That post the other day garnered a little more attention than expected and, I’m afraid, caused some pain to people I truly didn’t intend to cause pain to, so I think some clarification is in order.
One, it was a passing feeling that didn’t pass as quickly as I hoped it would but did, in fact, pass. Turns out I was coming down with a flu on top of all the other bodily damage I did over the weekend, and that can’t have helped. Also turns out that though my depression is being held at bay/controlled more effectively now than at any time in recent memory, it hasn’t actually gone away completely, something I need to keep in mind. I obviously felt strongly enough about what I knew, intellectually, to be a passing feeling that I felt I had to post about it, so I didn’t retract the post. But I do think it’s important to note that it reflected a (longer than anticipated, but still brief) moment in time, not a permanent state of mind.
Two, and perhaps more important, it was very explicitly not my intent to denigrate the very notion of Internet friendships, and if the post came across that way, I’m more sorry than I can say, because most of the important friendships I’ve formed over the last decade have been through the Internet, and I would never for a minute suggest that they are somehow less valid than friendships formed in more conventional ways. (I hesitate to even use the word conventional, because nowadays, the Internet is just as conventional a means of finding friends and lovers as anything else, really.) Sitting in that room on Saturday night, with some of the best friends, Internet or otherwise, that anyone could ask for, I knew that they were people who loved me and cared about me and “got” me; I just couldn’t feel it, not right at that moment. If I’d just gone to bed early and decompressed for a while, I don’t think the feeling would have even occurred to me. But there it was, and the fact that it was happening in a group of people who matter so much to me was what made it especially baffling, and troubling.
Maybe it’s too easy to say I’m over it now…but I’m over it now. It was a feeling that was real, and disconcerting, but it’s gone, and that’s all I’ll say about it. The subject of friendship in general, that’s something I hope/plan to continue talking about, because it’s kind of the great puzzle of my life in many ways (along with more mundane puzzles, like “how do they get those ships into bottles, anyway?”). But I’m afraid I’ve inadvertently made it sound like I don’t value the friends I’ve made through various music lists and through Twangfest in particular, and nothing, really, could be farther from the truth. (Just as a single example, I literally don’t know how I would have gotten through the last, say, seven or so years without my friend Marie, who has been as true and loyal a friend as anyone could ever ask for. And then there’s my husband, who I technically met in person before we started corresponding by e-mail, but who still started out as part of my Internet world, and I wouldn’t trade him for anything in the world—”real” or “virtual”— either. Okay, that’s two examples.)
So, enough about that for now. Onward to some musical stuff: I just recently bought a record by the traditional Aran Isles singer Lasairfhiona Ni Chonaola, and yeah, I admit that I bought it partly because I wanted to own a record by someone with a name as complex and beautiful as that (and learn to pronounce it, which I have), but it’s also one of the more wonderful records I’ve heard in the recent past. I can’t honestly say that my listening habits are tending back toward Celtic and mainstream country lately, because I’m actually listening to just as much indie-ish rock as I have for the last year or two, maybe slightly more. But somehow I’ve found a way to bring the country and Celtic stuff back into my frame of reference, and after volunteering at the local Irish fest a couple of weeks ago, I’ve really been in the mood for the Celtic stuff. So I’ve been on a teeny bit of a buying binge there, and so far I haven’t been disappointed: in addition to Lasairfhiona’s record, I picked up two by Cathie Ryan (one of many former singers for Cherish the Ladies) that I’m loving. Next up, I think I’m going to buy something by the Old Blind Dogs, whom I half-heard at the Irish Fest and was favorably impressed with. And after that? Irish lessons, for real this time.