west uptowner

you have to practice to be a person, originally uploaded by trevorsc.

When we were in Medellin, Colombia last month I met Bea's friend Marie Elena. She claims that she was once "the greatest smoker in all of the Americas." She spoke of the patience and conscious effort required to live with people. "You have to practice to be a person," she said.

For me, this rang true because I always feel the tension between being sociable and engaging with the people I know and / or love, and engaging with books, ideas, the web, games -- more solitary persuits. In Colombia it could easily mean many other things: how hard it is to be good to other people in a place where greed and strength seem to be the quickest ways to securing your livelihood. But in Colombia I find people who are friends stay friends, through their personal fuckups and fights, far more faithfully than here in Toronto.

Strange that I heard this in Colombia, and then went to work on a play ("Revolutions in Therapy" by Nadia Ross and Jacob Wren) in which this same idea is expressed. Maybe its part of the Zeitgeist for 2005.

# posted by trev @ 1:31 p.m.