“And then? What happens next?”
It’s a funny thing going step by step, week by week, in this process of becoming a meta philosophical performance artist. In some very real ways, it really comes down to a simple matter of doing.
You have to do the thing.
But where this becoming intersects with the project of developing an epistemology of intimacy, well…that’s where it gets interesting.
How does becoming more intimate with ourselves and others shape what we know? For starters, it assumes that knowing is a channel for rebellion insofar as intimacy shatters western, colonial, patriarchal claims about knowing that privilege distance, so-called indifference, and impartiality. Instead, an epistemology that emerges from intimacy reveals the significance of our style and manner of connecting, of learning. Maybe even healing.
In the wake of confronting my tired, old, haggard inner trolls and dramatically altering my own relationship to the darkest corner of my vulnerabilities, I also wondered what such work would allow me to do differently.
As meta as it may be, for me, processing the process is never strictly or solely about the process alone. It’s a method for reflection. It’s a reliable and consistent modality for meaning-making.
And meaning-making is a quality of being free. It goes hand-in-hand with meaningfully existing. When we have the ability to make meaning of our experiences and the will to choose the meaningfulness we want to pursue, we become creative, existential artists of some sort.
Lately, I’ve been returning to the notion of philosophy as the art of living (not just the more popular description of it as the love of wisdom). This gently nudges me to remember that meta philosophical performance art is really just about making a conscious effort that reflects an intentional relationship to truth. The heart of such a project is carried forth through actions to make it — the values, ideas, and concepts we uplift— a true story.
People continue to notice. “You really are putting yourself out there!” I hope this doesn’t end up on my gravestone. I’d hate that so much.
Nevertheless, I can accept how cliche commentary usually indicates that special something people pick up on, whether or not they use my language of meta philosophical performance art and intimacy as a way of knowing. What seems apparent, even if under-articulated, is that the will to “do the thing” is the stuff that builds a life of conviction and gives character to our choices. It’s the meaning we create that shapes what we desire and grows the flesh and blood of our dreams.
The doing is the becoming. Eventually, being emerges from the doing. (Even if or when the being turns out to be something different or unexpected. It still happened.)
The way we embody our own doing is a matter of personal taste and vision. For me, in the past two weeks, I took my process a step further and created new pages, a new, radical first of their kind. I dedicated an exceptionally large number of hours over many long days to becoming more intimate through my own handwriting, weaving in details, offering broad explanations, all with the hope of making some degree of meaningful contact.
This is an extremely labored way to say, I did the thing. I made my philosophical project proposal and sent it to Mae Martin. Three pages to be exact, though there’s a really good chance it’s all too elaborate an invitation or too vague an ask.
At this point, it’s all still part of a parasocial journey, which some may say makes it a failure (or under-realized, at the very least).
But those people clearly do not understand how meaningful it is to honestly say, “Something is happening.” My days are full and filled in ways that are part of everything, but Everything doesn’t happen in just one day. This sort of project takes time. I’m still flying over a bit of runway.
Time continues to be funny like that — the past couple months have been strangely folded onto years in themselves like rich, laminated dough. Most recently, Oprah republished the issue of O Magazine that featured my quotes from 2021. More poignantly, I finally started grazing through scattered notes from 2011-2012 that, until very recently, I didn’t even know were in my possession. This is the first step before rereading draft chapters of My First Dissertation Idea which, unsurprisingly, provided the root-system for much of this, inspired by my reading relationship with Nietzsche.
Already, after only the most superficial skimming of scribbled ideas upon loose scraps of paper a remarkable, life-filled fifteen years later, I’ve come to realize something important: to do my work as I want (and wanted) to do it, I will have to become My Own Nietzsche. That is, I will have to be the Nietzsche I loved decades ago, whom academic scholars did not take seriously, by writing in ways that embody my philosophy. And I will have to do it specifically for those with whom I wish to connect. For them, near and far away, there is something I have to share.
And then?
See what happens next.
My goal is to join with creative collaborators who can, want, and will to go through the sort of transformation inherent to any process of deep connecting, especially when that connecting coincides with (and through) powerful learning.
To that end, I want to co-create containers that nurture a shared imagining of creative projects to demonstrate the art of living with and through our intimate relationships as the means for how we can all get more free.
There. I said it. Succinctly. May it land with those for whom it resonants with their own relationship to meaning-making.
(Hi..Mae? Maybe?)
