Goodbye and the mind

On saying goodbye, archiving the chats and personal existence.

I say, "High", you say, "Low"
You say, "Why?"
And I say, "I don't know"
Oh, no!

The Beatles

When you were a child, at some point you’ve figured out that the infinity is somewhat tragic. Infinite space within which our planet exists, infinite plane in a mathematical construction, infinite scroll or even infinite possibilities of thought.

But when have you encountered something finite. In the movie Submarine, main character, Oliver, describes a situation where his girlfriend Jordana has to deal with the possibility of losing her mother due to cancer spreading and requiring surgical intervention. His rationalisation of this situation is to have her dog die, so she can experience loss and prepare for the greater loss that is about to come.

However, in real life, the finite thing you realise is not necessarily about death and the shortness of life. I remember my mother saying to a young me when a close relative had died that “I’m too young to understand it”. But I wasn’t. By that point, I was aware that the finale has to come. There is a phenomenon called Mortality salience — where a person is aware that they can’t defer death — it will eventually come in one form or another.

But death is not the thing that brings the awareness of finite being. Another memory of mine was walking around a football ground and seeing a dog. I followed him all the way through, but then I lost him somewhere in the woods. When I returned home, my parents told me that he also had to go home to his parents. Shockingly, I didn’t believe them. I knew that that moment, when I had felt happiness of finding this dog, was long gone.

Fast forward to today, and I to this moment I don’t regret losing people in my life (not to say I don’t miss them), but the phenomena that these people had brought up to my mind. It was always aware that first kiss, that feeling of falling in and out of love, perpetual cycle of life and death — that those occurrences were actually devoid from material reality — they were the product of my own cognition, my own Cogito, me. They were me.

On fictional representation of Them

When we write about people, we don’t actually write them in. We can’t, because we miss the part that is there to begin with — consciousness. Affects, emotions (or lack thereof), body language, everything that that person does or feels is reflected in the mirror of my own mind.

So I was actually trying to write about two people. One had died late last year. The other I’ve met not so long ago. One was a years long friendship, and the other a very happy coincidence.

I thought I knew the first one, but felt lacking in knowledge about the latter. However, I did know that they had a weird sense of humour, a shield that protected everyone around them from bad mood, but his mind? One day they were just gone. And I couldn’t for the life of me remember anything more than a high school nickname.

Devastated, this morning I tried to write about the happy coincidence. What I had were phrases, but in a context that felt weird, artistic, a bit cynical, but also some of the most unique to my mind that they engraved themselves like a sensory overload in the dark room. Every phrase could be their own story. Every inch of their face could be a novel.

In fact, me being sad that those moments have passed have had a phenomenology of their own — there was the Other and I’ve experienced their consciousness through their actions, words, smiles and hugs. Too much to write all at once.

On the other hand, I was at my friend’s funeral. I was trying my best to remember what we’ve said to each other back in the day. I sat down, tried to write something up, but nothing but a stupid nickname came to me. So that’s what I wrote about. I wrote about one thing that had been forgotten and lost to time.

I’ve said goodbye to him long ago without being aware. I’ve said goodbye to the nickname when the coffin had reached the bottom of the hole and got covered with dust, before it itself blends with it. I walked away to a bus station, thinking about this moment. No fiction could return our moments. But no memory of mine could as well. Because they were experienced by the two of us. Maybe more of our friends had participated. But a lot of time — just the two of us.

On thing I was sure that I was ready to never experience something with that person again. I was aware of it. I just never thought that when it happened, all I had left was a nickname and his stupidly awkward smile that everyone adored.

Why even write about them?

I will argue that you can’t write anything without experiencing. Not necessarily that you had to endure the war, but you need to feel something that can be represented with war. And if you don’t experience, you don’t exist. So to experience something is to exist in the world of phenomena. You’ll never be able to let go of them. You can push them back into the darkness of your mind or bathe them in ink.

I wrote so many things on one sentence and a smile, some freckles and curly hair. I don’t even know that person properly. I just remember the damn freckles beneath their big eyes.

Just like I remember the moment i fell onto another person’s lap. Maybe the moment before was also special, but it wasn’t a phenomena of my existence. This was. The moment I’ve opened my eyes and saw their pretty imperfections looking down on me.

I can only write what I’ve experienced. I can make metaphors, analogies or even construct things entirely. But I’ll never be able to let go of the initial phenomenon that had led me to create that something.

I’m not making a living from making art. But I am making my living (experience) by making it. That’s why I’ll never stop writing.

Goodbye, little socialist

Were you ever sad to leave a workplace? Because we experienced things there too. But the context was different. Maybe you’re letting go of a friendship or a colleague you’ve fell in love with. You’re losing some phenomena there — and that can be exploited.

Your friends are there, laughing, maybe hiding their unhappiness or despair, maybe thinking also about their finale. You’ve had moments that are nice in that office. One of my managers had told me once that people tend to stay because of other people. And that is true.

Unfortunately, this is where our Goodbyes get a political note. A workplace is place of production. Your value is not only in surplus of products or your labour, your value is that you are a human being. Many companies abuse this — integrating your being into the identity of the company.

Capitalist society has found a way to monetise everything — from love and sex to using propaganda-style film making when selling you a product.¹ Companies had long been past the slave-like labour of the past. Instead, we’re talking about selling you people, culture, love, identity. You’re not tied to your job only by legal contract, but a social one as well. You bring value outside of your work-related tasks, and that value is being used as a marketing tool — building a company culture using people without their knowledge.

This somewhat makes it hard to say goodbye. To leave and look for a change. Tying a workplace to individuals and making it the centre of your experience there is essentially using phenomena you encounter, the love of people, their interests, their passions, Them, creating an additional surplus-value, this time not labour, but human value.

How does this relate to fiction?

Many people have stopped reading, consuming fiction at all. Many have been lost in the infinite scrolls of new media. Them saying goodbye means not having to deal with real life loss, because they have archived messages, photos — not phenomena.

But in fiction, we always experience phenomena of someone else, and that creates a new phenomenon of our experience. We learn not only how to function within the world, but we know more about our mind and the Self which exists in this world.

Without fiction, a society of capital could sell you phenomena just as it sells shoes.

But people are not for sale. And they never will be. From a socialist’s point of view, a person is a unit that can be measured. But the society can only exist if these humans share their own private phenomena of other people, thus creating an infinite network of said Goodbyes.

In Submarine, Oliver finally realises that he’d been wrong all along. He didn’t know how Jordana felt, he couldn’t, he didn’t try to relate. He then goes on to have a depressive episode of his own, but also manages to finally encounter his own feelings, his growing up from a young teenager to an adult, his emotional engagement with the world of his parents and his own. Oliver is sad — because he has to be. He experienced losing someone due to him trying to rationalise the whole world. He was lost in his own infinite scroll. But, finally, through his encounter with phenomena of Jordana’s tiny imperfections, her hair, the way she speaks — he grows up. In the film's final scene, he stands before the ocean. For the first time, what appears infinite is no longer space, but time.

This is how we’re able to understand and value the finite time that we have, how we can be happy knowing that someday we’ll be someone’s phenomenon. And maybe when we eventually stop breathing, someone will still utter our names with a smile when recalling these moments. This is what we live for.

1. I’m referring to Leni Riefenstahl and her work Olympia, which, in spite of being a product of Nazi propaganda, is still a reference point of showcasing a human body as a product, not of a regime/nation, but of, for instance, Nike shoes. I suggest checking Deutsche Welle documentary on this link.