i sent my friend olivia a message the other night. we hadn’t spoken in a few years (i think we last spoke at graduation in 2018) but i had been thinking about her and i felt, as i often feel, that my thoughts are best when shared. we started talking and like, earnestly talking, and it was, as it always has been with olivia, so fucking pleasant. she asked me if i had been writing recently so i directed her to this substack, which isn’t much of anything, but is at least writing, and then we started talking about knowledge of self, and about language, and about truth in language vs truth in thought.
she sent me a piece of writing about knowing yourself, a response to the prompt of “how do you know yourself?” that struck me deeply. i have found myself sort of holding onto a few of the lines from it, lightly afraid to let go. i often feel this way after reading a piece of powerful writing.
during our sophomore year of college i, along with my friend scout, started a weekly poetry reading event. a lot of people showed up, just slightly over 10% of the student body of 450. on our tenth event, olivia read. if i remember correctly, it was march, and she read a few poems. she told me she was nervous beforehand but during the pre-reading debrief we made jokes and chatted and she was remarkably calm for a person who was nervous. she read in a very confident voice with perfect diction and elocution. i struggle with remembering the content of the poems, but the moment she finished reciting i felt the same way i did after reading this most recent piece of writing she sent me. all that is to say is that she is an excellent writer and speaker.
so for this post i want to respond to olivia’s prompt (the prompt was of olivia’s own making) and attempt to answer the question “how do you know yourself?”
since i was 15 i’ve answered the same way when people ask me “liam, tell me about yourself. what sort of stuff do you like?” i tell them i like music, chess, and reading, and i love men’s high fashion. the question pulls nothing from me and the ephemera which i use to provide a false confirmation to the grasping, reaching hand of this small talk is enough to get me through most conversations.
for the times where i can feel a meaningful attempt intimated, i find myself unprepared. i want to be genuine and friendly and thoughtful and to show the best parts of myself, to demonstrate my virtues and diminish my flaws and to maximize the return on their time investment by making this risk, this actual proffer of connection, into something of value to them. i can’t tell you about what i say in these moments because i have no idea what i say. i can never remember my conversations. i know that i will usually say something genuine about a topic, then something silly and contextually absurd to disarm them, then i’ll ask about their familiarity with the subject and then begin again on the same topic but with effort and vivre.
when i was 15 years old i was on a team fortress 2 team. we played competitively and we weren’t very good but we were significantly better than the rest of the people in our league because we had purposefully sandbagged our qualifying matches so that we would get placed into a lower bracket so we could demolish the shitters. when i would find myself in a social setting where i was uncomfortable, i would find solace in the knowledge that the thing in which i was actually skilled, and had invested so much of my time into, was more of my identity than the discomfort i was feeling in that moment. i would phrase it to myself comparatively, holding someone else who was more well received than me as the target, saying to myself “i am better at tf2 than he is popular.” that is, the difference between the average tf2 player and myself in skill was greater than the average person’s (mine) popularity compared to this popular person, and as such, my identity, my sense of superiority, was preserved.
i drink so much fucking sparkling water these days.
today i got up out of my office and walked around the corner and then the other corner while i was looking at the mountains and i almost walked into [redacted] who apologized and then i opened the minifridge door and i took out a fresca sparkling soda water grapefruit citrus original and then i looked at the bowl of candy and i walked back around the corner and avoided the fish statue and sat at my desk and took my mask off and opened the fresca and then i began to drink it while watching a hikaru nakamura chess video.
today i got up out of my office and walked around the corners and avoided looking towards the mountains and bent over and looked in the mini fridge took out a lime lacroix and walked back to my desk and took my mask off and opened the lacroix and took a sip of it and regretted having ever taken this job. i did this 4 times.
today as i was walking back from [redacted]’s office i stopped in the other kitchen and i bent over and opened the other kitchen’s mini fridge and i took a cherry lacroix and i walked back to my office through the back hall to avoid [redacted] and [redacted] and i passed by a roy lichtenstein piece that i hate and i looked at it and walked past and then i went into my office and took my mask off and opened the cherry lacroix and looked down at the banana on my desk and said out loud “god fucking dammit i forgot to close the fucking door god fuck” and then i stood up and walked across my office and closed my door and then i sat back down and looked at the banana and took a sip of my cherry lacroix.
the other day while walking to work a man walked out from an alley and he was wrapped in this blanket and as he turned the corner towards me we made eye contact and i nodded at him and he looked at me and called me a pussy and then kept walking down the street behind me.
when i think about myself these are the things that come to mind. the ways in which i have compared myself to others and how that has shifted over time. the hyper specific memories of daily activities and habits that continually boil themselves down. the moment of observation afforded by a stranger however crass and weird that may be.
when i shift my thinking from about myself to my knowledge of self all that falls away a bit and i feel sad and uncomfortable. someone once taught me how to feel this way because for years i had been not feeling this way and instead i had been not feeling any type of way. i’ve come to learn that that second feeling is what i feel when i’m depressed and that first feeling is what i feel when i’m frustrated.
i’m frustrated at this prompt because knowledge of self is a dialectic. it’s an action performed through reflection against another. what i know about myself can be summed up in a collection of behaviors, behavioral predictions, patterns and dynamics. to describe myself as kind, smart, cruel, quick, easy, bloviating, generous, would be to flatten a set of motivating circumstances into criteria and then reflect those criteria back onto myself without respect for the circumstance, decontextualizating through an attempt to describe.
so here are some stories:
when i was in college there was a woman who was a freshmen when i was a senior. we had spoken a few times. one day i heard that she had brought a sexual assault allegation against another student at the school. i spoke to her about it and i spoke to a few other people. after a bit of the school being terrible about handling the situation and deleting a bunch of facebook posts in the official facebook group for that class, i created an alternate facebook group, added anyone who wanted to be added, and then posted a bunch of shit. one of the things i posted was the full name and address of the apartment building in which the student that had been accused of sexually assaulting this woman lived. he was planning on having a party there and i advised people to not go to the party because he had sexually assaulted someone. the address was wrong. 3 hours later that student’s best friend, who did live in that apartment building, had a brick thrown through his window. it was november and fucking freezing. that friend messaged me like “what the fuck is wrong with you” and the next day the school told me i was banned from campus except for the purpose of attending my classes and that i would be expelled if i didn’t delete that facebook group.
the school decided that i had nothing to do with the brick and rescinded the campus ban but did force me to move dorms as punishment.
i was walking down an alley next to the school in france and i was with like 5 friends. a car, a renault, was driving down the alley towards us. there’s a 5km/h speed limit but the car was going like 20 or 30 mph. as they came towards us we all had to flatten against the sides of the buildings to avoid being hit by the car. as the car passed me, i punched the driver’s side window. the driver immediately hit the breaks and all 4 doors opened and these french shitheads popped out. they kept shouting “qu’est que tu fait?” and some french swears i don’t know. we kept walking away and they eventually drove off.
i once was sitting on a concrete curb up against a power transformer across from a small brick wall with a large graffitid face on it behind one of the main buildings at my college and i was with my friend weston and it was late at night and we were about to smoke weed and it was quite early on in our friendship. we had met a few days beforehand and we were still getting to know each other. with me it goes very quickly because i love to be known and i am very good at it and if someone else reciprocates it is almost exponential how quickly we can be all up in each other’s soul’s guts. weston and i were that way. he told me a story in which he made a series of questionable decisions and then reached into his g. star raw jacket pocket and pulled out a small weed pipe, already packed with weed. i asked him if he’d packed that before leaving his room and then somehow kept it perfectly ready the entire evening and he lit it and inhaled and looked me in the eyes and started laughing and coughing and passed me the pipe and i took a hit as he recovered and he said “yes” and then laughed some more. i exhaled and he said “liam you have the best comedic timing of anyone”
i was once at a park near my house late at night. around 2 am. i was with some friends. we were there because one of my friend’s friend’s dad had just died so we were all hanging out so she wouldn’t be alone. we noticed there was another group of teenagers walking out of the woods near the park. they get into their car. i threw a plastic water bottle at their car as they drove away. it hit their back windshield, and they immediately stop & get out of the car. we run to the edge of the woods with these dudes chasing us. we thought we lost them and circled back around the park to head back to the car. as we're walking up a hill, i look to my right and suddenly see 2 shapes sprinting at me, 10 feet away. they run right up to me and my friends. they shout at us and threaten us and try to kick my ass and then decide it’s not worth it and leave. later that night the dude who had tried to fight me tried to hold up a gas station and was shot by the gas station attendant and died on the scene.
i was with leah and bucky and we were standing at the bottom of a hill on the north side of aix en provence. bucky and i had been walking leah home. it was getting late so bucky decided to go home without me. he got up and hugged leah and then hugged me and started walking towards home with his headphones in. he had on his silly little doctors hat and his windbreaker and his disgusting pants and shoes and he looked so cute. there was a yellow tinge on everything and he was walking down a narrow walking street. it was all blue and orange and he was about 200 yards away from us. i realized his phone was in my pocket. leah and i had been making out and listening to The National. i told her i would be right back and i stood up and looked straight up and the sky was obscured by the silhouettes of tree branches and i could see the roofs of the buildings around me and then i looked back down and i could see bucky still getting smaller bouncing his way down the street. and then i ran. i sprinted directly towards him. it was all cobblestone and mistral and vigor and he was growing larger and more present. i couldn’t think and i was breathing and i felt so entirely invested in the result of bucky having his phone. i could have melted myself into a small soup and if you ate that soup you would have immediately felt the same passion fill your solar plexus and demand you move towards this goal. i gave bucky his phone and he was so cute and so happy to have it. he smiled his very silly smile and hugged me and said night again and put his headphones on again and began getting smaller and smaller again and suddenly i was alone in this street in aix and i was sweating and slightly cold and this passion that i had felt was dead and i was alone on this street in aix and i wanted nothing more than to hug leah. so i did. i ran again. the distance back to her felt so small relative to how much i wanted to kiss her so of course i ran. and i made it back to her and she laughed really hard and we kissed and kissed again and hugged a lot and listened to why? and i walked her home up this very long and stupid hill. years later leah told me that it was then, when i was running and sweating and returning bucky his phone, that she realized she was in love with me.
i started at a new job immediately after moving to denver and i was added to the appropriate teams chats. i was added to a coffee club for the younger people at the company and every week or so we’d just do a teams hangout and drink coffee and complain about work and ignore our tasks. a few months in my coworker sheridan said she was quitting. she’d been there for over a year at that point and me only 2 months or so. someone hosted a virtual happy hour for her which i attended and we all told stories and chatted and got lightly wasted at like 3 pm on a thursday. towards the end she said she wanted to say something and everyone got quiet and she said “i’m not gonna miss this place but liam you are easily the coolest motherfucker here, thanks for everything” and then left the meeting.
when i was very depressed and about to fail all of my junior year classes in high school i was talking to my older sister, johannah, and she could tell i was anxious about my upcoming classes and she said “liam millions of people go to high school every year and they all do it. you’ll be fine” and then i failed out of the majority of classes i took that year and almost got kicked off the chess team for not meeting the academic requirements. i remember i was sitting in chess practice, which took place in the same room where i took chemistry bc my chem teacher was also the chess coach, and i was cheating on my chem class by grading my own assignments and tests, and i realized that i was simply incapable of the same level of performance that literally millions of people handled daily without issue.
primarily my sense of self shifts based on the communities with which i identify. when i spent a lot of time going to poetry readings and writing poetry and talking to poets i felt more like a poet than i do now that i spend a lot of time talking to communists and reading about communism and of course the same is true of video games and philosophy and fashion and computers and ‘being midwestern’ and whatever else.
i’m writing down these memories and these ideas because i don’t know how to talk about knowing myself in an adequate way. i know myself because i am myself and that is, or at least has been, more than enough. externally substantiating that experience through the lens of knowledge feels valuable and impossible but when i consider it, it seems that the value of this experiment comes through in two ways: demonstrating aspects of myself from my own perspective for the sake of providing insight to others, and in the value inherent in introspection. i guess ideally that former value would be diminished through direct exposure.
but there is one last thing i want to touch on. regardless of the value of this writing, is there any truth to it? are you knowing me more accurately through this? or even more precisely: are you knowing how i know myself any more truthfully? i’ve got no fucking idea but i do know that if you listen to southside freestyle by megan thee stallion and you feel similarly warm in your chest when she says
“i’m goin hard for my mama she knew i could do it
i pray every day just to prove it
i’m goin hard for my granny, she want it she have it
the hood goin hard for ms paxton”
then it’s likely that we’re similar enough that anything you know about yourself you also know about me.
playlist:
Megan Thee Stallion - [Something for Thee Hotties CD1 #02] Megan Monday Freestyle
DJ Seinfeld - [Mirrors #10] Song for the Lonely
Taglo - [Beatport Andy Moor Safe on Both Sides Chart #05] Sub Rosa (Extended Mix)
Hyper-On Experience - [Peshay Studio Set CD2 #07] East Coast Vibes
Anthony1 - [DJ Bob Presenta: Banana Shot 2020 #03] Cambiototal
døves - [ULTRACLUB4K #08] anna
Alex M.O.R.P.H. feat. Sylvia Tosun - [A State Of Trance 1000 – Celebration Mix #72] An Angel's Love (Extended Mix)
DJ Metatron - [Loops Of Infinity (A Rave Loveletter) #02] A Perfect Mission
Planet Euphorique - [Tiny Planet Vol 1. #01] Killer DJ's - Untitled
Zack Fox - [shut the fuck up talking to me CD1 #01] uhhh
Maxo Kream - [WEIGHT OF THE WORLD #09] What I Look Like feat. Freddie Gibbs
Summer Walker - [Still Over It CD1 #03] No Love feat. SZA
Headie One, AJ Tracey, Stormzy - [EDNA (Deluxe) #06] Ain't It Different (feat. AJ Tracey & Stormzy)
Flo Milli - [Ho, why is you here ? CD1 #12] Scuse Me
State Of Grace - [Renaissance: The Mix Collection CD2 #11] Not Over Yet (Perfecto Mix)
Roza Terenzi - [Modern Bliss #07] Total Eclipse
mega: https://mega.nz/folder/7ZsSUT5A#uhLg3P8k4J8i0yJyCtVppw
youtube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4bUgvWbrZGLyOOHm-79CnLLCjgY1bNcI (regrettably the anthony1 track is not on youtube by itself. you can find it here: youtube.com/watch?v=1PAw8lh6IzQ
note: this is just a quick list of shit i’ve been listening to lately. i haven’t been much in the mood to try and make much of an actual playlist. i’ve been getting into d&b and trance and house music more lately so this has some of that. as well as new maxo kream, zack fox, summer walker, headie one, and megan thee stallion.