Missing Chunks

There's one quality tying together my fragmented identities. As an entrepreneur, as an artist (writer and musician), and as a yogi, nothing gets me more excited than to spot something missing in the world. I feel compelled to fill it, if possible. At such moments, I feel called.

This Slog is that. I fill gaps here. Mysteries resolved, errant strands connected, fallacies revealed and dispelled. Many note the eccentric skew of my viewpoints, but they view through the wrong end of the tube. I'm finding fresh explanations, and fresh explanations feel ghostly. They're slippery and eery, and reside far outside our comfort zones. What's comfortable? Ignorance and conformity! But I can't let a status quo sit undisturbed. It's not my nature.

By filling chasms, I become chasm. Inhabiting blind spots, I disappear. While I amiably chatter away, dissuading trepidation and normalizing epiphany, my form dissolves. I'm playing for the other team, or so it seems, in whichever game people might be playing.

I don't say the usual things people say in a world where billions say the same 20 things over and over. I do have conventional thoughts, but I don't feel compelled to offer them, lacking any compulsion to be the Guy saying the Thing; to stick my face into a cut-out and holler "Woah, look at me! I'm that guy! Now it's me saying it!"

No, I pitch in the other stuff. The missing stuff. The unsaid. But as I do so, the stuff remains missing...and I join it! Tail wagged, I fade, though I couldn't feel more vibrantly right here.

The goal was never to be recognized as The Guy Who Supplies Missing Pieces. It's not about me. I work like an ant, eagerly offering sand grains, one after another. Ideally, those efforts would offer people a sense of fullness. Yelpers complaining ignorantly about the greasiness of a Sichuan restaurant might download my cheap, fun-to-use app and quickly get up to speed re: eating in any sort of restaurant. Slog readers behold credible new takes on vexing mysteries. These, along with other efforts (Chowhound being a monumental exception), failed. I'm not embittered, just confused.

But I've had an epiphany: I'm standing on an enormous empty landmass watching a small iceberg crowded with innumerable people drifting away. And, to them, I'm drifting (insofar as they notice). And neither framing, of course, is "right".

So allow me to address my childhood self, who embarked on this experiment. He's sent me many useful notes and reminders (catalogued here), and now I'll toss one back at him, reporting results. Here goes:

Associating oneself with missing chunks doesn't fill gaps, no matter how insightful or ingenious the effort. On the contrary, it makes you a missing chunk! Illuminating the invisible leaves you invisible.

But, most of all: severing from preposterous drama leaves you offstage.

If you're sincere enough to not be merely playing an offstage character as a conceit, congrats for your sincerity, but it means you've vanished. The show happens on-stage, buddy. And you can't separate from it without appearing to separate from it.