On a carousel

unlike last week's subhead, this time I actually am in an airport

Greetings from LAX, where I am in the middle of one of the most bonkers days in recent memory. I’m here because earlier today I accompanied my niece from Philadelphia back home to Southern California, and now, four hours after I arrived, I am waiting to board a red eye to JFK. This was not a thing I expected to be doing – someone else was originally going to accompany her, but I had to swap in, and because all this happened kind of last minute, I didn’t make any plans or opt to stay over. Which sounds dumb when I think about it now but at the time made sense. It made more sense than the other option I had, which was arrive at LAX, sit in traffic, stay over in Long Beach, and then sit in traffic again to come back and get on a red eye. Anyway, apologies to anyone and everyone I know in LA, Long Beach, and OC, I really should have thought this through and forced you to make plans with me.

I am discombobulated, to say the least, so apologies for all of my past dumb choices as well as anything in this newsletter that doesn’t make sense.

asleep in an airport

But all this gets me to thinking about friendship. Well, I was already thinking about friendship, but now I’m thinking about it even more. Like why didn’t I just stay a few days and see friends here? Well, honestly because I didn’t think I was ready to spend time in California. Too many memories. Like way too many, from so many past versions of myself that I’ve lost count.

I guess also because I didn’t want to impose on anyone, since I’d have needed a place or two to stay, and everyone’s got work and lives? That’s silly though. Like that’s something friends are for, right? Doing you a solid on an unexpected visit.

Friendship is weird, isn’t it. Like, I get it, but also sometimes I don’t get it? Friends are so important, some of the most important relationships we will ever have in our lives, but everyone walks around like friendships just, y’know, happen. Like they require no work or effort, unlike romantic relationships, and god forbid something goes wrong and you need to talk about it, because where is the manual for that.

Let’s get really real: It’s weird to talk about being befuddled by friendship, isn’t it. It’s like admitting you don’t know how to swim or ride a bike. Everyone walks around talking about all their shitty breakups and bad romances, but no one’s walking around going, “Ah yes, friendship, truly it bedevils me.”

Sorry for all the discourse, but I honestly don’t think we talk about friendship nearly enough. At any age! We don’t talk about how important friends are, how supportive and nurturing they can be, and equally how hurtful and difficult. We don’t talk enough about how sometimes a friendship ending badly is a thousand times more damaging than getting dumped by someone you considered marrying. We don’t talk about the work that friendships require. We also don’t talk about the ways in which society strongly encourages us (read: literally penalizes us if we don’t, at least financially) to be coupled, and to have children. It’s as if the atomic family were still the only way we can imagine society being structured, the only social institution we can imagine that will save us from devastating loneliness and financial ruin.

It’s wild, right? Like here we are in 2023, with technological advancements basically coming out our asses, and socially we’re still partying like it’s 1899. (Fine, not really, we’re obviously not totally Victorian, but again: I have flown to LA and am flying back to NYC in one day, give me a break.)

queen victoria

On top of friendship being just, you know, hard sometimes, how much harder does social media make it? So much harder! Social media makes just being a human harder, tbh. Of all the technology we could have developed around interacting with other people, we somehow glommed onto the ones run by humans whose take on friendship seems decidedly not very human at all. And by somehow I mean the software was designed for you to glom onto it. Because remember what I said about this? The house always wins, and in social media the house is a mansion built by and for billionaires who come in a limited range of personality types.

But hold up, don’t let me get ahead of myself. Friendship! How does it work, what do we get wrong, how valuable is it. I want to talk about it. Maybe you are supremely well-adjusted and have loads of friends and never, ever feel weird or hurt about stuff that your friends do or don’t do. Probably not. I don’t think those sorts of people read what I write.

Because you know those people, right? It seems so easy for them, like they just get it. They always have plans. They’re very good at small talk. They keep it light and never let things get weird or heavy. They constantly travel with friends, and they’re always doing fun things.

Ok, fine. Some of these people just pretend on social media to have fabulous social lives. Sometimes you can tell, because there’s an air about it that feels forced, like a woman I knew years ago who would always say she was “screamingly happy.” Or like the friendship equivalent of pushing a pile of dirty laundry out of the way to take an artfully framed picture of a perfect corner of a home to make you think everything is peaceful and tidy. But often you can’t tell, so really feels like everyone gets it and is good at it. Except maybe you.

Sorry, I guess this is about social media after all. I really wanted to write about something else but I can’t get this out of my system quite yet!

So yeah, maybe the number of people who are well-adjusted and find friendship easy is a smaller number than I tend to assume. It could be that a lot of people are more self-contained, or don’t really get close to other people, so it’s easier to keep things light. Some people, as a dear friend described herself, are emotionally independent. Others aren’t. A lot of people get confused or hurt by other people’s behaviors but don’t show it or talk about it, or they post anonymously on Reddit to ask if anyone else has ever experienced this. Also, not everyone has the same emotional life. Some people have high highs and low lows, and others have much much narrower bands of experience. Not everyone feels personally wounded by small stuff, and not everyone is constantly keyed in to reading all the signals like tea leaves that spell out YOUR FRIENDS DON’T REALLY LOVE YOU.

Because that’s what some people do when they look at social media (which I swear I’m not doing, I’m on break, except I went on for a quick second, big mistake). Even in our 30s and 40s and 50s and beyond, when some of us see other people doing stuff with each other but without us, or when we see them doing things for other that they don’t do for us, a lot of us feel a little… little. Small. Left out and inconsequential. Outside looking in. Which, spoiler alert, is how much of social media is designed.

There’s always chatter about how Instagram and now TikTok tend to flatten culture and experiences, and they do it faster and more thoroughly than television ever did. We also know how social media affects teens, psyches, and self-esteem. But the things it does to friendship! Whew. It’s like having parasocial relationships, the kind people have with celebrities and influencers, but with people we actually know, in person, and are supposedly friends with.

carousel

Or maybe – I just finished watching Mad Men, finally (I’m in the now when it comes to cultural consumption, thanks), and I keep thinking about Don Draper’s pitch at the end of season 1. The famous Carousel pitch for Kodak’s slide projector. In case you don’t remember it, here’s what he says (and here’s the clip):

Technology is a glittering lure. But there is the rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level beyond flash, if they have a sentimental bond with the product.

My first job, I was in house at a fur company with this old pro copywriter, Greek, named Teddy.  And Teddy told me the most important idea in advertising was ‘new.’ Creates an itch. You simply put your product in there as a kind of calamine lotion.

But he also talked about a deeper bond with the product: nostalgia. It’s delicate, but potent.

Teddy told me that in Greek nostalgia literally means ‘the pain from an old wound.’  It’s a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone.
This device isn’t a space ship. It’s a time machine. It goes backwards, forwards. Takes us to a place where we ache to go again.

It’s not called ‘The Wheel.’ It’s called ‘The Carousel.’

Isn’t new what all the apps are? And isn’t nostalgia what our photo dumps are?

Being a spectator seems to reinforce the idea that friendships just magically happen, that they don’t require work, on some level. Maybe you’re not doing the work, but someone sure is, to make sure your friendships happen and to make sure they last. Where’s the technology to help us learn more about that?

Until next time!

Lxx

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Three recommendations from me, if recommendations are your thing:

1. Just kidding, today we have only one recommendation, and that not to fly across the country and back in a single day.