Freaks & Geeks

Today a colleague from SFSU came to campus to deliver our annual endowed lecture, which was on the topic of an 18th-century African-American/Native American whaler/trader/entepreneur who was able to live a crazily successful, independent and free life, despite the odds.  He was rich!  He traveled all over the place!  He did whatever the fuck he pleased (more or less).  He was one of those people whose individual story is just now being uncovered, and it goes against the grain of "our" cultural assumptions about what life was like for people of color back in the day.  It fascinates me that one person's story can effectively disrupt--though not necessarily discount--the narrative of an entire group in an interesting--though not always satisfying--way.  The paradox of the outlier fascinates me:  he or she who doesn't fit with anything, who sticks up like the proverbial nail, and who, if they survive into adulthood, is used to the hammer.  I know this feeling a little, and know more than a few people who live/have lived/lived this class of feeling.  What strikes me today: it depends how you look at it (your outlier-ism), and how much strength you have.  Por ejemplo, I can say that I've known about six true outliers in my life: one of them shot himself at 40, one is currently coming out of (I hope) an addiction to meth, three seem to be fine, and one is my husband (my current case study).  All six have been to the brink of sanity in self-doubt, all six were bullied/abused mercilessly (usually by members of their own family),  all six are/have been/were on psychotropic medication, all six have either considered or committed suicide.  WHAT?

This is all the bad stuff:  aren't we just talking about the mentally ill, here?  No.    Each is an amazing, amazingly different person who has been blowing people away with their creativity since birth.  All make things: words, pictures, concepts, sometimes money.  All are unusually funny.  All are perceptive.  All tend to attract fans.  All are polarizing. 

These are the people who seem to live outside time, convention, etc., and reinterpret it, navigate it, in ways that others only get much later.  It's a narrow, magnificent, almost magic path.  It's the low-percentage shot that makes it: the needle threaded, with flava.  The elegance, the ease is what's so hard to watch, and so impossible not to.

Which leads me to the problem:  others get jealous (or something) and want to not just destroy, but annihilate these people.   I've seen this over and over.  How does the outlier triumph...especially over the long haul, when he or she is mostly alone (as these people tend to be, literally or figuratively), and often under siege?   I don't know.  There is something to be said for knowing how to lie low and blend in.  One of my wacky friends figured this out early, even took it to an extreme (which annoyed me).

I've been talking a lot in my rhetoric class about Martha Stewart's weird love for her drone (don't ask). Whatever you think of her, she is an outlier (art): but her relentless drive for more, more, more seems to have eclipsed this in a really tacky way.  Bob Dylan, another nut (who should have listened more to his own advice, IMHO) once wrote, "To live outside the law,  you must be honest."  Martha, you seem to have started to believe your own bullshit, which I suppose is one of the pitfalls of constant loneliness.

I was going to attempt a witty dismount here, which would go something like: friends, honesty, ethics, find the right Rx,  try not to poop in the temple, etc., but then my stomach started growling for Taco Bell and this is already way too long for a Friday read, so....if you had any advice for the lonely weird, what would it be?