The Doctor is In[-Progress]
Or, the erotic power of knowledge
Dear Friends,
A decade ago I used to find myself intertwined with poets and writers through social media. Some of the best conversations and debates I saw took place on Facebook posts that are now hidden behind a dark veil. I don’t necessarily feel like I made connections over the internet, but the internet was the place where literary friendships and acquaintanceships were maintained. I spent most of my twenties living in New York, and on some level I probably took for granted how many writers were in my face-to-face circles or at least passing through them.
Life feels slightly different in the now. There were people who used to seem everpresent on my digital feeds, and some of those people have dissolved into one realm or another. Often I would wonder where these people went. Did they run off into the woods to start a commune, living off mushrooms and berries? Did they fake their deaths? Go on the lam? The truth is, more likely, that many of us have grown older and grown up. Taken on new interests. Watched as technology changed in unrecognizable ways. Or else, sat by as the pandemic changed us.
These days, it seems I am the one who slipped into the vanishing cabinet. I was never very good with Twitter in the first place (or any social media, truly), and somewhat recently I left it deactivated for too long, and the entire thing went poof. Some of the best author advice I was even given was to give yourself permission to vacate spaces that aren’t feeding you intellectually, spiritually, creatively, et cetera. This is certainly not advice I have taken, at least not when I initially received it. I’ve forced myself to be active in digital spaces that made me itchy because to give in to the solitude I prefer felt like some kind of failure. Even as social media moved toward a space that felt unfamiliar and noisy, I’ve forced myself to sit inside the insipid outrage machine.
Don’t get me wrong, there are aspects of social that are delicious. I love gossip!—and the ‘main characters of the day’ can be entertaining, but when I’m wading through the profanations and the middle-gray Publishers Lunch screenshots and the effusive proclamations of gratitude, I’m not learning anything new. I’m not engaging in a way that feeds me or feels meaningful. It sometimes feels like the more I give myself to maintaining a second self, the more inarticulate I become. And often when I’ve tried to share something of substance online, the algorithm devours me, and my attempts to make human connections were devoured too.
Beyond my Instagram account, this newsletter is probably the only other space where I am actively maintaining my ‘second self.’ Mostly this is because my first self is too busy trying to complete a PhD while teaching two different preps this fall. Although, I would also say that during the pandemic I began to realize how much local, in-person community means to me, and any extra energy I have, I’d rather spend in the fleshlands. These in-person encounters are the ones that have been feeding me lately. I’ve also been very dreamy about ‘third spaces’ (neither work nor home) and lost in memories of the late-night coffee shops I spent my teenage years in.
I hope I’m not being too navel-gaze-y here, but this is all to say that life seems more enjoyable since I’ve allowed myself more space to focus on what is most important to me at the moment. For now, that is focusing on getting through my exams in my doctoral program. I’m still working on my lists and trying to hone in on my readings. Every English program is different, but the way mine works is that you have a primary literary list, a secondary theoretical/critical list (speaking to the literature in the first list), and a tertiary list that is a combination of literature and theory (completely removed from the first two lists). All in all, this is a list of roughly one hundred books. This is what I spend time with when I’m not teaching, grading, or trying to prevent the two cats I recently adopted from causing total destruction.
In her essay on the erotic, Audre Lorde wrote that “the erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.” For me, as someone who has perpetually felt like a creator but seldom felt like a scholar, the doctoral journey has allowed me to hone in some erotic power of knowledge. Not school as automation, or school as expectation, or school as stepping stone, or school as escapism… but school as a place to chase down knowledge and find joy in that hunt. There is an eros in spending time with ideas or interests that you have been repeatedly told are frivolous or aberrational. What is the point of a doctorate if not to pursue something faraway or unnamed? To try to locate that thing and find its name?
There is still some anxiety in me about neglecting some part of my second self that is connected to this idea of myself as a published author. If I step away for too long, does that illegitimize me? Did everything I spent so long creating vanish with my absence?
No, of course not, but it sometimes feels that way. In the background, I tacitly send out the one or two poems or stories that feel polished, apply for a residency or fellowship here or there… but mostly I’m not working on publishing my next book at the moment or focused on myself as a creative. I am drawing connections between transgressive fictions and queer literatures and fairy tales and Southern Gothic literature. I am psychogeolocating my own rapture.
I hope people don’t forget that I’m here. I hope people still think of me as someone capable, someone who has something to prove and is gently pursuing ideas that will one day be shared with you. Perhaps my fear of the ever-growing noise is unfounded, but sometimes it feels like while I toil away with these little theories that I move further away from something that once felt knowable. Perhaps the opposite of Eros is not Thanatos nor Chaos: it’s FOMO.
Anyway, I’m still here among the backdrops. Herding cats, eating tacos, answering student emails, trying to learn Zotero, and perusing Spirit Halloween stores. I’ll try to not be away for so long next time. See you all in the darker half of the year.
Yours,
JD