Masters of Arts

Meta-cognition, Sincere Irony, and the Necessity of Solitude

I was listening to a song that meant a lot to me in college.

“Oh, woe is me!” sang the refrain.

While this bit was self-referentially critical, all of the other lyrics expressed very sincere confessions of great emotional turmoil.

Something had not gone right in the relationship. She had predictably, but unexpectedly, left and he remained to try to process the experience of abject loss and sudden isolation.

Woe indeed.

But, also, the necessity to present himself with proper pathos and ethos to we, his listener, who would certainly expect him to keep all of this in perspective.

Except that we are hurting, too. And, when we allow ourselves the brief respite of a three-minute song, we can (for a spell) experience a moment of solace.

Although even we know that our emotions don’t “matter” — that they are ultimately just another process of so much semantics and serotonin, easily processed by transitioning into other modes like sleep, exercise, eating, or therapy.

But that last one — therapy — is a bit of a bugaboo. A real mother. Processing is processing, but sticking labels to oneself can often just commit one to a cycle of perpetual fixedness, never properly processing out of the alienating state.

Thus it is that listening to music from one’s youth can be both sentimental and nostalgic. But it can also be liberating.

Distance is the essence of what we once called “objectivity,” an ideal held for several hundred years as the core of scientia.

Now, of course, we’re all about shitting on science, forgetting about how much it had helped us get out of certain aspects of this mess. It was once called “Enlightenment.”

We’ve eschewed enlightenment for tarot, yoga, Catholicism, and Orthodox Christianity. The fastest-growing religious tradition in the United States, in fact, is Pentecostalism.

I have no doubt that ecstatic states of non-lingual speaking might be greatly beneficial to many people. That’s certainly what punk rock and ska meant to me in high school.

But I also know that a great deal of knowledge and even wisdom seem to come from literacy. That is, from time spent in contemplation of texts, experiencing and critiquing them, developing the dialogue that Plato so glorified in Socrates.

This takes solitude. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from participation in group therapy, it’s that no one is likely to accept your premises.

The very moment you express something, it’s shot down with an “I disagree.”

That doesn’t leave much time for proper contemplation. I’m fine with the idea of questioning the logic of an assertion, but to have it shot down on face with no discussion is just plain old violence.

And, while I’m happy with the idea that my assumptions are not only erroneous, but also biased, bigoted, nostalgic, sentimental, and even saccharine, I deserve as much of a right of time to process and compute as any other organism does.

Thus, solitude.

Also, poetry.

The vocation that appeared to me at age 15 has never left me as a standard operating principle. The more life I cherish via experience continuing to confront, question, and participate in discourse and strife, the more I see clearly that this vocation is a solid one, and sound.

Of course, I can’t do it alone, as no one can. But what it looks like to be “together” is something worth exploring with some curiosophy.

I look forward to your letters.

Attendantly,

Aaron