Of Orchestras and Pathology

My initial response to the comment on my last post is to say, petulantly, that yes, an orchestra is better than an ensemble because there are more people playing. And if "extreme relationality" is the sort of pathology that the term sounds like, I want it. Being involved with a number of people does make one a more complex person.

I don't intend to discount the value of having a select number of particularly close friends, and developing those relationships over time. That's exactly what I'm missing: relationships that could have been more fully developed. But if I were given the choice of having either A: a small group of close friends, or B: a slightly larger group of close friends, with another ring of friends slightly less close, and another ring of friends slightly less close than that, I would not hesitate to choose B. There is a limit to the relationships one can earnestly commit to, but I am interested in being always at that limit, and nudging it back at all times. I enjoy my time to myself, mind you, but that is another matter.

If I were to go back to that music metaphor, I would say that if you have an orchestra, you can pare it down to a select group when necessary, but if you only have a small group, you can't just grow an instant-orchestra. We could even get extravagant with our metaphor here and say we'd like a piano concerto, where one instrument carries the theme, but couldn't do so without all the others.

Who am I when I'm alone? Well, who is alone? Who is not either receiving communication from an absent other, via music, literature, photo, video, or another form of art? Or perhaps they are themselves communicating to an absent other, as I am now. [No, I wouldn't classify these as the most full types of relationships, but they are relationships]. And there is God, the eternal point of reference. Perhaps it is cheap to invoke the divine in debate. Oh well. But I could say that when I am alone, I am volcanic potential; I am churning waters. I may boil and empty myself into nothingness, or I may surge onto another, and be struck by their own overflow in turns.