A Good Conversation I Think Should Be Shared

This is an e-mail conversation I had with my good friend Sam Zolin, who is currently living in Pittsburgh, PA and attending college there. I must warn you it is rather long and deep so if you don't have time to read it that's okay, I just thought we maybe touched on some things here that should be shared.

Jan 29, 2009

Hey Nigel,
I am a terrible blog owner and just read your comment from the 14th on my blog, and felt I should respond. I don't know if it was being quasi-sheltered in York for so long, or if we're just going through dramatic changes in our lives and adapting to them is taking more time than we anticipated.

I don't know if this has been your experience, but I know that here there is infinite time. Besides maybe 3 hours of class per day, you end up with a ton of time otherwise where you try to do work and are sometimes successful and you try to be friends with people and are sometimes successful and a lot of times you end up laying awake after your roommate is asleep wondering what you're doing and why things aren't as you imagined them. They aren't worse, just nothing like you expected them to be.
I feel not exclusively taken back, but also pulled forwards. Like the past is grabbing my left arm, the future my right, and they're both leaning back with all of their weight. I feel like I carry the weight of obligations, expectations, successes, and failures from the past,and like I carry that same weight in a different sense for the future. But at this moment it's more or less like the future is simultaneously far-off and right in my face. Time goes so quickly and so slowly. I guess, at least from my perspective, everything is paradoxical and there's no precise, 100% valid description of my experience. I have a hunch that you're feeling somewhat similar.

I don't think there is a way to "change" that. I think it's normal and natural and shows that we're human. I don't know if you've read "Tuesdays With Morrie," but I think one of the general concepts presented is that it is a good thing to feel weird and unusual,because it shows that you're going through new experiences and at the end of them, you can say "Oh, I felt disconnected because I was going through this," and in the future you know why you feel how you do and you can possibly even enjoy the feeling, or at least savor it for awhile. I might be remembering it wrong. You could probably read the whole book in less than an hour.

So anyway, I guess those are my feelings. By the way, I am extremely sorry for not attending the skype/oovoo sessions a week or two ago. One day my roommate was sleeping and the other day i slept in afterwaking up at 7:30am every day. If it would be possible to set one up so that it would be evening in Pennsylvania and morning in Taiwan,that would probably be more do-able for me. But I'd like to talk to you, and Sarah would also like to meet you via skype or oovoo (i'll d/l that tomorrow). Anyway, I have to go to bed, hopefully you'll get this soon. Let me know if/when you do.
Best wishes,
Sam

Jan 31,2009

Thanks, Sam,
Do you remember the chorus from "New Year's Song" (the part that's like "take me out of context)? Well, I didn't really realize when I wrote it just how far out of context I would be taken in a year's time. I don't mean just the distance my body is from where I came to be, I mean finding myself in an almost completely different situation from the one I was in when I left home.

With this whole exchange process, I'm given "parents" and a "family" even some "friends", but when it comes down to it, I'm living alone and for myself, deciding what I think is right, forming my own opinions and beliefs. Maybe it stems from the fact that I'm on vacation right now and I really haven't been kept very busy. I have too much time too get bogged down in thoughts and I figured out one night that I need other people a lot more than I ever imagined.

This is the time my "real" mom wants me to look for scholarships and prepare enough so that my return isn't more uncomfortable than it's already going to be. I feel pretty unproductive lately though. I haven't been drawing and when I do, the fire that allowed me to create things that people liked enough to give me awards seems to be glowing coals right now, waiting for me to put another log on. Anyway, I'm trying to get back into my old habits and I write in my journal and I finally restrung my mandolin, so I can jam on that sometimes.

I agree though I think we are experiencing similar situations, and when we're back on the beach frisin' with the sun on our face I'm sure we'll be able to look back on what we lived and say, "Pardon!" No, we'll say, "That was good, bring on the next one." I'll have to give "Tuesdays with Morrie" another look through. I haven't read it since eleventh grade.

In other business, yeah I can wake up early on most Saturdays to talk on the interwebs. That makes it Friday night in PA. Also, this PSP has Skype, so once I get a memory card, that should be up.
Regards,
Nige

Feb 1, 2009

I agree with you - context is a huge factor in every aspect of our lives. We're both out of what for 18 years was our "normal" zone and thrown out into a much larger world. It's harder to excel at things now, I think. Maybe you see it this way too. But there are twice as many kids in my chem and spanish classes, and 10 times as many kids in my bio class. You get thrown in with a ton of people and realize that you're maybe not as good at things as you thought you were, or maybe you just don't feel the same way about things as you did in the past.

At the same time, I think seeing things from a different context is extremely beneficial. You get to explore new places, meet new people, try new things, and some of the above you'll like and some you won't, but in the end you've still had the experience. You've been along for the ride. And it's not about redefining yourself and becoming a new person, but rather it's about expanding the definition of yourself. What do you think?

Anyway, would this upcoming saturday morning (your time) be good for a skype session? Just let me know.
Talk to you soon!
-Sam


Feb 2, 2009

You know, the way you put that last sentence, "...It's not about redefining yourself and becoming a new person, but rather it's about expanding the definition of yourself."(Zolin 11-12), that's what I've been trying to capture this past month. It fell on me today, before I read this, but I hadn't quite synthesized an adequate description of what I felt.

At some point here, I did try to reinvent myself culturally, physically, mentally, religiously, morally, but what I found out recently was that it was a step in the wrong direction. As they say in Ret Lion, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" So, as I mentioned before, I have been trying to take a look at my older self and build on what I was brought up with.

As far as excelling at things (which for me was mostly artsy things), I've decided that being on top might be nice, but I'm not going to be upset if I remain little known. Actually, I decided this partly through reading a couple issues of an art magazine called Juxtapoz and visiting the Andy Warhol: The Pope of Pop exhibition down the street. It was really at the Andy Warhol thing that I decided I don't have to be famous. There were a brazilian people in there. I used to look up to Andy and gave him a lot of credit. I made a comic book about him following me home and being wierd. However, lately I've felt like it's not his world anymore really.

Anyway, I guess my point with that was that even though I haven't been to art school yet and been surrounded by people that have similar interests and most likely more skeelz than I do, I can relate to the feeling of being just another one of the ants. I think the truth is, though, that even with a ton of other people you still have your own life to decide what to do with and you are the only one really capable of saying the word on things.

So Saturday is on as far as I'm concerned. My PSP is now Skypeable and ready for action. I was wondering if I could post this on my blog. You have my permission to do the same. I just think that this conversation is too good to keep to ourselves. Let me know.
Talk to you Saturday,
Nige


Feb 4, 2009

Dear Nigel,
It's late in the states and I have 9AM class tomorrow, but feel free to post this back-and-forth to your blog. I think we've reached some worthwhile conclusions and maybe some people could reach some new conclusions after seeing ours.

And that actually brings me back to your comment about being "just another ant." The really neat thing about college is that, once you establish yourself with a group of talented and motivated people, you realize that you're still an individual. There are people here who are better than me at biology, better than me at chemistry, better than me at math (the last one isn't very hard), but I'm just a little more advanced than them at other things. But it's not a competition at all. It's collaboration more than anything. If someone knows more math than you, you ask them for help. When they need to have an essay corrected, you give it a look-see. You study with people and work with people and retain your individuality. You may be in a 300 person class, but you have 5-10 people that know your first and last name,where you're from, and with whom you share inside jokes and experiences and all sorts of things. So really college (and by extension, life) isn't about being the best at all things - it's about learning from and teaching other people. It's daycare all over again- learning to share. Except this time it's knowledge and ability. To someone else, you are an expert. You are the best.

(As a side note, Sarah and I went to the Andy Warhol Museum two weekends ago, I believe. It was a really neat experience. He was big on collaboration. One of the coolest exhibits was this room where they had big mylar pillows filled with helium. They were probably the size of four or five regular pillows stacked on top of each other.Anyway, that's all there was in this room, and they had fans blowing the pillows around. And you just go in and push them around and move between them. I think it is called "Silver Clouds.")

Anyway, I guess this all gets back to fame. It's tough to be famous.I think that if you look at a lot of celebrities, you see that a good number of them don't handle fame particularly well. I think I'd rather be a Henry Darger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Darger)than an Andy Warhol. The people who really suffer at college are people who feel like they have a right to be famous. They end up realizing that they are completely wrong the hard way. Again, this istrue in life in general.

And it gets back to definition. Every choice is yours as to what you study, what you do, how people end up seeing you. It's a lot like Fable. You choose the things by which people define you. You choose your outlook and how you'll be to people. I see it as having 3 main choices:

1. Withdraw and people don't meet you. Not famous.

2. Try to be better than everyone else. Famous in a bad way.

3. Try to be better than you currently are, in all aspects of your life. People will respect you and see you as a friend.

So I guess this comes back to definition and redefinition. You can't redefine who you are because that implies that you are starting anew. And you can't, you simply can't. You can't give up aspects of yourself immediately. You can't change where you're from and what experiences shaped your world view. You can't lose all traces of your past. One thing I realized is that I do miss York. Do I think that there is a plethora of cultural activities there? No. Do I think that it is a really pretty area? No. Do I like the majority of thepeople there? No. But it's where I'm from and it's what I'm familiar with. You spend 18 years of your life somewhere and it becomes a partof you.

To a large extent, then, you can't change who you are, eg. redefine yourself. What you can do is make additions and subtractions, even infinitesimal ones, that result in self-improvement and learning.Take up yoga or painting or playing a new instrument or taking walksin the park or volunteering. This is expanding. It's probably morework than going to Hot Topic and buying some ironic shirts, but it'smore rewarding when you find something that "clicks."

So here ends this probably rambling, pretentious, and preachy message. I hope you can find some meaning in it, because I think it touches on a lot of things (and none of them exhaustively). I blame it on being written mostly at 1AM. We're still a go for our friday your saturday,so let us know when a good time is for you. We should be around for most of the evening.

Take care and I'll talk to you then!
-Sam