One of the best and most important albums of my youth was Carole King’s Tapestry (1971). The title song (not nearly the best on a collection that included: “I feel the earth move,” “It’s too late,” “You’ve got a friend,” and “Will you love me tomorrow?”) speaks in general terms of the complexity of life and connections and intersections it comprises.
I was recently reviewing (and cleaning out) my contacts file on my computer, recalling the periods and events in which the various folks listed there came into my life. Many dropped in for one particular reason or project and vanished (most of those got dropped from the contacts file); they are just little pips of thread. Some, for reasons that often pass understanding, still resonate with me, even if their thread in my tapestry was brief (they got kept in the list). Quite a few from pre-internet days are rich lines, even if they don’t show up in my contacts file. Some threads are long and narrow, a few are long and thick (some are short and thick) . There’s a whole section of cloth filled with overlapping fabrics of family members. Different colors and textures show the presence of school and work groups. Some threads appear for a while, vanish, and then show up again in another section of the cloth.
I imagine that my thread shows up in all these ways in their tapestries too.
My life is filled with (is comprised of?) all these interactions; the vast majority of which were transient and unmemorable. These people (who never made it into my contacts list) provided services, or were colleagues in work, students, clients, or neighbors. Their appearance was so short that they can’t really be seen individually; they only show up as a different weave or general color trend in one section.
It’s a strange and moving way to envision a life. “Whatever happened to Jimmy, my best buddy from elementary sixty years ago? Or that girl I dated when I moved to Washington in 1980? Etc. etc. etc.
I distinctly remember a time (I’m sure I was in single digits) when I realized that I actually knew a full hundred people. That realization wasn’t about accomplishment or hitting a milestone; it was a change in my understanding of the world: it was stunning to me that a person could know so many other people and that I could be such a person. A decade later I’m sure I passed a thousand; and now it’s over 10,000, but by then such a range wasn’t so remarkable and wasn’t marked at the time.
What if my tapestry could be an event? A retrospective collection of the lives that have intersected mine? A souped-up version of that old TV show “This Is Your Life” (1952-61 and various follow-ons) in which all the bit roles, supporting actors, and stars of the “Steve Harris Show” all came together. I don’t envision it so much as a party (or a podcast); rather as a way to see how I have fit into the broadest tapestry of the world: a high school classmate who sells gemstones in Bangkok, a girl on whom I had a crush at 13 becoming a medical researcher, my secretary at PacBell, now retired, who lives quietly in Walnut Creek.
It's strange and moving to realize that the nature of a lifetime is the compilation of all these interactions; that the billions of people in the world all have the same type of connections (and that all of us interconnect in unimaginable ways). “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” on steroids, an Ancestry.com matrix that goes beyond genetics to social contacts. My tapestry—with all its different colors, fabrics, and textures—is interlocked with those of all these other folks (and their connections…and theirs…). The ultimate multi-dimensionality is mind-boggling: to think about how the 100 billion people who have lived are connected to each other (and to me). It’s a fine antidote to statistical thinking and grand collective nouns like “the human race.”
Of course, just sticking with my direct contacts, and even with all the tools at our disposal these days, we don’t have the means to find and contact and interview all these folks (although it could be an interesting AI application/business opportunity), nor do I have the time to relive my life (some sort of autobiographical version of Borges’ imperial map that was drawn at a 1:1 scale), much less more than scratch the surface with all these other lives in play. It’s all I can do to imagine it all and explore just a few lines: track a few folks down on the internet, find their websites or public listing info: the guy who was with me on Safety Patrol during elementary school is a pro bono lawyer in Anchorage. Another guy I knew a bit from Junior High in Royal Oak, MI is an orthopedic doc two miles away from my house here in SF. I could (literally) go on and on; but we only get one life and we can’t live it just doing self-history.
I was recently reviewing (and cleaning out) my contacts file on my computer, recalling the periods and events in which the various folks listed there came into my life. Many dropped in for one particular reason or project and vanished (most of those got dropped from the contacts file); they are just little pips of thread. Some, for reasons that often pass understanding, still resonate with me, even if their thread in my tapestry was brief (they got kept in the list). Quite a few from pre-internet days are rich lines, even if they don’t show up in my contacts file. Some threads are long and narrow, a few are long and thick (some are short and thick) . There’s a whole section of cloth filled with overlapping fabrics of family members. Different colors and textures show the presence of school and work groups. Some threads appear for a while, vanish, and then show up again in another section of the cloth.
I imagine that my thread shows up in all these ways in their tapestries too.
My life is filled with (is comprised of?) all these interactions; the vast majority of which were transient and unmemorable. These people (who never made it into my contacts list) provided services, or were colleagues in work, students, clients, or neighbors. Their appearance was so short that they can’t really be seen individually; they only show up as a different weave or general color trend in one section.
It’s a strange and moving way to envision a life. “Whatever happened to Jimmy, my best buddy from elementary sixty years ago? Or that girl I dated when I moved to Washington in 1980? Etc. etc. etc.
I distinctly remember a time (I’m sure I was in single digits) when I realized that I actually knew a full hundred people. That realization wasn’t about accomplishment or hitting a milestone; it was a change in my understanding of the world: it was stunning to me that a person could know so many other people and that I could be such a person. A decade later I’m sure I passed a thousand; and now it’s over 10,000, but by then such a range wasn’t so remarkable and wasn’t marked at the time.
What if my tapestry could be an event? A retrospective collection of the lives that have intersected mine? A souped-up version of that old TV show “This Is Your Life” (1952-61 and various follow-ons) in which all the bit roles, supporting actors, and stars of the “Steve Harris Show” all came together. I don’t envision it so much as a party (or a podcast); rather as a way to see how I have fit into the broadest tapestry of the world: a high school classmate who sells gemstones in Bangkok, a girl on whom I had a crush at 13 becoming a medical researcher, my secretary at PacBell, now retired, who lives quietly in Walnut Creek.
It's strange and moving to realize that the nature of a lifetime is the compilation of all these interactions; that the billions of people in the world all have the same type of connections (and that all of us interconnect in unimaginable ways). “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” on steroids, an Ancestry.com matrix that goes beyond genetics to social contacts. My tapestry—with all its different colors, fabrics, and textures—is interlocked with those of all these other folks (and their connections…and theirs…). The ultimate multi-dimensionality is mind-boggling: to think about how the 100 billion people who have lived are connected to each other (and to me). It’s a fine antidote to statistical thinking and grand collective nouns like “the human race.”
Of course, just sticking with my direct contacts, and even with all the tools at our disposal these days, we don’t have the means to find and contact and interview all these folks (although it could be an interesting AI application/business opportunity), nor do I have the time to relive my life (some sort of autobiographical version of Borges’ imperial map that was drawn at a 1:1 scale), much less more than scratch the surface with all these other lives in play. It’s all I can do to imagine it all and explore just a few lines: track a few folks down on the internet, find their websites or public listing info: the guy who was with me on Safety Patrol during elementary school is a pro bono lawyer in Anchorage. Another guy I knew a bit from Junior High in Royal Oak, MI is an orthopedic doc two miles away from my house here in SF. I could (literally) go on and on; but we only get one life and we can’t live it just doing self-history.
RSS Feed