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Jun. 21st, 2020 09:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sebastienneDear Dreamwidth,
You've been an important part of my life for a very long time, and Livejournal for even longer before that.
Seventeen years - that's half my life. My entire adult life.
You are part of my 1990s dream for what the internet could be - people connecting worldwide based on shared interests and values, in a facilitative creative space that isn't mediated by money or advertising. Primarily text-based (which used to be about Freedom from the Tyranny of Society's Gaze, to Create Ourselves as we Wish to be Seen, and these days is more about accessibility).
Now I spend most of my online time on Facebook (for socialising), Twitter (for politics), or Tumblr (for fandom).
But lockdown has crystalised how they're all, for me, ersatz. The sense of connection they give is absolutely real - but it's so attenuated compared to what can happen in person, over video, by phone, even by synchronous text messaging.
I feel like I'm becoming realer, not through creating myself an online persona which Perfectly Reflects My True Self, but through a real experiential being with other people. And I hate articulating this because I feel as if I sound like one of those tedious people saying "put your phones down and talk to each other!! godd!!" -- as if my phone isn't FULL of all the people I love the most in the world.
It feels like progress towards believing that I don't just have value through being the Cleverest or the Kindest or the Most Loyal or the Most Radically Accepting. That I don't have to have all the answers, to anything. Maybe I have value through just being.
Today, I am mostly going to be Being in the sea. (Which I'm trying to understand in terms of having intimacy with the natural world - see the 'Jade Mars' circle at https://www.instagram.com/farandpride/ for a (text on pictures, auto-scrolling, ugh) fascinating exploration of 'more-than-human' intimacy, and how it differs from my previous objectifying-colonising framing of 'being outside is Good for my Mental Health and I should Access This Benefit daily'.)
"sebastienne", as the name of this journal founded in 2003 comes from one part of the three-part characterisation I made of myself as a teenager - "Sebastienne, Alia, and the great unnamèd id".
Sebastienne was the glam rock part - artifice, decadence, glitter and velvet and steel. Determined, decisive, angry-fragile glamour.
Alia was the hippy part - nurturance, growth, nature, love and life. Gentle & bending yet grounded & strong.
They fit together like the face-tattoo in Hedwig, syncretic opposites, both tending towards something magnificent, in creative contrast with each other and destructive contrast with the id (which was where I put all the parts of myself I didn't like).
The names feel too femme-coded now. Sebastienne has long been in the ascendant through online usernames and feminist cabaret stagenames. It all smells of adolescent dramatisation.
But still, I'm thinking of all of those parts of me today. Integrating opposites, living paradoxes, preferring questions to answers.
Happy Solstice, Dreamwidth.
You've been an important part of my life for a very long time, and Livejournal for even longer before that.
Seventeen years - that's half my life. My entire adult life.
You are part of my 1990s dream for what the internet could be - people connecting worldwide based on shared interests and values, in a facilitative creative space that isn't mediated by money or advertising. Primarily text-based (which used to be about Freedom from the Tyranny of Society's Gaze, to Create Ourselves as we Wish to be Seen, and these days is more about accessibility).
Now I spend most of my online time on Facebook (for socialising), Twitter (for politics), or Tumblr (for fandom).
But lockdown has crystalised how they're all, for me, ersatz. The sense of connection they give is absolutely real - but it's so attenuated compared to what can happen in person, over video, by phone, even by synchronous text messaging.
I feel like I'm becoming realer, not through creating myself an online persona which Perfectly Reflects My True Self, but through a real experiential being with other people. And I hate articulating this because I feel as if I sound like one of those tedious people saying "put your phones down and talk to each other!! godd!!" -- as if my phone isn't FULL of all the people I love the most in the world.
It feels like progress towards believing that I don't just have value through being the Cleverest or the Kindest or the Most Loyal or the Most Radically Accepting. That I don't have to have all the answers, to anything. Maybe I have value through just being.
Today, I am mostly going to be Being in the sea. (Which I'm trying to understand in terms of having intimacy with the natural world - see the 'Jade Mars' circle at https://www.instagram.com/farandpride/ for a (text on pictures, auto-scrolling, ugh) fascinating exploration of 'more-than-human' intimacy, and how it differs from my previous objectifying-colonising framing of 'being outside is Good for my Mental Health and I should Access This Benefit daily'.)
"sebastienne", as the name of this journal founded in 2003 comes from one part of the three-part characterisation I made of myself as a teenager - "Sebastienne, Alia, and the great unnamèd id".
Sebastienne was the glam rock part - artifice, decadence, glitter and velvet and steel. Determined, decisive, angry-fragile glamour.
Alia was the hippy part - nurturance, growth, nature, love and life. Gentle & bending yet grounded & strong.
They fit together like the face-tattoo in Hedwig, syncretic opposites, both tending towards something magnificent, in creative contrast with each other and destructive contrast with the id (which was where I put all the parts of myself I didn't like).
The names feel too femme-coded now. Sebastienne has long been in the ascendant through online usernames and feminist cabaret stagenames. It all smells of adolescent dramatisation.
But still, I'm thinking of all of those parts of me today. Integrating opposites, living paradoxes, preferring questions to answers.
Happy Solstice, Dreamwidth.