On what we pretend to be
- triggered by a chance meeting at a gig after 25 years
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
Kurt Vonnegut, “Mother Night”
==
Friday. It’s a day without work demands, without work pressures. I made choices and continue to make choices to quarantine Fridays. It is a day I try to maintain at significant financial cost, for my mental health.
It’s for more than that though.
The act of keeping Fridays free is for my mental health, yes. But more accurately it’s to prevent cognitive overload. Cognitive overload is something that happens pretty easily for me and is a consequence of closed head injury from all the way back in 1995. But it’s for more than that, too.
Friday morning. I’ve been recently confused by a message from someone I know: “by your own admission and through no fault of your own you have trouble understanding complicated things…”
“No,” I thought. “I can understand complicated things.”
Complicated things are fine. Complicated things are fine. Since my injury I have successfully worked on and worked out many complicated things. The truth is that since my injury, perceived time pressure and environmental pressures make complicated things seem hard. Things like ambient background noise, chatter, loud talking, dogs barking. Things like the fridge being without milk or low on milk, or an appointment looming on my schedule. Those things act to cloud my mind.
==
Friday evening. I’ve won a ticket to a gig at the 3RRR performance space. On most Fridays, the local community radio station 3RRR, hosts a show that goes live to air. It’s great to be here. The band is brilliant: “Public Figures.” Young punks, roaring, thumping, grooving with big fat bass lines through songs from their just-released EP called “Work it out!” The singer steps off the stage mid-song, and weaves among the crowd. She yells into the mike from the floor among us right here!
The show ends and only now do I hear: “Dave? Dave is that you?” And alongside me, it’s B. Instantly I fall through a wormhole of 25 years.
“Whoah, B!”
“What..?”
“What’s going on?”
We’d last seen one another at uni in the late 1990s.
And now, in the dark and crowded room we skip through life highlights from the past 25+ years. It’s wonderful. We give, receive, laugh and sigh. Stories of our children, of our separations from our childrens’ other parents, of our apartments, of our cobbling-it-together.
When I mention that I haven’t worked today, as I work part time to manage the old head injury, B looks blank.
“Your what now?”
“Head injury. From that car accident.”
Further blank looks. And that’s fine. I don’t expect B nor anyone I haven’t seen for 25+ years to remember details from my life – just as I cannot remember details from hers or theirs. But I am struck.
The accident occurred in January 1995. I would have met and hung out with B through 1997 and 1998. Seeing bands, taking classes, field trips, house parties (including a particular beauty at a Drummond Street terrace). That would have been the peak of accident-recovery period for me.
And in the band room at 3RRR on a Friday evening it strikes me that 1997 and 1998 was a time when I fought very hard to NOT mention the accident. When I fought very hard to “defeat” all aspects of my ongoing injuries. To “get past them.” To “move on.” I remember believing that the best path for me would be to forge on despite ongoing difficulties, as if nothing had happened.
I think differently now.
Kurt Vonnegut wrote “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” For me, I pretended to be unaffected by injuries. That’s OK. That period ran its course. All paths led to here and now.
I wonder about trauma and response to trauma. I wonder about stories. I wonder about memory.
==
The gig ends. As the room slowly empties around us, B and I stand wide-eyed, chatting, listening and smiling. Until we are the last two people left in the room.
“Looks like we’d better leave. I want to buy some merch,” says B.
B buys a t-shirt. She buys it directly from the singer of Public Figures herself who opens up a cardboard box full of t-shirts that she has just folded shut (“Is that the right size? Do you want to try it on or nah?”).
As B holds up the t-shirt for size, I wonder about the stories we tell ourselves. I wonder about memory. And I feel very lucky to be here. (Is that another story? Yes, it probably is).
“I rarely get out these days,” says B, clutching her Public Figures t-shirt. “So, I want to make this night count. I want to remember.”
==
That was Sproutings #126. Thanks for your feedback on last week’s issues. All previous issues can be found here.
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Really enjoyed this, e.r.
I hope B is doing well.
Thanks
I’m reading this and I’m thinking I’ve been here before.
Such is the power of suggestion.