Writing on Closeness

Closeness is the most important thing for me. There are many words which are similar like connection or warmth or tender which all come into it but they aren’t good enough alone. I spend ages thinking about closenesses of all sorts. Feeling close is the most alive thing and even thinking about it is still a warm shadow to sit in. It is so often the separator for me, splitting everything into categories. Describing something of this size is hard, it is like taking you through my whole in little and big bits. Closenesses are my markers, both my stopping points and my fuel. I see my life as a string of differently spiking closenesses, each in-between bit both pushed on by the last one and expectantly waiting for the next. I like it when they are constructed and regular, or when they are unexpected and bright. I like them most when they are really massive and textured and you are just enveloping further and further into it and there are no stopping points just a continuous horizon producing more and more space to run into. Closenesses are often with people but they can also be with things and also abstract things like cities or concepts. They can also be with people but not directly. When I find a new song I really enjoy I always quickly go and find the comments under it on youtube. I like it when the video has a lot of views but not too many, a big club but still a club. Everyone is so partisan and they all know what I’m thinking. People seem to share an awful lot on there, they are more open than in real life. You get to hear their true feelings because they know they are sharing it to a council of similars. Everyone is agreeing and telling each other how they are just so right. And they will pull other things into it about their wider life and be descriptive about important things that have happened to them. It is a special sort of sharing closeness. I have written a few comments like that and although nothing happens straight away it is so warm to know that sometime in the future my deposit will be picked up and looked at by someone who understands exactly why it has been left there. The comment is tied to the song forever like something dangling off the end of a boat, reanimated each time the motor starts humming. I don’t mind that this is prepackaged closeness, I don’t mind that I have sought it out or that it is anonymous. It still has the seeing that closeness is made up of. Seeing is just meeting but with an excitement for learning. Closeness on the outside is something small in a little pocket but on the inside it is very big. Seeing is realising that the thing is actually very textured and the focusing in on the textures just makes the whole thing bigger. Like pinching into an image on a screen that doesn’t get more blurry, the thing just expands and you see all of the grains and the hairs and the irregulars. Seeing is an acceptance of uneven layers. It is such a warming thing, seeing the detail. Details come in all different fonts and tones and there are always so many of them. Closeness is noticing and maybe pocketing that noticed thing or maybe being lit up by the fact that it is there and you got to see it like spotting a rabbit run by in a clearing. That isn’t to say that closeness is only built on the incidental or the unique but more that the atmosphere that allows these things on show usually is where closeness is. Like a comfort, even if not always a familiarity. Seeing is an evening with chairs left closer than when you turned up, that slow moving in. A moving of the vase then a lean forward then an elbow on the table to rest a head then an arm reached over to correct a strand of hair. Seeing is cordoned off attention. And intimacy. I think all of these things are the same really. Physical intimacy is an overwhelming closeness. I like to notice all the points of bodies touching, going through the individual tensions one by one like a list of fastenings. A hand pressed is never that simple, it could be a fingertip and a rim of a palm or a wrist or many things. I like it when there are lots of tensions and the closeness feels consuming. Focus as a total thing. Closeness as complete unabsence. The closeness of weight against, or the lightness of a dragging nail on skin. Closeness as something unignorable and tight. Tight as to be caught in a wrapping grounding thing there and just there, when everything but the current is fuzzy. A different but slightly similar thing could be said for being in crowds. At concerts or football games. Everyone transfixed in the same way, bodily reactions all in unison. It is a caring attention. Care is the most important part of closeness, maybe. Care is time and attention but also tenderness. Care towards something or right next to something. When I get lonely or feel pathetic I watch little videos people have made of moments from films with sad music playing usually too loudly in the background. My muscles soften. I can pick to be one of the characters or just observe them like my friends. Depending on my mood there are nice benefits to each one. I can’t do it too often but it gives me a closeness when closeness isn’t there. I like how it is all very easy which is exactly what I need in that moment because care is best when it’s an obvious thing. Care is a thick thing, it richens the voice. Proper closeness is care, suitcases of it. Suitcases to excitedly dig through and pull out what you got. Caring closeness is like a softening thing and a mellow thing and a marked thing. It is a changing thing. Some closenesses char or sort of fall apart and then the little bits don’t look right. Closenesses are staying things but they can be taken away or there might be a time where you have the last of a particular type. And then it hangs in the air in the way felt things do and you notice it a lot because when it was there it was big and now there is an outline. A precipitate but not a thing. The growing thing that is the middle bit stops and leaves and the dimension of it is all that is left and it has hardened. If closeness is expansion then the leaving of closeness is shriveling. It’s the difference between a grape and a raisin in size and juiciness and colour. It’s being in a place tarmaced over and shrinking. Sometimes if I get like this I try to fill the space with empty closenesses and try to pour myself out onto something else but it usually doesn’t work. I just get everywhere. There might be little deposits of closenesses to find but it is not like the proper thing. When I find proper closeness it is so obvious that all the other little tries were only that. The best closenesses change and grow and you don’t plan it they just spring off in different directions and it is giddy to chase after them. Full speed. The best closenesses are with people and soft to the touch. They go up and down a lot with humour and meaning and lots of things. They are very mutual and they are very layered. They are all the things I have said before in one thing. I collect and collect them and make my bed time later so that I can have more. They are nourishing and moreish. They are all of the clear things, all of the synonyms. The best closenesses are actually sort of flat. They aren't overly excitable they are a comforting stillness. An uninterrupted state of home. They are breathy and present and tender more than they are erupting. Tender excitement like dew building on the bit above each other’s lip from breath being trapped in that small space. Holding is so important. So much of it is so important. All of this is sickly sweet but also it is mine. I don’t mind being built on syrup and not tougher stuff because I get to have these things. I've had them and will have more. What else is there? You put these things of seeing and intimacy and care and tender and attention together and they all sort of mean the same thing and you put them in a fine net and you shake it and something like icing sugar comes out and it is cloudy and big and sweet and it falls and covers everything and it hangs in the air in the way that made things do and then right then it doesn't matter this here is the certain thing this here matters all else will be okay. It is the clearing.

This is an essay from This is What It’s Like. Click here for more information