Aloha, Is It Me You're Looking For?
We all want to be noticed, but what do you do if you're invisible?
Note: Don’t like reading? The Podcast audio is at the end of the story.🫡
Big pulsing eye in the ink-black void. This is the sun and Sun sees all.
Sun sees me.
There is no hiding from it, no sprinting away from the radiant lick of its hot love as it unfurls upon our earth. It springs triumphantly from behind the curvature of our mornings to chase away Moon, flaring and crying out: “Beat it, you Lunar-tic! Make way for the ol’ solar stomper!” Moon slinks and sinks away—following some ancient script as it has from that very first table read—leaving Sol to trample its morning mosaic of oranges, yellows, and reds upon humanity’s canvas.
Seconds dribble their sand.
Sun seeks and seeps into the dark corners of our secret stashes, the nooks of our nerves, the naked skin of our beings.
“I see you,” it croons, slithering on to greet each person in turn. “I see all the rough edges of you.”
All seeing. All knowing. All burning1. It is the sun, and Sun sees me.
[sigh]
“Oh Sun, why don’t people notice me fully, as you do? Is this the true paradox of visibility? To be looked at in life but never truly seen?”
[sigh]
It’s a puzzle for the ages. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve stood at a food counter, or at a bar, and just not been served. Not been seen or registered by human eyes, despite being fully present. I’ll watch as everyone around me is noticed and catered to while I’ll stand there, quiet, invisible, and ignored. It makes me wonder. Oooh, and it makes me wonder.
Am I simply a glitch in their Matrix—a dead pixel on their screen they’ve learned to tune out? How can they not see me? I’m literally the only person here2.
Sometimes, they’ll scan the storefront for customers, glossing over my presence entirely3, before nipping out back for a quick ciggie or whatever. “Oh, sorry,” they’ll say upon their return, “I didn’t see you there.” Those words are such a bummer. Shhhh! Hear that? That’s the gentle drip of a non-verbal introvert collecting tears into the mason jar of her soul.
Perhaps what I have just described has happened to you—does happen to you—and if so, I just wanted to take this opportunity to say two things on the subject of unintended human invisibility.
100% Effortless Visible Invisibilityis the superpower Marvel never talks about, and,Screw being seen. Let your work do all the talking. Let it be the lighthouse that guides blind ships to the shore of you.
Some people sparkle like jewels or glint like shiny diamonds upon the sidewalk of existence. It’ll really rip your knitting to observe them raging in the light; in the orgasmic ecstasy of being seen without even trying. It’ll be tempting to look at that and think you want that too, as though being seen is the validation we are put on this earth to find. You saw me, I exist, I matter. But what are you being seen for? Are you being noticed for the right reasons? Who is controlling the spotlight?
This is not to say I begrudge those who are easily seen and shot to the moon to swim in Olympic-sized pools of adulation without ever having donned a space helmet. But I recognize the chances of that happening to me are pretty slim, and I’ve had my space helmet ready since I was a child. But it’s okay. Space helmets last forever, and I have something those Easyseens™ don’t have: 100% Effortless Visible Invisibility. I blend in like the right amount of salt to a soup and I make my world taste better for it. And before you say bullshit, let me double down.
If you’re frequently never seen despite being there, you have been bestowed with the gift and power to observe freely, and by observing to gather life in giant, privately accessible baskets of what’s called “Source Material.”
Conversations, mannerisms, colors, sounds, arguments, smells—whatever. You can just stand there and soak it all in. You’re basically a life spy. A regular James “got your nose, got your wallet” Bond and that’s a skill. A work skill. A creative skill. With it—your invisible cloak of invisible visibility—you can rob this blind world of all its stories and no one will ever be able to remember your thieving face.
She might have had brown hair, I dunno?
Make it your goal to be noticed for something you’ve made or created, rather than being noticed for simply being in a room. We are not on this earth for some arbitrary roll call. We don’t just exist to say “Present!” and move on. Surely we are here to do something that makes our presence mean something after we are gone? So do that.
Remember: People are terrible at seeing other people. They suck at it. They are preoccupied and scared little sailors aboard Captainless boats floating in a terrible fog, desperate to get to some familiar shore. Let your work be the lighthouse that guides them away from the rocks of a superficial connection and to a real relationship with your art.
It’s okay to want to be noticed or to have that desire. I get it. I want it some days, too. We all yearn for that validation but surely not if the price of that validation is questioning our own identity, or by equating worth with the visibility of our bodies and how we occupy physical space? I am me! See me!
No. The real space we want to shoot our rockets to—for it is the most valuable real estate to occupy—is in their brains. Make something they’ll remember long after they’ve seen it, good or bad. Face blindness is a thing, but art or music or writing that sets hearts trembling or elicits a blood response is something they’ll never forget. Keep at it.
Oh, and one more thing: Stop looking at not being seen as a failure. If they didn’t notice that you wore that Hawaiian shirt on Zoom for 264 days that’s on them, not you. Instead of hating yourself and your stupid invisible visibility shirt, simply say “Well, I guess that didn’t work,” and move on to the next thing. They can’t possibly hurt you by not seeing you. Not if you’re doing the work. Not with the sun on your side.
“I always see you,” Sun says. “You exist. You are seen. Don’t believe me? Here, have a shadow.”
Yours in tiny thought,
Janeen
This week’s amends…
Longread of the week:
As she plunged, the three-seat bench into which she was belted spun like the winged seed of a maple tree toward the jungle canopy. “From above, the treetops resembled heads of broccoli,” Dr. Diller recalled. She then blacked out, only to regain consciousness — alone, under the bench, in a torn minidress — on Christmas morning. She had fallen some 10,000 feet, nearly two miles. Her row of seats is thought to have landed in dense foliage, cushioning the impact. Juliane was the sole survivor of the crash.
This story is so nuts. A teenager at the time, she survived for 11 days in the jungle after LANSA Flight 508 was hit by lightning. This year is the 50th anniversary of that crash, which is the deadliest lightning-strike disaster in aviation history. But it’s more than a story about surviving a plane crash—it’s a great story about living a life with purpose.
“The jungle caught me and saved me,” said Dr. Diller, who hasn’t spoken publicly about the accident in many years. “It was not its fault that I landed there.”
Via New York Times
Now spinning:
Remember when this did the rounds a few years ago? I didn’t watch it then, but this week I finally accepted the history of the Peacock Chair and its role in photography into my life. The hook is why that style of chair is on so many album covers, but the story of its rise to prominence in photos—specifically portrait photography—and how it got there is pretty neat.
I love a good name and Scanwiches is solid.
Via Kottke
Did any of this spark a tiny thought of your own?
Wear sunscreen.
“Can’t see for looking,” as my mother used to say.
By this stage, you’re probably screaming, “You’re an idiot! Say something!” but over the years, the whole charade has become a bit of a game to me. I used to get agitated—now I’m just fascinated. How long will it take before I am noticed? Will I ever be? Just how much do I want those cold cuts?