Talking to Strangers
Finally figuring it out
One of my coworkers talked about how on Mondays I often talk about doing too much during the weekends and needing to recover after having wonderful life-affirming experiences. And yes, lately, this has become true. After long being a Person Who Does Not Do Anything On The Weekends, I’ve lately been spending more and more time participating in Activities (AKA leaving my house).
Strangely enough, some of the most thrilling experiences for me are the ones in which I don’t resemble myself. On Saturday, I went to see one of my favorite artists King Krule perform. This was the first concert I had ever been to by myself. Going into it, I was prepared to notice myself slowly begin to hate everyone around me at the concert, seething with jealousy over their non-aloneness, as I was forced (by my own actions) to exist in solitude at this event.
Yet, I found myself loving the concert, appreciating the greatness of the performance, and identifying with my fellow concertgoers with our shared love of the music and shared annoyance of having to sway to peek over the shoulders of too-tall people with giant hair or ignoring the couples incessantly making out to a sad man singing about hitting rock bottom. I didn’t speak to any of them, but I felt a faint kinship towards these people, with our shared experience and matching paper “General Admission” wristbands uniting us.
Afterwards, I ventured to a hi-fi listening bar, a venue to listen to a high-quality vinyl sound system and relax in a chill atmosphere. The idea is imported from Japan, and I had been meaning to check out this place for a while. I loved the ambience of the bar, and I soon realized that I was surrounded by a couple of my kin from the concert. I started talking to one of them about the concert and how the setlist was unexpected but wonderful. Before long, we ended up having a conversation for nearly 2 hours, chatting first about the concert we’d both come from, but then random topics like travel and art.
After chatting with her for a while, I started to realize that talking to a stranger like this wasn’t something atypical for her. She talked about meeting wonderful people during her travels and staying in touch with them years later. I’d heard stories like this from people before, but never before had I realized that I was capable of making friends with strangers in this manner. I assumed experiences like that were a sacred privileges only granted to those who magically didn’t suffer any shyness or fear of strangers being mean. But there I was— making a meaningful connection with a stranger, unlocking a special ability that I never thought possible.
I imagined that I had suddenly become a different person entirely, one unafraid of talking to anyone and able to talk the ears off of even the most awkward of specimen. Had the entirety of self as a shy introvert been a façade for this extrovert within me, one that had simply needed to be awoken like a sleeper agent?
And at first, the next day, I acted like this was the case. I had coffee with a friend, told someone on the bus that I liked their jacket, and headed to a concert in my friend’s backyard. It was filled with mostly people I didn’t know very well and I quickly realized I had no desire to talk to anyone. Despite all of my newfound confidence around strangers, I had emptied out my social battery from my many social interactions, and ended up standing in a corner for most of the concert.
At the end of the day, my grand delusions were just delusions, and I was still the same old guy with an introvert’s social battery. For the next couple of days, I was lethargic and misanthropic, trying to recover from all of the social energy I used up during the weekend. Somehow, it was somewhat of a relief that I hadn’t been deceiving myself for my entire life, and that the only reason that I had been having wonderful interactions with strangers lately was because of a shift in attitude.
Compared before I started having these positive interactions with strangers (this week and a couple weeks ago), I hadn’t suddenly become any more charismatic or charming overnight, but I realized that thinking about strangers with more openness made the artificial boundaries between us feel less visible. The humanity in any given person was much more visible and so it felt so much easier to interact with them. I was still my cynical, annoying self, but no one else knew that, they just knew of however friendly I felt like being in that moment.
I’ve always wanted to connect with other people, and nearly everything I’ve ever done has been directed towards that, whether it’s the various art forms that I’ve focused on over the years, or the student organizations I joined in college to try and connect with other people, or the too many tweets that I’ve sent out over the years. So much of my life has been digital that I sometimes wonder if my physical self is even the same person as my digital self. These connections were and are valuable, but they can only go so far.
And as the entire world become more and more digital, I want to be different and continue to find ways to connect in real life, even if it’s for a moment in an Uber ride or a shared smile at the park over a cute dog. Even if I thought I’d always be misanthropic and shy and unwilling to talk to strangers, even I still can be, I want to try to remember what life can be like when there’s room to see the people around us. What it’s like when someone you don’t know can reach out to you and make your day warmer. What it’s like when we imagine a future where people don’t have to feel lonely in crowds.
From “Empty Glass” by Louise Gluck:
And it occurs to me that what is crucial is to believe
in effort, to believe some good will come of simply trying,
a good completely untainted by the corrupt initiating impulse
to persuade or seduce—
What are we without this?
Whirling in the dark universe,
alone, afraid, unable to influence fate—
💧 Drops of the Week 💧
PLAYLIST - september 23 - the month’s over! I listened to nu-metal, hyperpop, J-pop, country music, and a few other genres. Try it for a weird shuffle.
FILM - La La Land (2016) - I watched this movie again for the 4th time total and it’s still so good
POEM - “Ours To Hold And Caress And Cherish” by Hanif Abdurraqib - I don’t think I want to make it to the end of the world this time. This one ain’t my type of apocalypse.
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