Midnight City

I love electronic music. Electronic and folk are probably my two favorite genres, and when running or relaxing a nice electronic beat is wonderful. One of my favorite electronic artist is m83. In this sense favorite is a bit of an understatement…yeah.

It also happens to be a very warm Summer this year. I am a grad student which means as long as I get my work done, I can generally set my own hours. Because of the heat I change the time I go into work from 7:30 to 10. This way I usually get done with work around 8 pm just as the day is starting to cool down. The nights have become my world and I kind of love it. At least for the Summer.

Doing the running that I do I also end up running a lot at night. It is beautiful, cool, and thanks to pokemon go there are usually a bunch of people still up in the parks. As I run by or through these parks it is very interesting to see. Many people are there, and I’m sure many friendships are made, but most of what I have seen are people in little groups chatting softly, or people not talking at ll. Black shadows milling through the park. Gently travelling from place to place, mostly indifferent to other people and to me.

For some reason I think this space is kind of analogous to the human mind. Many human minds are often close together, but the amount of communication that goes on between them beyond the casual exchanging of niceties is pretty small. I kind of think that is the basis of human intimacy. The exchange of emotion between two people that is more concerned with honestly and less about politeness.

I don’t really have anybody, a friend, family member, or significant other that I am really intimate with in that sense. This means I have a lot of conversations with myself, in my head about the things I am thinking and feeling. For some reason the United States presidential election has been on my mind. It could because my family is pretty fanatical about politics, or that not a day or two can go by without something crazy happening in the political realm. Sometimes it just feels like the presidential campaign is more bipolar than I am, someone needs to get them some medication!!!

But whether it is politics or interpersonal communication, whether it is people milling about in a park or family members barely speaking to each other except for on holidays, it just struck me that sometimes cognizance is a very lonely place. To identify one’s ego seems to also require accepting there is a gap between you and another person, that you will in some ways always be a little bit alone inside your own head. This means I spend a lot of time conversing with myself. Kind of like I am in my own little midnight city.