Calling the edge-dwellers
24/11/13 09:59![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darkemeraldsThis is the best scene ever written for television. Was anyone else as bowled over by it as I was?
SHERLOCK: I've given further consideration to your rebuke regarding my capacity for "niceness."
JOAN: I didn't mean it as a rebuke. I was trying to have a conversation.
SHERLOCK: Either way, you have a point. There is, unquestionably, a certain social utility to being polite, to maintaining an awareness of other people's sensitivities, to exhibiting all the traits that might commonly be grouped under the heading "Nice."
JOAN: I think you'll be surprised how easy it is to earn that designation.
SHERLOCK: No. I am not a nice man. It's important that you understand that. It's going to save you a great deal of time and effort. There is not a warmer, kinder me waiting to be coaxed out into the light. I am acerbic. I can be cruel. It's who I am, right to the bottom. I'm neither proud of this nor ashamed of it. It simply is. And in my work, my nature has been an advantage far more often than it has been a hindrance. I'm not going to change.
JOAN: You have. You're not the same person I met a year and half ago. You're--
SHERLOCK: --good to you? Yeah, for the most part. I consider you to be exceptional, so I make an exceptional effort to accommodate you. But you must accept that for as long as you choose to be in my life, there will occasionally be fallout from my behavior. That must be a part of our understanding.
JOAN: No one can accept something like that forever.
SHERLOCK: "To thine own self," Watson.
And scene.
There have been quite a few well-meaning Joan Watsons in my own life over the years who accepted me as I was while rooting for me to become nicer. Some of them had letters after their names and billed my insurance by the hour. And I was fully on board the "cure me of being me" train for years.
What else could I do? I'm not a brilliant detective or an attractive and financially independent white male--things that allow all versions of Sherlock Holmes to withstand the consequences of being fundamentally--what's the word? Attachment-disordered? Spock-like? A wee bit sociopathic? Introverted? Poorly-socially-networked? A natural loner? An edge-dweller?
It's a strange minority position to be in. The scene emphasizes the strong belief among more connected humans that we edge-dwellers could join the majority if we just tried a little harder.
So we try, most of us, most of the time. Often our livelihood depends on it. If I'd been born a couple of generations earlier, the need to conform to a "marriageable" standard of nice-girl behavior would have been nearly a matter of life and death.
None of this is to disregard the advantages I do have in life--I have them, I make use of them, and I'm grateful for them. (As it happens, I think my combination of coldness and competence has just plain scared employers into keeping me on and paying me a salary all these years. And now I get to retire.)
Nor am I advocating for antisocial behavior. I'm not completely separate from the continent, and yes, the bell tolls for me, too. I abide by common please-and-thank-you standards, and what I care about, I care about deeply. I experience enjoyment and pleasure in non-evil things like laughter and food. I'm capable of love, albeit to a limited extent: I let things and people go much more easily than others do. I've tried not to, but I just don't care as much as I "should."
Jason Tracey, who wrote this episode of Elementary, has perfectly captured the tension between the edge-dweller and the more connected among us, and that's no small thing. But the scene goes a bit further by explicitly stating the edge-dweller's acceptance of himself and the consequences of his nature. Sherlock knows--and does not regret--that his nature is what makes him good at the singular thing he's really good at.
That's what made it revolutionary for me.
SHERLOCK: I've given further consideration to your rebuke regarding my capacity for "niceness."
JOAN: I didn't mean it as a rebuke. I was trying to have a conversation.
SHERLOCK: Either way, you have a point. There is, unquestionably, a certain social utility to being polite, to maintaining an awareness of other people's sensitivities, to exhibiting all the traits that might commonly be grouped under the heading "Nice."
JOAN: I think you'll be surprised how easy it is to earn that designation.
SHERLOCK: No. I am not a nice man. It's important that you understand that. It's going to save you a great deal of time and effort. There is not a warmer, kinder me waiting to be coaxed out into the light. I am acerbic. I can be cruel. It's who I am, right to the bottom. I'm neither proud of this nor ashamed of it. It simply is. And in my work, my nature has been an advantage far more often than it has been a hindrance. I'm not going to change.
JOAN: You have. You're not the same person I met a year and half ago. You're--
SHERLOCK: --good to you? Yeah, for the most part. I consider you to be exceptional, so I make an exceptional effort to accommodate you. But you must accept that for as long as you choose to be in my life, there will occasionally be fallout from my behavior. That must be a part of our understanding.
JOAN: No one can accept something like that forever.
SHERLOCK: "To thine own self," Watson.
And scene.
There have been quite a few well-meaning Joan Watsons in my own life over the years who accepted me as I was while rooting for me to become nicer. Some of them had letters after their names and billed my insurance by the hour. And I was fully on board the "cure me of being me" train for years.
What else could I do? I'm not a brilliant detective or an attractive and financially independent white male--things that allow all versions of Sherlock Holmes to withstand the consequences of being fundamentally--what's the word? Attachment-disordered? Spock-like? A wee bit sociopathic? Introverted? Poorly-socially-networked? A natural loner? An edge-dweller?
It's a strange minority position to be in. The scene emphasizes the strong belief among more connected humans that we edge-dwellers could join the majority if we just tried a little harder.
So we try, most of us, most of the time. Often our livelihood depends on it. If I'd been born a couple of generations earlier, the need to conform to a "marriageable" standard of nice-girl behavior would have been nearly a matter of life and death.
None of this is to disregard the advantages I do have in life--I have them, I make use of them, and I'm grateful for them. (As it happens, I think my combination of coldness and competence has just plain scared employers into keeping me on and paying me a salary all these years. And now I get to retire.)
Nor am I advocating for antisocial behavior. I'm not completely separate from the continent, and yes, the bell tolls for me, too. I abide by common please-and-thank-you standards, and what I care about, I care about deeply. I experience enjoyment and pleasure in non-evil things like laughter and food. I'm capable of love, albeit to a limited extent: I let things and people go much more easily than others do. I've tried not to, but I just don't care as much as I "should."
Jason Tracey, who wrote this episode of Elementary, has perfectly captured the tension between the edge-dweller and the more connected among us, and that's no small thing. But the scene goes a bit further by explicitly stating the edge-dweller's acceptance of himself and the consequences of his nature. Sherlock knows--and does not regret--that his nature is what makes him good at the singular thing he's really good at.
That's what made it revolutionary for me.
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(no subject)
30/11/13 04:15 (UTC)Here is something that I've never forgotten from that year. I was having lunch with my old friend Janet-- you probably don't remember, but you met her once, we went to see Michael Thompson's hideously awful one-man play together and then for beer and pizza after-- but anyway, I was trying to explain to Janet what had gone wrong and at one point I mentioned that my ex had hated the home library and considered it 'clutter.' And Janet just EXPLODED with exasperation. "For God's sake! Why did she even marry you then? How in the hell did she not know you come with books?! *I* know you come with books! That's who you ARE!"
It seems like such a petty little thing. But it's always stuck with me. I loved her so much for being so exasperated over it, because this was so OBVIOUS to her. From that point on, that was the yardstick: My real friends know who I am. I'm anti-social, I loathe crowds, I like shitty movies and old comics and quirky weird pieces of pop culture, I disappear into my own head often and without warning, and I come with books. The people in my life who are still in it know all of that and either are that way themselves or don't mind that I am.
I eventually met a woman who found it all endearing and I married her. And I didn't have to adjust my personality for her at all, though I behave a little better towards Julie than I do to a total stranger. But it's not WORK.
I obsessed about it a lot when I was younger, probably because of my parents who were Popular in high school and college and never quite reconciled themselves to having somehow birthed me, who was the kind of kid they loathed when they were kids themselves. I suppose it marked me some, but I got over it. As I get older I am less and less interested in putting up a front just in case people are offended by who I really am. I have enough people who know the truth and hang around anyway, and those people are generally pleasanter and more interesting. It pleases me that we are still in touch after all these years, and I've never minded your edge-ness in the least. Personally, I think like calls to like and that's all there is to it.
(no subject)
1/12/13 20:08 (UTC)It's interesting to me that in any context you might have ever thought acknowledgment of your book-geek-ishness (shorthand--forgive me) "a petty little thing", but I understand how easy it is to lose perspective. Speaking for myself as an introvert, I depend on those rare few friends to be my mirror. Janet's exasperation must have been your mirror, and a particularly clear one, and that's why that petty-little-thing of a moment meant so much.
I ran across this infographic yesterday, showing (ostensibly) how psychotherapy views people. To my eye it was an excellent explanation for why I quit psychotherapy. It's altogether too easy to point to certain slices of that pie and say, "Those people need fixing!" but there was a time not too long ago when (for instance) homosexuality was officially a disorder, too. Do we all need fixing? Should we all be in that upper-right-hand slice that says "Happy-happy-joy-joy angels sing and we go to heaven"? (And, perhaps more profoundly, is there some uniform core self or natural state of being that we would all have in common if we could strip away the defenses? Scary thought.)
Self-acceptance is very powerful, but if your parents and your society didn't quite accept you, then you, like me, spent a lot of energy over the years either fighting your niche or fighting for it. And that was energy that might otherwise have gone into much more interesting and creative work.
Like does indeed call to like. Those of us around the edges might have to call a little louder, or shine a little brighter, but we know the code. We can hear each other and spot the distant beacon. Thanks for being here!