Full Stomach, but Starved for Conversation

Before I start in on this I’m going to give fair warning that this “essay” is not my standard fare. What you’ll read is really just a lot of opinion, nostalgia, and metaphysics. So if that’s not your bag, exit now and wait for my next theo-philosophical argument to surface (which shouldn’t be too long in coming).

This is essentially just me rambling, so it isn’t worth reading at all, unless you care what I think about when you see me out driving my car alone.

There is a question that has plagued me of late—the subject of many late night drives, early morning walks, and extended talks.

What is home?

This question was really a problem for me for a long time I think because I was asking it wrong. As I began to leave my parent’s house for extended periods of time and to really expand my concept of the world, I remember wondering about how I defined home spatially. I distinctly recall feeling “homesick” for the folks and landscape of Boston after returning to Jacksonville from there a few years ago and being a little bit confused about how that worked out. Along with Cambridge (I can still smell the T) , Ortega, Deerwood, and Marsh Landing, my concept of the physical home also includes St. Augustine (late nights at A1A, walking down St. George’s at midnight, surfing The Inlet, The Pier, and Matanzas all in the same day), Sewanee (Crazy Sewanee nights, campsite #6, the Lodge), the Caribbean (Getting tipsy at the Tipsy Seagull, Jurassic Park), and Commache Cove (Drinking beer while rigging baits, making fun of “yachtsmen,” and being the youngest mate on the dock). When I think of home in the context of a physical place there are a thousand images and memories from a hundred places that come rushing across my mind in a castrophany so immense that it can be heard far away in space, and I realize that the question isn’t “Where is home?”

So is the question “Who?” I spent considerable time tossing this around, and pretty much ran into the same problem as “where.” I also realized that if home is a place or group of people, then it is an extremely fluid concept, subject to the whims of death and natural disaster. If home is people, then you will know us by the trail of dead…and to me, home should be more immutable: the rock to which any of us might turn when we face hurricanes and seek anchor. And with “Who” there is also the problem of people, and that we, despite our most valiant efforts, are characteristically fallible. We fuck up, readily and consistently, and we let one another down. I know myself as a human well enough to not have any desire to put the burden of my home concept on the shoulders of people. I will say, however, that I believe that this has become the most prevalent home-concept for my generation. That’s why there’s such thing as Emo music (which I’m not condemning, I’m actually listening to The Honorary Title right now), because we look to other people to be the pillars of our homes, and put far too much trust in one another as individuals than is fair. Then, upon the given (and usually forgivable if we’re all being honest here) failure of said pillars, our entire concept of home is shattered, battered, and broken.

This brings me to my next question. How does Home, whatever the hell that is, contribute to our concept of self? Is it self that defines home, or home that defines self? Kind of a nature/nurture debate for some of you, I’m sure, but I’m going to take the easy way out and say that it is a combination of both (big surprise…the moderate viewpoint coming from me). I think those things that contribute to our concept of home are the things or people or whatever that have a profound effect on us, but only because we embrace them so dearly. Even the negatives. For many years my idea of home in the context of family was marked by a great anger on my part, but it was still home, and I still held to it, if only with the determination that my own home in the future would never resemble my present. I would go so far as to say that not only are our concepts of home and self indelibly bound, but they are the same thing. I may work on qualifying this more philosophically later, but my thought is that self-actualization is feeling at home.

So home, as a philosophical concept is what? Contentment? Yeah, that’s what I’d say, and since this is completely my opinion, and completely based on my experience, I’m not going to qualify that.

Is home temporal? I fairly quickly dismissed this notion. Home as I understand it certainly isn’t restricted to a certain “when,” like my early childhood or high school or something, but I will concede that self-actualization (feeling home) can be achieved by some sort of revisitation to past time periods. For instance, I’m feeling somewhat self-actualized at the moment because the song that just came on reminds me distinctly of the time that I took a former girlfriend and her little sister to Orlando. It was a beautiful day, and some of its beauty was due to the time in my life, so I’ll take that Home can be partially “when,” but to limit it to reflections of the past prevents expansion of the concept any further. Though I would like for Home to be somewhat static, I don’t think it should be completely unable to broaden.

So if home is neither a place, nor a person, nor a time, then what is it? If it both defines and is defined by self, what role does it play in life?

To me, home is a song. Or a collection of songs (written and recorded both between 1995 & 1997 and at other times before and after). In every song that I have stored on that wonderful piece of consumerism in a shiny metal-and-plastic case there is a face, a place, and a hell of a lot of time that I revisit. Does this idea frighten anyone; that I define myself by the music that I listen to? Not in the way that punk kids do, but in the sense that by way of music I can taste a little piece of myself and reach that self-actualization spoken of before? I’ve got Belle & Sebastian on right now, and I’m totally back driving home from track practice on a rainy day, in a fight with my mom about college. But it is more intense than even the memories…its that I think that, for me at least, the lack of music (a soundtrack for our lives) would make me unable to ever really feel home—it is that vital of a part of myself. Which recalls again what I said a little bit ago about home and self being analogous and even synonymous. People who know me well often joke that I sum life up in quotes from songs (and some of you can even name the bands that I most commonly use), and I guess that its true; I think of life as a song, and when I am frustrated at my inability to understand something, I bury myself in music, and let it understand for me.

So thanks, those of you who have gotten this far, for reading probably one of the most disjointed and pointless things that I’ve ever written (does this thing even have a thesis?). Go forth and spend some time alone. Like, a few years. Figure out your self. Find your home.

-Spencer-

Rock on my friends.