modern friendship
to survive we are all tied up in each other
In July 1983, Linda Montano and Tehching Hsieh embarked on a collaborative performance piece: for one year they would be bound together by an eight-foot rope, unable to touch each other. They would go about their days, eating, sleeping, making art, irrevocably tied together and yet separated. At the end of summer of 1984, one whole year later, the seal between them “was still complete, intact, and unbroken.”
In an interview toward the last few months of the performance, Hsieh explained his inspiration for the piece: “To survive we are all tied up. We cannot go in life alone, without people. Because we are individual we each have this own idea of something we want to do. But we’re together. So we become each others’ cage. We struggle because everyone wants to feel freedom.”
He went on to remark, “We had a lot of fights and I don’t feel that is negative… This piece is about being like an animal, naked. We cannot hide our negative sides. We cannot be shy. It’s more than just honesty—we show our weakness.”
Bearable and unbearable closeness. I wonder if Hsieh and Montano went on after that year’s experiment, after the removal of their ‘bond’, feeling the sense of a phantom connection lingering between them for many years after. Perhaps the physical proximity transformed into a psychological one. Will the invisible rope always be there? I feel that way about some people: we witnessed each other at our weakest, angriest, saddest, deeply flawed, most heartbroken, sitting outside on the grass looking at the sky, listening to music, bumping shoulders on the bus, playing tennis and talking about our futures without realizing they were already arriving. That moment holds its own nostalgic geographical place in time.
Long term friendship is navigating this duality: we’re atomized, yet connected. We’re tethered together, but the path forward is deeply individual. Our lives will intersect meaningfully at least once. Then, its a small miracle to keep a friendship alive. People have diverging trajectories: they move, change jobs, pivot paths, have kids. I’ll meet your boyfriend. One day I’ll be at your wedding. I’ll read all the links you send me and send you the books I’m reading in return. You can stay over at mine; I’ll show you my version of San Francisco. We’ll go on long exhausting walks in the Presidio and listen to Strawberry Blond on repeat.
True connection is sometimes lost in the way we currently articulate our friendships: through instagram tags or other forms of signaling. It’s when you feel comprehended, truly understood, free in ways you weren’t before. As Hsieh says, We cannot hide. To be known is to be seen. You bring out a different side in yourself when you’re with that person. Some people make you more talkative, more secure, more experimental. In Winterson’s The Passion, Henri says this about love but I think it’s just as resonant of friendship: It is as though I wrote in a foreign language that I am suddenly able to read. Wordlessly, she explains me to myself. Like genius, she is ignorant of what she does.
My friendships in SF are completely different from the ones in college, or in high school. I have hyper-individual relationships now. I invest specifically into one person over a long period of time. I am fascinated with how your brain works and I want to understand what shape your thoughts take.
It’s striking to me how (unintuitively) I feel like I have so much more agency over my friendships post-college: some close friends came through direct messages on twitter, through substack, through work, through parties-I-almost-didn’t-go-to. My mindset these days is that if you admire or like someone (even from afar) you should probably just… talk to them? Which seems obvious, but it was a new muscle for me.
We do a great disservice in thinking about friendship in binaries. Either we’re intensely bonded or completely isolated. Best friends or strangers. Newer friendships are nascent and fragile, and longer things are infinitely durable. In some cases that’s true, and in others a false platitude. I’ve accepted that things can crumble in ways I can’t anticipate, also that new people can enter my life and still rearrange the wiring in my brain. The truth is somewhere in between: we can control who we choose to reciprocate and invest in, who we schedule time with and plan things around and support their work and remember their sibling’s names. Still, we’ll naturally ebb and flow into each other’s lives. The important part is choosing re-engagement and revival. Hua Hsu in Stay True: Friendship rests on the presumption of reciprocity, of drifting in and out of one another's lives, with occasional moments of wild intensity.
To survive we are all tied up in one another. The older I get the more starkly I feel this. Everything is more precious, everything is more fragile. I’ll invest in the room I’m in. I’ll paint the acrylic frames above my bed and try to make it a home I want to return to. I’ll devote myself to hyper-local communities even if I’m unsure where I’ll be in a year. I’ll invest in the love between us, even when there’s no guarantee of permanence. That’s the tax of living. That’s the cost for feeling any sort of aliveness or tenderness. There’s no insurance on your experience. No way to backstop the loss.
That’s truly also the only way to have deep connections with other humans. To be close requires going out on a limb and asking for togetherness, despite the potential of rejection, abandonment, or carelessness. All friendship is a bargain of invisible effort and patience and time. Can I call you, will you pick up? Did you like the book I gave you? Where are you right now? There is no closeness without friction. Closeness means we’ll change each other ways we can’t predict. I’m still getting used to both that lightness and that weight.
You might like some of my other essays on friendships:
I just got back from a 4 day trip to Oahu with A. Despite our stated aims for a ‘very relaxing vacation,’ our revealed preferences were telling. Some highlights: A 4 hour hike to Kuli Ou Ou ridge up into the clouds — it cuts through a cooling shaded most forest and ends on a stunning peak. Reading on the beach at 7am. The view of the ocean from Makapu lighthouse. The dense and lush forest of Manoa Falls. Eating ginger poke while watching the sunset by Tantalus Lookout. Renting and driving a car around the island (despite my fear of driving), the windward drive, putting on goggles and swimming around fish and corals at Lanikai beach.
I’m reading Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. I finished Dior’s Biography (thanks B!) Recent substacks I’ve really enjoyed are
by , by , The Amateur by , ’s newsletter, and manners and mystery by (who I met in IRL after we mutually read each others’ work for many months) I’ve given into my VC tendencies and am also reading The Generalist (sue me haha)I am going to Maggie Rogers’ show in November. I’m listening to Poom again nonstop. I like everything the color of cool baby pink. I like asymmetrical necklines and pearl earrings. I am eating dark chocolate covered macadamias and mung bean flavored Gyeongdan (sweet rice cake).
This gorgeous piece on friendship and what we owe to each other by Agnes Callard
I really enjoyed this piece, it had me reflect on the tenderness of being human and connecting with others. If I had a highlighter, and this was paper, I would highlight every line, write in between them. You made me think so deeply and lovingly at the relationships I've built, and I'm so grateful for that.
"I’ve accepted that things can crumble in ways I can’t anticipate, also that new people can enter my life and still rearrange the wiring in my brain."
this stays with me. thank you for this amazing piece nix. i really enjoyed it