i
I'm working out a manifesto for my braided autobiography. Some of my posts, like today's, will address an aspect of that manifesto. In other posts the manifesto will be implicit as I write from personal experience or historical/cultural research.
I feel like I'm dealing with a writers' Rubik's Cube. Somewhere in the back of my imaginal many-roomed storehouse is an idea of completion. Along the way, it's a multi-sided puzzle. At least it's colourful. I'm hoping I can bring my readers...yes, you my friends...along on a journey of twists and turns. A cube might be too neat. It might better be a mess of writhing snakes or an impossible game of Quidditch.
ii
My project is an exploration of the phenomenology of connection. This means that, although connection is a primary principle, I always want there to be an aspect that asks what the nature of any given connection is. What is the experience behind the connection? What is the real connection? In my last Substack post, Thrown, the connections included: a snowman, the house I lived in as a two year old, a local Town Hall, the Beatles and my love of music. Why those connections? They are all clues to understand who I am now. They are all keys as to how to proceed. The snowman represents the possibility of magic, art, creativity, potential, childlike wonder, imagination. He also is a reminder of impermanence. The local Town Hall represents the importance of venues for music and theatre and how buildings are repositories of memories. The Town Hall is also a symbol indicating inspiration is never far away. The Beatles, like the snowman represent creativity, possibility, musical potential. When I was two years old, the Beatles played a gig only nine miles away. I was probably tucked up in my cot, keeping warm from the freezing fog outside, and fast asleep. Does it matter? It does to me.
Supporting group, The Cossacks were from Cannock, Staffordshire. They also supported the Beatles the previous week at the Plaza Ballroom, Old Hill, Nr. Dudley. At that gig the drummer of the Cossacks sat behind Ringo Starr’s drum kit and obtained the autographs of all four Beatles after the show. When the autographs finally went up for auction, the catalogue stated, “The Cossacks were the final act on stage before The Beatles. The stage at the venue revolved and The Beatles joined The Cossacks singing Long Tall Sally, out of view, before the stage revolved and revealed the Fab Four to the audience, who then took over the end of the song."
iii
Most people would agree that the principle of connection is necessary for a healthy and meaningful life. We all want to feel connected, to be part of something bigger: part of a family, group, tribe, culture, broader humanity or eco-system. We have a drive to connect to higher purpose, ethical orientation, God, Goddess, trans-deity or higher spiritual principle. We feel safer and at home when we are connected to place, locale, village, town, city, country, planet. No one wants to feel isolated or disconnected. Often, the sense of connectedness settles on the familiar. There is a security in the known. This is fine - we have a natural need for safety in the familiar. However, dysfunctional families and relationships often stay dysfunctional because the familiar connections, albeit causing ongoing suffering, feel safer than the risk of change.
But these are generalised points about the nature of connection. What interests me even more is the diverse, perverse and abstruse ways in which we seek connection. Connection beyond the familiar. It seems that once our basic safety and survival needs are met, human curiosity knows no bounds when it comes to seeking connections beyond the usual references. Sometimes the curiosity of connection has a practical implication. A scientist may have an insight through an intuitive link between a dream and an experiment. The nineteenth-century German chemist August Kekulé claimed to have pictured the ring structure of benzene after day-dreaming snakes writhing, twisting and turning. Apparently this happened whist sitting on top of a London omnibus in 1855. Kekulé became a champion of the importance of visual imagination in scientific method. Before he was a chemist Kekulé was an architect - probably another reason he was able to develop visual methods to represent complex chemical structures. But it requires an existing imagination of connectivity to make creative leaps of understanding.
iv
Only connect the fantasy and the fun. Quidditch is a fictional game from the Harry Potter story. It involves flying broomsticks and fantasy magic. But people have such a strong connection with the books and the story that Quidditch can now be played outside the fictional realm. In 2005, students at Middlebury College in Vermont devised a "Muggle" version of the game, which employs a combination of basketball, rugby elements of hockey and dodgeball. Connect with the fiction, connect with the non-fiction, cross-connect. Not to mention Cosplay.
v
Hobbies are fascinating in terms of the need to connect. Why on earth would anyone want to make a connection with Roman coins, Victorian Matchboxes, ID numbers on trains, out-of-date video games? Digital retro-nostalgia is a thing. Geekery has its own logic. Why would I want to make a connection with an obscure group from The Potteries, in Staffordshire, called The Marauders? Why was it satisfying to say 'Hello' to Björk in a cafe in Reykjavik? Or to take a close up photograph of Yoko Ono's hand? Or to take the teenage son of the drummer from Manchester band Elbow to see King Crimson live? Why do I even want to share this stuff? Connection.
I'm wondering if the object of connection is almost irrelevant, or at least incidental. A seemingly insignificant connection can be deeply meaningful to an individual. But also any connection can lead to another connection and build to a network of interconnections with far greater significance. The incidental opens to the coincidental. Parts and patterns.
vi
I'm trying badly not to quote E. M. Forster, but I looked up the full passage from chapter 22 of his novel Howard's End and it seems relevant:
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.
This is liberal Edwardian intellectual Margaret Schlegel's manifesto, emerging from a less than satisfying first kiss with the conservative and disconnected businessman Henry Wilcox. She sees through him, to his suppressed wildness and his unhealthy asceticism. Only connect the story and the curiosity; tell the tale of your life with desire. Let the beast kiss the monk. Live in fragments no longer.
vii
A phenomenology of connection: the experience of sharing your life as if it was a kiss, then feeling the heart swell as the unexpected kisses come back.