Have you ever had the feeling that you’re like, wrapped in an invisible soundproof silo?
It’s a tall glass case that looks kind of like the one Austin Powers was preserved in but no one can see it so they don’t know that you’re in there — that you can’t hear them and they can’t hear you. You can see them, though, and they see you too, so it’s easy to like, mimic what’s happening around you. Someone laughs, so you laugh too. Someone cries, so you pout in a compassionate nod of solidarity. Your mom falls, so you try to help her up, and all of this is happening from inside the silo.
Sometimes, it gets kind of boring in there. So you start making up stories — they’re laughing because person A told a funny joke. Or person B slipped on his way back from the bathroom before sitting back down next to person A. Or maybe, actually, they’re laughing at you. They’re making fun of some way you look, or something you did. They’re assholes — fuck them.
The stories get more elaborate as you spend time in the silo. They’re no longer based on what you see but on these more complicated projections. So you’re building the storylines and they make great sense (to you) and they tell a damn good tale that really, you should sell to Netflix, but now you need your characters, right? So, person A becomes the villain. Person C is the victim. Person B gets to play the role of aloof gentleman and person D is comedic relief — the steak knife who arrives in perfect time to cut the tense meat. Between A and C and person U — that is, you. The protagonist. In this story, you’re the hero. But it changes.
Sometimes I wonder if I’ve been living in and out of one of these silos forever. If the silo is actually this impulse to write stories about reality not as it is, but as you think it is — and I wonder if I’ve been up here coming in and out of this inclination to feign simulations for so long that I don’t even actually know the difference anymore when I’m in one and when I’m not.
What inclines us towards these silos? What are the silos? Are they actually just our most primitive coping mechanisms — the ones that settle so firmly into the architecture of our existence we don’t even realize they’re there?
I used to video like, every waking moment of Madeline and Laura’s lives. I didn’t want to forget anything and also, I take great pleasure in ending my week by sitting on the couch and scrolling through this incredible visual record of time that I get to create with my stupid smartphone. But when Laura was like 2.5, she started clinging to small-sized rectangular-shaped objects and pointing them at my face or Madeline’s face or her dad’s face as if she were recording too.
And I didn’t get mad or embarrassed or ashamed about it, which I mention only because I consciously chose not to, but I didn’t like it either, so I stopped filming everything even though I long to recall these particular moments when they’re 3 and change and coming into their own but also becoming masters of imitation.
Anyway, I bring all of it up because I still film some stuff. And I still do my thing at the end of each week, where I scroll through the record and either sigh or smile or do something in between and I process what has happened that way.
Last week I was watching one of the videos of Madelaur and it occurred to me that for as much as they have “kept me honest,” motivating me to answer their questions directly and straightforwardly (see: What if a question’s just a question), I still do it sometimes. I speak to them from inside the silo. Seeing that — a recognition that a silo exists at all — seemed like progress. I wondered how much of my view of reality was impacted by the silo through which my mom spoke to me. The one I can see now, and hold up against mine.
I wondered what happens when suddenly, the choice to go in or step out becomes yours. What happens when you deign to step out. When you stop writing stories and you start to see what is around you as it is.
When the villains melt
and the victims disappear
and the heroes fall
and there are no steak knives or aloof gentlemen. When it all just is.
Dispatch #041321: What if it all just is?