11c.

letter

pt. 1

Brother,

Three weeks ago we were completing a SWOT analysis for this project, I imagine you’ve done similar strategic meeting stuff, it was kind of yawn-y, until colleagues were stating opportunities/threats, and they seemed to just be some version of what another colleague called a threat/opportunity, and I waded into a ramble, how do you tell the difference between an opportunity and a threat, aren’t threats just opportunities in their pessimistic state. My colleagues seemed unmoved.

But I can make the interaction productive. There is this sense of how do you tell the difference between when you haven’t seen a person in a while and when you miss them?  When you are compelled to say something - like you often say to me, of missing me, or some version of “I feel like we haven’t done X in ages”? When someone’s door has been closed to you and you want to open it, what does it feel like? And what is it like always being so connected to how you feel? I do wish we went to concerts together when you were less busy so I could have seen how you experience emotions in that atmosphere.

And yet, I have this longstanding insecurity about sharing music with… all of you (I know, sister the exception). I remember taking a duffel bag with me when I went looking for music so I could hide my CDs or… (what else did I buy?), because you or dad or mum would ask, or grab the CD case out of my hands, or make a loud comment, an unnecessary announcement, when you correctly guessed what I had bought.

If I wouldn’t even share my albums with you, I find it hard to imagine I could tell you about something significant to me. Or that if I did, you wouldn’t tell Joyce, and mum and dad, and everyone. Not that I’m a just-between-you-and-me person (although perhaps that’s because I’m a just-between-me person, or have increasingly become that). And I do want (enough of the time?) to tell you things. Then there is this pause. As if I turn my head to the window, surveying.

What I see is a mountain, ever-growing (as it does when my memories carry the loneliness of the moment of realising, as I did in 2019, that you were at home when I was calling a ticket provider to cancel and I ended up debating the non-refundable cancellation date, and so you later (accurately) had told sister I was trying to bail on that concert). And each time I look outside, the mountain is bigger, harder to overcome, to see the other side, to see the evidence I want to so I can take a risk.

I pause again. I used the word “loneliness”.

If I were to try to scale the mountain, try to talk or open up myself, maybe what I would see when I come down the other side is… a slightly lonelier person than I expected?

I guess I’d always thought that being connected to everyone as you were, knowing their secrets, and now being married, this meant you were warmly crowded, as if the cables of your gossip network insulated you from being alone.

Maybe I haven’t asked you enough questions lately (ever?). Maybe gossip is your way of opening the circle. Of feeling acceptance. Of course, why would you want to share words that feel insignificant, or cold (or from me, abstract, or demanding time alone with one’s thoughts) when you can talk about messy, real people. I don’t know exactly what it is I’m afraid of when I fear gossip.

Whereas you build a relationship with everyone by pointing to some other relationship, I suppose I lie to feel accepted. Which in some sense is worse, because I’m closing a circle, protecting not building, curating rather than welcoming. Even in your critiques you are aspirational, suggesting something about the fallibility of us all, establishing that you do want better for us. Sometimes all I want for others is to be OK that we’re different and let me put my headphones back in. I’m sorry for not asking questions. I’m sorry for being absent in those times where you’ve asked for more than loneliness.

I’m also sorry for never speaking of my loneliness. Not that either is particularly large. But there is this sense that I carry my small feelings in a duffel bag around you. I don’t ever share how I feel until those feelings have passed. You don’t know about a decision until it’s been made. Sister and I would close the door when we were listening to music.

I guess I usually don’t show you my work?

The other bits in here are my attempt, a small one.

I feel like we haven’t listened to music together in forever, because we never really have. I’m wanting something we’ve never done.

I miss you.

folded paper

pt. 0

title
notes for letter to brother

top + middle left of page
challenge with brother? gossiping (obviously) but too simple
it’s not the mere act of him speaking other people’s stories that makes me uncomfortable.
more like every morsel of gossip he shares about someone I know, reflection of all the gossip he has shared about sister or I with someone else
the ways that feels like judgement, as if he is allowed to spill about sis/me/other because it’s different to what he would do?
not just small things gossip; high stakes-gossip about people I know

underlined other side? he actually cares about what other people do, in a way I don’t?
unlike dad, admire some aspects of brother that are not same as me
attentiveness to own feelings, feelings of others
he feels strongly that someone is doing something good or bad for them and is willing to say something
gossip as care? gossip as idealism?

top right of page

• mountain of gossip obscuring window, makes it hard to see a different person
• general metaphor for gossip: water? network? whispers?
• music, duffel bag, out of tune guitar (lying?), music with sister, songs that never want to play too loudly?
• if I’m a house, rarely seen as scaffolding, seen in unbuilt state, or a gallery in an un-curated state. idea of open/closed doors
• (don’t need to be as sophisticated with use of imagery as with sister, she is more critical. brother responds to emotions - although hard to generate)

bottom left of page
question him
critique is what?
not on his emotions - certainly not
not on gossip
feeling that in the gossip he lifts himself and a group of people up - sharing gossip as creating a circle?
and I guess maybe I was doing the same thing when I would lie to you, or hide things from you, or when I discuss you with others - a different circle?
the only people I gossip about are my family?
Joyce worry brother not as close to sis/me + drop in on weekends/sitting outside in car twice last few weeks + busy with work + house stress = lonely?
hard to imagine you as a lonely person, but family, romance, friends, don’t automatically save us from that feeling?
gossip as a way to help others share with you? or as unburdening?

bottom right of page
question me
relationship between my lying and his gossip?
in some sense lying is worse. at least in gossip you’re sharing something. at least brother shares of himself.
my fear of gossip?
why did I never share music with him?
underlined definitely never shared music with him in the same way as sister
closed door, headphones with sister
in some sense that’s OK, but then what message does that communicate?
I wouldn’t tell him, if something happened, if I felt some kind of way. why?
how to reverse the pattern?
underlined something sister wrote made me realise, I don’t have everyone figured out
learning, asking = risk

various locations on the page
send link to calendar? can ask any questions he wants about letter, we can play games, or ball, or have a beer and talk about feelings, whatever he wants to do?

family loudness ranking list:
1. dad & brother (although it’s a different kind of loudness) | 3 mum | 4. sister & me

what’s his goal for me? marriage? happiness? to be known by him? to ask? to share?

middle right of page
what does it mean to miss brother?
still trying to work out with emotional/linguistic precision
i feel some kind of way when I walk past your open door and sister’s closed door, and it’s for both of you

circled i miss you

envelope

pt. 2

a CD