A week ago I was in a car with my parents and some friends of ours. They’d all just come back from a concert (Josh Ritter, if any of you know him) and where energetically discussing his performance, the songs, the atmosphere, and above that, the way he carried himself. He was grateful, to his fans, and this whole island which shaped his career. They said that at the very start he thanked the whole crowd, in the midst of all the craziness the world has right now, “for the rest”.
My parents friends are intentional people, so the question was asked to us – what gives us rest? And I had to think about that. And when it did come round to me, I had my answer. “My rest”, I said, “is in losing myself”.
You may wonder what I mean by that. Truth be told it took me a minute to figure out what I was saying too, – and not just because I’d chosen to phrase it so pretentiously enigmatic. To lose myself is to become entirely engrossed in what’s right in front of me.
An easy example is a good book. When you start reading, you’re sitting in a chair holding it, you’re in a room, in a day, in a life. Though you’re not actively, “consciously” thinking about it, you remain aware of the context you are in, what you did before picking up the book and what you intend to do after.
The process begins the moment we start reading the words. Ever since we were children we’ve been able to look past the shapes of letters to see the phrases they make up. Once we’re just a few words in, these too become less and more than just words, forming sentences, which form pictures, which forms a narrative. As you read, you do no think about the act of reading – your awareness sits at the level of comprehension, unaware of the mental apparatus you’re using to achieve any understanding of the text at all.
But we haven’t lost ourselves yet. I only show this process to outline how we lose track of anything. I could do the same with so many other phenomena, from simple actions like breathing and eating, to those times when you find you’ve walked a familiar route while thinking about something and have no memory of the journey.
But back to the book. If it is a dull book, you grasp the ideas but remain aware that it is a book you’re reading. If it is fiction, but bad fiction, you may forget the physical book but are painfully aware of every misshapen metaphor, cut-and-paste character and forced plot device. But as a good book is read, some finely crafted novel, we start to lose track of more. The first thing to go, once a story starts to get us, is time. Our knowledge of what we were just doing starts to fade, our intentions for what we’re doing later are put on hold. Next, the room we’re in goes, our eyes never leaving the pages. And these go next – if what you’re reading has you truly engrossed, the turning of the pages is as automatic as swallowing is when you’re engrossed in a meal.
Other things could well go at this point, depending on the reader. You might stop hearing the words and only see pictures, or the narration in your head will take on more volume, perhaps with different voices for the characters. But the penultimate step will be forgetting what you are reading is fiction at all, disbelief entirely suspended. The people, the places, the scenes the writer brings you too, they’re all as real as life to you as you read them. Perhaps more so. But the last thing to be forgotten, the final thing you lose track of…
… is you.
One minute you’ll be enraptured, just you and the story. And then it’s just the story. There is no one reading it, it is happening, it is unfolding all of itself. And its not that you’ve forgotten your body or your mind and are left with your awareness hovering over the narrative like a spirit hovering over the waters. It may be so but you aren’t aware of it. You have melted, at least for a moment.
The same thing can happen in art, in another way. I have experience the sensation only a few times while writing, but when I have it’s been glorious. I’ve had it happen in groups of people too, my worries forgotten as I join in the free-form music of discussion without thinking, without planning what I mean to say or how I want to present myself. I’ve had it happen in places, where what was at one point me walking in a forest turned into just the forest, everywhere and unending.
In another discussion with friends, months previous, I got asked a different question. I forget the original phrasing, but something like “what is your best quality”. And I was surprized to find I had no answer. After a long pause I gave some answer I remembered from previous times I’d thought about it, but in truth I couldn’t come up with anything I believed to be true. It horrified me, in all honest, because I used to have such a strong sense of who I am and what I’m like.
How these two questions, and two answers, connect… I am not sure. But I feel that they do. Perhaps I’ll write a follow-up to this when I’ve figured that out. But right now, Caleb has a train to catch.