Making connections
“this is a normal greeting”
Making connections on this planet is not easy, and does not always feel fun, ok. Mind you, it is also easy and super fun! On this page you will find optimistic examples that may inspire you, or tales that make you “sick into your own scorn”*. take what you will and feel free to send me your own sage tips (that is, cuttings from a sage plant to get rid of bad vibes and whatnot, not unsolicited advice).
* Bernard Black (2004), Party (the best episode).
You’re standing there, like, feeling all stupid, trying to figure out when to speak up or do a jig or pickup that axe and join in the fun. These posts are as all-over-the-place as can be expected in a world where connection is EVERYTHING. Connect with yourself, with your neighbours, vibe with a tribe, get down with a clown. It’s a sweeter life, as far as I have experienced, when we figure out how to make things click. Except the clown bit, I regret writing that, I take it back.
Examples of things I’ve connected with: myself through fraternising with artists; with local culture in Oslo harnessing the wonder of dating apps; with fun-loving women with nothing in common but a love of dancing at 4pm on a weekday; with nature via a desperate attempt to escape a boring companion; with the schoolyard of younger selves that are wreaking havoc on the pizza restaurant inside me via ADHD medication & therapy.
No matter what the situation is that you feel totally alien in, you could probably find connection in it and be a little less on the outside looking in.
Posts about connecting:
25/03/2023When one is a bit of a glitching, potentially unstable version of a person, it’s handy to have access to a sort of… backup folder (forgive me) that can restore some vital data to your, er… programme (why won’t this metaphor end?) that will help stabilise or at least improve the functionality of whatever the fuck it is you’re trying to be, do, become, embody. Excuse the cheesy software analogy, but I have been bingewatching techbro YouTube videos for no clear reason other than perhaps the possibility that YouTube has broken my brain. Anyway, here we are.
But I like the glitching metaphor, because it suits my sense of self quite well: a person who is a little bit all over the place and, for no obvious reason, sometimes quite clear and lucid and apparent (and even USEFUL), and other times a mere ghost of something that was. All within the most miniscule time frames. Seconds, sometimes.
It is, actually, quite annoying.
But what I found, some decade and a half ago, was a wondrous tool: the archive. A kind of both static and living entity, that tells you interesting things about yourself and your history, and the history of everything your glitchy little hands touch and eyes see and brain tries to comprehend.
Mine was from the now-decommissioned Centre for Popular Memory (R.I.P.) from which I was generously gifted a trove of oral history accounts of the community my father came from and talked endlessly about, and which was miserably removed and erased during apartheid’s Group Areas Act. The ghost voices I listened to were people I would never meet directly, but who I found I would later interact with through their descendants and artworks and writings, among other legacies. Here, in these vivid voices I witnessed an urgency and animation that defied the rules of time and brought me to myself in a past and a present and a future in a single moment. Ta-da, backup files, were being restored. Ah, how much smoother the system was starting to run.
A gallery of some of the photos in the Claremont Histories archive (and one of me being a total bummer at a street carnival by reminding the revelers of the history of the place as they day-drank)
But, of course, every system has to stay current. And I had to keep up with life’s changes. I had a child, moved, divorced, changed careers, lost one of the most important people in my life, got older, got a little more unwell, and basically just fucked with the nice little ecosystem I had going.
Enter: more archives!
Look, this isn’t, if you’re thinking it, living in the past. I wish. This is the past making a cordial visit to me and leaving me a lovely gift. The gift isn’t always a pleasant one to open, because you know, history. But it does nicely help provide me with tools to build a more robust self that can handle some shit life throws at me (like sneaky internalised racism and sexism).
An example: I’ve been feeling a nagging insecurity, a nameless sense of diminishing worth, as I find myself more busy with work and friendships and generally things that should make me feel better about myself. Why? The archive helpline was eager to help.
Looking like I’m OWNING IT at work, but really feeling like an alien in a skin-suit trying to fake it as a human. My colleague took this pic and I dig it, but still…
So, in a recent meeting with some memory activists attempting to preserve the heritage of their lost community (again, apartheid), I found myself welcomed into their group because of my father’s history, and because of my passion for their project. But also, beyond finding a sense of belonging that naturally offers one a sense of worth, it also helped me understand why I feel this dreaded, nameless worthlessness. My heritage has been plagued by the message of being told that one is unworthy. Through the very act of being discarded because of the colour of their skin, and their homes occupied to this day by white people when their neighbourhood was officially & legally declared a “White Group Area”, I have been fed the message (even if I and my parents openly resisted it) that I am some kind of inferior being. Again, I don’t actively or consciously believe this of anybody. But my subconscious doesn’t play by the rules.
The archives I explored, along with listening to clever people who study people and societies, helped me make sense of the feelings, name them and therefore begin to dismantle them. Without naming them, it was impossible to fight, because there was nothing to fight against. And the archives also gave me something to attach myself to, something familiar to myself while currently living in unfamiliar territory. And so now I had something solid to fight against and was solid enough to lift my fist and do the fighting.
The way I could suddenly see myself, feet on the ground, palms opaque and real, breath leaving puffs of steam in the cold Norwegian winter, after connecting with this history, indicates that I needed that grounding. Not really to define me, but more to inform me. To help me see and understand.
One of my favourite and most relatable scenes in Spirited Away. Chihiro starts to disappear and must eat something from the spirit world to become solid and have agency.
It is commonly expressed that we have to understand and know our past if we are to create the best world for ourselves and others in the present and future.
And so now, I am on a bit of a minor crusade (hilarious, since my heritage is both Catholic and Muslim in equal parts).
I am going to archive the shit out of everything and gather bits of the archives already out there for my own greedy purposes. And kids, there are other freaks out there that are a million times more obsessed with archiving than me, and no I don’t mean hoarders but yes I do, but no they’re like information hoarders and yes it’s super cool and no it’s not crazy and yes its crazy but in a cool way and yes they have conventions and yes there are FREE resources because they just want everyone to love archiving as much as they do.
Sjoe! Breathe, me.
I will start with the most obvious archive on the internet, and this should keep you occupied for the rest of your life. And when you reach the next life, there are so many other archives out there, and other ways of building and disseminating them. This digital one is hardly traditional and, what with the potential AI invasion and takeover looming, it may not be the only and best way to be collating all of our history and knowledge. But for now, I love it so because it is accessible, democratic, free and fiendishly optimistic. I do think I will dedicate a separate post to each archive I adore, but here is my first in the list:
The Internet Archive.
Correct, this is an archive of the whole Internet, and they don’t fuck around. It’s been going since 1996 (hello chain emails, Duke Nukem and Mrs Isaacs letting us do whatever we wanted in IT class), and has since spawned a wealth of insane and cool projects. You’ve probably heard of the Wayback Machine. That’s a gift from the Internet Archive.
But, as I said, I am going to write separate posts on each archive I find and love, so this one can end here. Just a love letter to the archive, the darling that stepped in when I needed some support and reminded me that I am a person, part of a community, with a history and a story, and whose story will one day be part of somebody else’s history and story, and how lovely is that? Or terrifying, depending on how I plan on living my life (do I feel stabby today?).
Song of the day:
I’m also going to bring back the habit of sharing a theme song for each post, not necessarily something that has to do with the post content at all, but what I was listening to when writing the post. (HOLY SHIT, I had not seen the video before sharing it now and it’s BRILLIANT. Oh sweet lord. And it fits, it fits, it fits).
Here you go: […]
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11/02/2023Mostly we chill, but we do spill out into the night on occasion.
Coincidentally, this healthy protein is supplied by the beautiful resident witch.
The first time I met Pawel and arrived, grumpily, at dep.artment
Bernt immediately posed me in front of the giant circle
A random reunion with a friend from the past, upon the day of her book release
It was a good reunion
Reading up on the late Ole Sjølie in his apartment, in front of the fire
Pawel and Constance talking Big Art (or gossip, idk)
Kitchen crowd one cold morning
First time meeting Darius, and I forced him to stop so I could get a better look at that awesome coat
Dariusz’s jewelry exhibit
Christmastime with beauties
Elisa at an exhibit that went all sciency-above our heads
Catherine making rhubarb porridge
While I made pumpkin fritters!
Trying to make it look natural
Erik never looks this jolly
I have converted Pontus into a regular attendee 🙂
Cute dark souls
Scientists’ corner
Help. Me.
Dancing around the clock at KÖSK Gallery
All species welcome!
Off-the-wall at KÖSK
Some of us are really good at standing still for photos
The quietest canine
After breakfast things get serious. We WERK.
Bringing my son to join in the fun
And when will YOU get your tattoo, young man?
A blast by EL MAOUT in Tøyen […]
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11/02/2023So every time I talk about Porridge Club, the mad glint in my eye, and the fact that it has a name ending in ‘Club’ makes it appear as though I’ve joined either a most wholesome or most disturbing cult. If I am quite honest, hearing my own proselytizing about it makes me occasionally wonder if I have joined a cult. Many of the signs are there: I talk about it constantly, have built many of my new, increasingly primary, social connections within its hallowed walls, and I am always attempting to recruit new members to join me in my worship of chilling out on a floor doing nothing. Because that’s what we do at Porridge Club. I mean, not NOTHING, because many ideas and friendships and projects and working relationships, etc. etc. are birthed there, but mostly it’s a lot of lounging around eating oats and drinking coffee and exclaiming with delight when a familiar face wanders in the front door, or exclaiming with delight when an unfamiliar face wanders in the front door. We are easily delighted.
Why yes, those are larvae on the porridge. Thank fuck the worms are optional.
One especially chilled morning. Chess, like the larvae, really isn’t my thing. Pawel has suggested chess-boxing. Perhaps I can be turned.
I guess I just described a bar filled with regulars, but without the alcohol.
But (fortunately or unfortunately, depending your perspective) we also do drink. From a chicken’s butt, no less. But this occurs usually at events we hear about at porridge club, and because many of its members lurk about and cause trouble at various artistic institutions, free wine gets involved. Win-fucking-win.
The chicken with the secret wine stash within. The tap comes out of its butt! The tap comes out of its butt!
But people like me are probably giving this heroic effort at creating a space for chilled people with flexible schedules and busy minds a bad reputation, what with all my rabid enthusiasm.
I suppose writing this blog post is not helping.
Whatever! Just sit down and let me tell you how I got saved by Porridge Club.
Every Monday and Wednesday morning, I make my way to Hagegata near Tøyen station, climb my way to a loft apartment within a magical artwork created by Ole Sjølie, and spend a few hours with good (I mean, really good), folk.
I’m not kidding about the artwork bit, it turns out its former owner, Sjølie, wanted to live within one of his paintings, and so he made his own apartment feel much like one of his abstract monochrome, multi-textured paintings did. I will write more on Sjølie later, because he is an important part of dep.artment (and thus, Porridge Club’s) story.
But Porridge Club. Why the fuck do I hang out with people twice a week to eat porridge like a fairytale peasant?
Much like the fairytale peasant, I am a simple soul with a penchant for a strong drink and a good yarn, I can do a hard day’s labour and complain admirably while doing it, and I know a witch when I see one (incidentally, I really did meet one recently and she was delightful and had a big dog and offered to take me bouldering).
Ew, this bebe lady is putting me off my porridge and all. Image source: wtf.
The gathering of porridge enthusiasts (not really, I rarely eat breakfast, but I do deplete coffee supplies) was initiated by Pawel Stypula, dep.artement’s founder and current owner of Sjølie’s live-in painting. He pitched it as a way of surviving the loneliness of the Norwegian winter, and invited all of his friends to just come any time, between the hours of 8am and 12pm, to drink coffee, eat porridge, and sit in front of the fire. Unluckily for him, I had just decided to become disciple to a cult that nobody started and doesn’t exist, but my fervor alone might will it into existence (much like Pratchett’s gods!), and so I’ve been spreading the good word about this place to anyone who will listen – my god, even to a Californian I met in Egypt on the off-chance he may detour through Oslo. Thus, with his extensive social circle and my wagging tongue, the gathering has grown, and I get my fill of social contact and then some twice every week.
Fortunately, the several-hundred member strong group do not all attend at the same time, but statistically it is possible that this might occur one day. Shem, poor neighbours.
Mostly, however, we are a few regulars who turn up, people originally starting out as strangers, and now we’ve grown quite fond of one another. The main thing that really seems to bring us there is how much we like Pawel and his generosity, and how much we like people, just enjoying a little basking in the warmth of human (and occasionally canine) company. I read an article recently that said that as adults, we tend to forget the beauty of just ‘hanging out’ – spending time with people you like with no agenda or activity, just mooching and getting some time in each others’ orbit. With my family back home I do this all the time. And in this way, I have become comfortable with the new people I have met, a sort of pseudo family who I don’t have to entertain or be anything particular with, just turn up and be. Together.
So how has it saved me? Well, I’ve been, these past years, finding a kind of new shape, or perhaps simply shedding an old one without knowing which form the new will take. And this leaves me, I suppose, open to vulnerability, free of my exoskeleton and all misformed and squishy. And this has made me a little scared, very often feeling hopeless as happens when I don’t know which direction to take and, with each winter, very depressed.
It me. Image source.
I’ve been trying New Life Things (e.g. ADHD meds, different work, quitting dating, healthier food habits, etc.) and have been somewhat lost in all this change, unmoored in dark waters. God, what a pretty picture – a squishy blob of floating uncertainty. But oh! Almost out of nowhere, a deus ex-machina to my catastrophic mid-life crisis, I am swept and rescued by an unlikely passing ship that is this gathering of wonderful people, and they have porridge! And a fire! And I ignore the worms! They don’t seem to notice or care that I’m oddly formed, and they are all themselves interesting shapes and energies and sounds. I feel safe there. And with each conversation about art or technology or family or history or porridge or death, I find my squishiness firming, though the form remains ill-defined and I think I like that. I look out with my bug-eyes at them all in wonder, at their open minds, their kindness to each other, their complete lack of surprise when I say something that pops into my mind that usually makes other people side-eye me and ask who manages my medications (his name is Knut, and he’s doing great!).
If my mind were to be captured by a comic, it would be comics made by Deliberately Buried. Go, go and visit Deliberately Buried, you will laugh so hard and it will be weird.But nobody at Porridge Club thinks that I say odd things, and this is sweet relief.Copyright: Deliberately Buried.
I have heard similar from other regulars, and I realise that this one act of generosity by Pawel has potentially positively impacted hundreds of people, by building a community in which to obtain a sense of belonging and even purpose.
Being an aggressive friendmaker these past years, I have always been aware of the importance of having a community to thread yourself into to help build your resilience against the life bombs thrown your way. My found-family had helped me through culture-shock, divorce, joblessness, homesickness, a rotten break-up, yadda-yadda crummy things, AND I’ve enjoyed the privilege of sharing the joyful life moments: finding great work, falling in love, yadda-yadda cool shit.
And though I didn’t think I needed a new community of any sort, Porridge Club offered me a space for parts of me that I was only just discovering: the creative side of me was starting to make itself known, demand my attention. I slipped easily into the space they made for me, and it felt just right. The depression that had taken hold of me at this point in my life was something I couldn’t understand (who ever does?), and I felt it affecting my relationships with those in my close circle of friends/family. And in this dark space I certainly didn’t have any desire to go and commit my weary self to new social obligations and people. But there I was, looking forward to two days a week of doing nothing with a bunch of people I barely knew. And within those walls, with these strangers (well, strangers no longer), depression was but a memory. I was weaved in, tight and strong, and bad things just could not penetrate.
In a TED talk by Marisa Franco, she highlights the importance of building a community or network as a way to find contentment/happiness. She cites several studies (and legit seemed as if she thought we were going to recognise any of those thousand academic names she dropped), so it’s worth watching for the scientific backing. But if you’re too exhausted from already reading this far into MY expert theories that are based on nothing but a hunch, then listen up, losers: that TED lady is right. Look, you introverts may not be able to make immediate use of her tips, but at its core, the advice is just telling you to try to connect to others in ways that you can, rather than wait for others to find you in your hidey hole. And that, if you find yourself unmoored or unhappy, it might help to bounce your reflection off of other people and learn new ways of thinking, feeling, being. Loneliness is a motherfucker, and we can say what we want about enjoying isolation, but goddamn it feels good to grow and develop as a person – something that being part of a group facilitates.
I want to stress here that I don’t suggest that you attempt to cure your depression by using human beings as your personal medicine cabinet, because that is a surefire way to alienate people. I mean only that being part of a community can offer you strength and bring light. And community means giving as well as receiving. Together, like.
Peer pressure (wherein I pressure my peers to also get tattoos and they do it). Video: dep.artment.
I also want to write a post about loneliness at some point in the future, because this is something I personally have never struggled with, but heard much about, particularly in Norway. I am sure that if creating or finding a community were easy, the lonely people would have done it by now, and I think that there are many factors, including culture, that contribute to isolation in the country. I can’t tell people to go against what feels comfortable for them, or go against their culture or what makes sense to them. But I do suggest just taking a few small steps, if possible, into something new, or try to add a new layer to something that already exists. I am sure that many people are part of groups that could become supportive and joyous communities with just a few adjustments. The group of parents who get together to arrange school events: perhaps they could have a regular group chat that shares silly memes and develops its own in-group jokes, or even meets once in a while for coffee or playdates with the kids. Or people you meet at whatever sport or activity you do, or random hobby you participate in, I don’t know your life. Take a tiny step toward building a community by extending invitations, bringing food to celebrate something, creating a point of regular communication in any way.
And online communities are great, but I do think that IRL ones have value that can’t be matched by online alone.
OK, Jesus, I feel like this post is going on too long, here is another bit of hilarity from Deliberately Buried.
Image Source: https://www.instagram.com/deliberatelyburied/ […]
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23/02/2015The title is rather dramatic for the actual content of this post. What I want to talk about, and what has been on my mind all morning is: how the fuck does everybody else know what’s going on?
And by ‘what’, I mean ‘everything’. I spend my life in a perpetual state of confusion. I don’t mean just when I’m stuck in a complicated talk or reading a book that uses words more than ten characters long. I mean going-to-the-fucking-bank-and-being-owned-by-the-ATM confused. I just can’t seem to get my act together.
This week I became a student again. I’m actually quite excited about it. So of course, I think: “I’ve got brains enough to get into this establishment, I must have enough to help me navigate the general administration that being a student involves.”
“MWAHAHAHHAAAHAHHA” says the neat little post-doc human lurking in a corner with all his books, access cards, maps & uncanny ability to remember all of his passwords (I’m locked out of Vula AGAIN). He takes one look at me tripping over my own slip-slops and realises that I don’t really have the mettle to cut it on a large campus. Hell, I don’t even have the mettle to cut it at my local library. I seem to just be wired all wrong. Papers (the wrong ones, which I picked up by mistake) fly out of my hands and are sacrificed to the paper-gods daily, pigeons capitalise on my weakness by stealing my sandwiches while I’m trying to rescue my lost papers, and campus admin staff’s eyeballs are stretched to dangerous levels of roll.
So what is the secret? While I’m trekking with bags, baby supplies (which I’ve forgotten in my school bag & will probably irk my baby some time shortly) & milk-stained clothes, others seem to have time for coffee, work & arriving on time to lectures.
I always counter my deep confusion by arriving preponderously early for everything and thus confusing the shit out of the people who can’t figure out who I am or what I’m doing there. Misery likes company. Also, confused people tend to ask a lot of questions and I get a lot of mine accidentally answered in the process.
“Er… who are you?”
“Who, me? I a student, who are you?”
“Er… well, I work here. And that’s my chair and… can I help you?”
“Oh, no thank you. I used this thingamajig to get in. Do you have one?”
“Your student card? Yes, I have something like that. Um, where did I put my coffee?”
“I’ll get you one. Can you just point me in the direction of the kitchen? And the computer lab? And tell me what courses I’ve signed up for?”
“Sure, sure. Just, uh, get out of my office and get my coffee.”
Score. I usually then hand them some kind of sign-up form on which I’ve filled in & crossed out all the wrong sections, signed by the wrong person (possibly the caretaker or the local traffic service official), and which should really be handed to the funding office rather than this random stranger who I found in the department I presume I’m registered to study under.
There has to be some tool out there. You know, some way that shows me how to do things before I ask all the stupid questions. I’m sure there is signage everywhere, but it’s in a language I don’t understand. Or am too impatient to read.
Forget studies – it happens at work, too. In all my jobs, it takes me more time to figure out the damned administration line than it takes me to pen the 20 000-word e-mail explaining why I’m not fit for the job & should probably be fired. It doesn’t matter if I’m the most or the least qualified person for the position – I will assume that there is somebody with their head screwed on straight who can do the job a great deal faster & with less fuss than I can. And I’d probably be right.
I would like, now, to take the time to thank the people who have helped me get this far in life without accident or bankruptcy. Because, frankly, that’s the sort of thing that awaits people who live in a constant state of “HAEH?”. To my parents, who instinctively steer me back to happy reality with their daily phone calls to make sure I’m still alive (and also by teaching me certain skills which have been nicely lodged in my procedural memory bank & cannot ever be lost. Hello toothbrush, hello car!); my partner who ensures I am well-fed and clean & social; my mother-in-law who made sure I ate all my fats at dinnertimes & dressed warmly always; my sisters who put up with me while running our family business (there was much hand-holding here); my grandma who used flash-cards to ensure I was at least good at school, if not at life; and all my friends who forgive my confusing text messages & bouts of cursing in casual conversation. Did I mention my sisters? Well, they kind of fit in all of the above categories except the flash-cards bit. I’m sure they’re kicking themselves for not having thought of that.
I think I need a little award for getting this far. Now, if only I could figure out how to put my name forward for it.
Thank god for the internet. Here I can lurk and pretend I know what’s going on from the safety of my beanbag.
Please tell me there are more out there like me. […]
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