Be not Afeard
Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices,
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
At night the monsters come out. A lesson I learned very young. Daytime people and nighttime people inhabit entirely different universes. In daylight everyone aspires to perform coherence. At night the facade starts to sag. Walking home through crowded New York streets, the happy people seem happy in the way drunk people seem happy, chemically suspended just above their despair, laughing too loudly beneath restaurant awnings.
The air conditioner in my apartment hums. I’ve always loved that sound. It makes me feel safe. The quiet hum of background noise. Contained. Safe from the wiry electricity of groups.
I don’t do especially well at parties unless I have one person there with me, someone I can retreat to a corner with, away from the crowd, and build a smaller world beside. Someone to metacommentate on the absurdity of social life in real time. Someone to exchange the little glance that says: are you seeing this too?
In fact, I think that may be the deepest kind of intimacy I know. Not romance exactly. Not even friendship in the conventional sense. More like a temporary conspiracy against the surrounding atmosphere. A private frequency. The best jokes work this way too. The funniest jokes are often only fully legible to three people in the room.
Maybe this is the Andy Kaufman fan in me revealing himself. I’ve always been drawn to performances that feel like coded transmissions rather than entertainment, little worlds that ask for participation rather than approval. As a kid I thought adulthood meant eventually becoming comfortable in large groups. As an adult I think it means finding peace in solitude.
I aspire to be more like my friend Nina Power here: