending. In a sense, many friendships
never die.
New friends tread lightly into our lives on the stepping stones
of common interests, which lead to hanging out and a series of shared
times. Soon enough, they become like old friends – we take
the friendship for granted and invest little effort into sustaining
the friendship. Without promise and commitment (unlike a relationship),
a friendship still takes a life of its own anyway, somehow, and
friends stay around forever.
With friends who have become old friends, you might drift apart,
even lose contact, and then suddenly, out of the blue, your paths
cross again and it's like old times. With old friends even the bond
of common interests shifts to irrelevance. I have a handful of teenage
friends, for example, with whom I have little in common. Our lives
have flopped in different directions, our worldview is contrasting,
the nuances of our tastes disparate: if I had to meet these people
today I would not give them my telephone number. So why are they
the people I miss now and again and rush to the telephone to call
them?
What makes us friends, I suppose, is the shared history. All those
past moments and rites and rituals together have made these people
familiar like extended family – and we care. The bond, perhaps,
may be only as good as memory, but if memory is what makes us who
we are, isn't memory everything?
• • •
There seems to be the idea embedded into the Gen X psyche, especially
among young artists, that artistic creativity is borne out of suffering.
Bleeding with emotional intensity – especially the dualities
of love and sadness – seems essential for a fuller life and
better art. Those who burn in the line of pure love and high determination
are revered martyrs (think of Oscar Wilde, for example). In other
words we all want to suffer and be afraid and feel empty with unrequited
love, even become noble victims.
Then there is the bed and bread struggle, and the scramble for recognition:
I see this around me all the time living in a big Capitalist city
that can be lonely and brutal. It seems to me that many people find
starving artists worthy of noble admiration. Are there shades of
truth in these notions, or is the yearning to suffer a consequence
of our cushioned, sheltered, yet vacuous modern lives? If we didn't
find meaning in materialism, are we trying to find meaning in suffering?
Well, if art is the light in the dark, then the artist has to draw
from the dark, surely? Often, many artists (especially writers)
start from a point of injustice, the whine that accompanies a sense
of defeat; that sense of injustice gives us something to express
while contentment lacks the conflicts that makes stories or paintings
or songs so poignant. So perhaps there is truth in the struggle
and the emotional madness spurring creativity. In a lot of literature,
story-lines start from a situation blazing with emotional highs
(an excitement about something, or the euphoria at the threshold
into something worthwhile) and then plummet into sobering reality
and grim endings (the consequences of throwing oneself head-first
towards one's dreams).
Perhaps my fatalistic views stem from my fascination with obsessions
and my belief that we experience our best moments – when we
feel alive and can see the world clear-sightedly – either when
we are flying with emotional highs or when we are wallowing with
emotional suffering. The in-between may be safer, more content because
emotions are not on a roller coaster, but that state is also bland
and fails to stir my soul – so I jump from the peak to the
valley and so on. From the position I am talking from (my life),
there are a lot of ironies and twists but no happy endings –
is that a world of my own making (perhaps illusory) or is it a metaphor
for life?
victor@borg.tf |
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