bike: 30 minutes
run: 2.7 miles
basement
outside: 7 degrees / feels like -9
Tomorrow it’s supposed to be slightly warmer, so I decided to wait until then to run outside. While I biked, I watched the 2017 5000m men’s world championships with Mo Farrah. While I ran, I turned on an Apple Music made “Energy” playlist. It was great. I don’t really remember the environment — oh, except for that I was cold at first, in our unfinished basement, but then warmed up fast — but I remember my body during the bike. I was working on keeping my back straight and long over the handlebars. During the run, I remember the music and the stretches when I only noticed my legs when they were off the ground. Listening to the music and getting lost in my thoughts about vision and faces and names, I forgot chunks of time.
before the run — remember/forget: names and faces
Last night, I drifted off to sleep thinking about names and nobodies and how I wanted to gather past accounts about them today in this entry. During my “on this day” practice, while revisiting 14 jan 2020, I came across the documentary, Notes on Blindness, and John Hull’s description of losing all of his sight and the ability to remember faces. Hull asks,
To what extent is the loss of the image of the face tied up with the loss of the image of the self and with the consequent feeling of being a ghost or a mere spirit?
So now I’m expanding my thinking to names and faces.
First, a question, prompted by a bit of the Hull that I listened to/watched just now: What senses produce the strongest memories? answer: smell
I watched the part after Hull’s quote about the face and the self, and it helped clarify the quote more. First, his wife says:
I can’t look into his eyes and be seen. There’s no beholding in that sense of being held in somebody’s look.
To be seen is to exist. This is what lies behind the thought my older daughter has expressed, Oh Daddy, I wish you could see me!
It is not the person who cannot see the face that is the ghost, but the person who cannot be seen. Even as I often feel like a ghost moving through the world, I also feel like everyone else is a ghost or a specter, that I’m the only real and living thing. It’s complicated because I feel both: haunting and haunted.
Of course, sometimes I can see faces, or at least parts of faces, and I can still see gestures and bodies, so my feeling of loss and disconnection is much different from Hull.
And there’s more messiness about my understanding of all of this. To be sure, there has been a tremendous feeling of loss over not being able to see faces clearly, or to hold someone with a look; to behold and witness others seems to be part of what makes us feel human. But (or and?), some of this is illusion and cultural construct. Sight and seeing someone is not the only way we connect with them, or see them as a self. In fact, it’s not the most reliable. For me, there is something exciting (is that the right word?) about gaining a new perspective on vision and its limits, and about being motivated to care about the process of seeing, which I used to ignore.
Wow — how far am I wandering from remembering and forgetting here?
Now I’m thinking about names and faces and phrases like, put a name to the face. For a little less than a year, Scott and I have been regularly going to a pub near our house, The Blue Door. Much of the time, we’ve had the same waitress. I always recognize her — less by her face than her gestures — but I haven’t known her name. A few days ago, Scott finally realized he could check the bill for her name so now we know it. I wonder, what difference does it make? (How) do I feel more connected to her now that I know her name?
after the run: music
All of the songs I heard were good for energy and distraction, but a few of them felt especially connected to what I had been thinking about prior to my workout.
Reputation/ Joan Jett and the Blackhearts
An’ I don’t give a damn ’bout my reputation
Never said I wanted to improve my station
An’ I’m only doin’ good when I’m havin’ fun
An’ I don’t have to please no one
I don’t give a damn ’bout my reputation
I’ve never been afraid of any deviation
An’ I don’t really care if you think I’m strange
I ain’t gonna change
I think it was around the time she sang about not wanting to improve her station, I started thinking about names and “being somebody” and notoreity/notoriousness and when wanting to be known is desirable and when it’s not. Usually it’s not for me. I like to be left alone to do what I want to do. I also thought Alice Oswa
Poker Face/ Lady Gaga
Can’t read my, can’t read my
No, he can’t read my poker face
(She’s got me like nobody)
Can’t read my, can’t read my
No, he can’t read my poker face
(She’s got me like nobody)
Wow, these lyrics! Yikes. Anyway, I’m interested in the idea of an unreadable, stone face. That’s how most faces are to me all of the time. I can’t see small gestures or tells that help you to make sense of what’s being said. Now I’m wondering about non-facial poker tells. Here are two that I found: how they handle the chips/cards and table talk.
Rhythm Nation/ Janet Jackson
With music by our side to break the color lines
Let’s work together to improve our way of life
Join voices in protest to social injustice
A generation full of courage, come forth with me
As I heard these words, I thought about my discussion below about seeing, looking, beholding each other as the primary way to recognize each other’s humanity/selfhood. What about hearing and listening and playing music?
Bonus: It’s Raining Men/ The Weather Girls
Not directly related to faces and names, but hearing this song reminded me of one of my favorite sections in the blindness documentary. It is nine and a half minutes in and it’s about rain and how its different sounds on a tree or a roof or a garbage can help us to “see” a place with our ears.