We arrived at the same post-naive place by opposite roads, and yours is the one I keep not taking. I also stopped believing the story is the truth. But where you loosened your grip, I tightened mine. My stories run architectural: a frame (non-linear path, phase transitions, built to found rather than follow) that’s load-bearing, not provisional. You hold your narratives as hypotheses you might be wrong about. I hold mine like a thesis I’ve already decided to defend.
Here’s the asymmetry your piece exposed. My skepticism points one way. I’ve gotten good at interrogating the stories that diminish me and almost never turn the lens on the ones that build me up. Yours is omnidirectional, distrusting the flattering ones most of all. That’s the harder half and I’ve been doing the easy one.
What’s refreshing is where you land. Beauty. Everything I tell about myself arrives pre-interpreted, processed into a lesson before it leaves my mouth. I sold my console last year and wrote about it as addiction-fighting, an arc I won, but never as the strange absurd thing it actually was, carrying the box out with no meaning attached. For someone who thinks in trajectories the unprocessed version barely registers as a story. You’re pointing at a register where the telling doesn’t have to prove anything. I don’t live there. Your essay made me want to visit.
You didn’t convert me. The frame still feels true. But you got one hand off the tiller for a paragraph, which is more than most writing manages.
the way you write makes it feel like we’ve landed halfway through a conversation - meandering but direct at the same time. how do you do that!!! a great skill and a very enjoyable read, thank you
Also, from a functional perspective, the act of telling stories to one another is basically how human relationship are formed and maintained. A friend is a co-author!
"Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills." I love the wild celebrity/PR handler analogy in the footnote.
We arrived at the same post-naive place by opposite roads, and yours is the one I keep not taking. I also stopped believing the story is the truth. But where you loosened your grip, I tightened mine. My stories run architectural: a frame (non-linear path, phase transitions, built to found rather than follow) that’s load-bearing, not provisional. You hold your narratives as hypotheses you might be wrong about. I hold mine like a thesis I’ve already decided to defend.
Here’s the asymmetry your piece exposed. My skepticism points one way. I’ve gotten good at interrogating the stories that diminish me and almost never turn the lens on the ones that build me up. Yours is omnidirectional, distrusting the flattering ones most of all. That’s the harder half and I’ve been doing the easy one.
What’s refreshing is where you land. Beauty. Everything I tell about myself arrives pre-interpreted, processed into a lesson before it leaves my mouth. I sold my console last year and wrote about it as addiction-fighting, an arc I won, but never as the strange absurd thing it actually was, carrying the box out with no meaning attached. For someone who thinks in trajectories the unprocessed version barely registers as a story. You’re pointing at a register where the telling doesn’t have to prove anything. I don’t live there. Your essay made me want to visit.
You didn’t convert me. The frame still feels true. But you got one hand off the tiller for a paragraph, which is more than most writing manages.
the way you write makes it feel like we’ve landed halfway through a conversation - meandering but direct at the same time. how do you do that!!! a great skill and a very enjoyable read, thank you
aw this made my day thank you. it's easier on some days than others...
I have an are.na channel centered around this topic https://www.are.na/connie/auto-fiction-2lv-jrj1fhu ! what do stories tell us about ourselves and the lives we lead...
that is sick
I love conversational kasra
Also, from a functional perspective, the act of telling stories to one another is basically how human relationship are formed and maintained. A friend is a co-author!
oh wow yess