Share or Bust.
G: Hello, I’m G, and I’m not a sociopath. Although, I suspect I’m way closer to that label on the personality type spectrum than most.
While M gets accused of feeling too much, I am plagued with indictments that I am inferior in the touchy-feely department. Loved ones have accused me of being “cold” and “a little jerk.” My mom once exasperatedly asked: “do you care about anything?” And most recently, on my 29th birthday, M’s mom sent me my horoscope:
Your birthday chart is urging you to be more open about your feelings, especially if you are the sort of Taurus who sees showing emotion as a weakness. You don’t have to shout and scream but you do have to be more expressive. It will benefit you.
These consistent accusations make me feel quite crumby, and so I know I can, and do, feel. Like, I know I’m not dead inside. Nevertheless, the pressure to “be more expressive” mostly makes me anxious and does anything but motivate me to share my feelings. Ideologically, I am aligned with the “express yourself” cause, yet personally, I’m an oyster.
M: Hi, I’m M, and I’m an emotional clusterfuck. That is to say, I feel a lot.
If I could hide my feelings better or, at least, control your perception of them, maybe they wouldn’t be so cumbersome to the both of us. Being a thinly veiled, highly feeling creature is a struggle. Even when I’m trying to hide my feelings, they kind of sneak out there. I mean, I’m a functional member of society. But it’s hard work, keeping my feelings buttoned down.
A few years ago I was working a desk job when my outwardly sunny boss turned her swivel chair to face mine and asked in a sing-song voice, “so, are you having fun?” My face contorted into a screaming frown.
Fun? I’m doing data entry. I thought I was going to be an actor. Then I had a breakdown. Then I got a masters. I still can’t operate this printer. Your husband thinks I’m an idiot. The office cat peed on my files. Lindsay cried at her desk this morning.
I turned my back and pretended to fish around for something in my knapsack, while my face reorganized itself. Meanwhile, she stared at my back, wondering why I was being such a fucking freak. Anyone else could fake glee in that moment, so why couldn’t I? Maybe I should’ve just been honest with her. But how could I tell my boss that I was miserable? And that a big part of it was the job? I needed the job.
Look, my point is: feelings are loaded. They just are. They’re uncomfortable and they’re imposing and they’re often considered impolite. I find it cathartic to talk about feelings but others find it oppressive. So, I try to keep my mouth shut about my feelings, for my own sake and for yours (tick, tick tick…).
G: The two of us are lovers, best friends, and roommates. We are lucky to have each other. And our diametrically opposed affective styles, although sometimes jarring pieces of our relationship, contribute to a rich vantage point from which we undertake this project.
We share everything, feelings included, whether we enjoy it or not.
PHEELINGS, though, is more than an opportunity to share; it’s an incubator. We deem feelings worthy of critical thought and investment. And so, this collaboration is our way to affectively engage with our experiences, our networks, our issues, and each other, as well as to keep our feelings supported and well stocked.
Our preferred signifier - PHEELINGS - encapsulates our mission: to think about, with, for, and because of our feelings. We join the present cohort of affect aliens whose hard work is directed towards legitimizing feelings as useful and trustworthy knowledges. There’s an infinite array of battles being waged within the affective universe, but we are particularly plugged in to the feminist imperative to destroy the disparaging stereotype of the emotional (and by nonsensical extension: ineffective, un-hinged, irresponsible, and usually female…) human, which is always inevitably foiled by the rational (and stoic, productive, precise, and usually male…) human.
To feel is to live. There is magic that happens somewhere between our bodies, our minds, and our souls - chemical and ethereal reactions that feed our appetite for tomorrow. To ignore this complicated plane of our sentient existence is extremely stupid. We cannot will our feelings away, and in attempts to ignore them, we ultimately deny ourselves the practice we need to interpret them. Everyone is oozing with feelings, and so an emotional lack is not the problem we are working against, but rather, methods of affectual engagement are what concern us. The stoic is a performance artist, not a rational role model - let’s not get that twisted! In order to feel better, we believe, we must FEEL better.
Throughout the course of PHEELINGS we will dive deep into the distinction between feelings, affects, and thoughts. We will make up words and coin new moods. We will fuss over experiences and vigorously interpret them. We will push up hard against the forces that try to eliminate the space and resources required for us and for others to feel. And we’ll do it once a week.
For the straight-laced readers who need a nut-shell statement (or a thesis if you’re one of those…) to understand what the fuck PHEELINGS is all about, then here it is: feelings are never wrong. Their very existence is proof of their relevance - their correctness if you will - to our lives. We are agnostics who believe our feelings are the closest that we can get to divine intervention. We don’t construct our feelings; they construct us, and so to argue with them is to misunderstand their essence.
So, for starters, we affirm every feeling. Then, and hopefully, PHEELINGS will provide useful ideas about where to go from there. Here’s a quick example, straight from the desk of M’s ninety-two-year-old grandmother - a fierce proponent of meditation and purposeful breathing. As her ninety-third birthday is just around the corner, I’d say there’s something in her methods worth checking out.
