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Obsession!
I am obsessed with Orson Welles.
This is not news to any of you, I suspect, since I talk of little else lately except for the odd foray into Peter Pan outfits. Nor do I think it will soon pass, and you will be inundated with more reviews as I attempt to watch his entire body of work. But I don't bring him up to talk about him in particular, today, but about obsession.
See, it's been ages--it feels like years--since anything's hit me this hard. When I was a teenager, and through college, certain things would grab hold of me and not let go. Sherlock Holmes, The Phantom of the Opera, T.E. Lawrence, The X-Files, all of them had their day(s) and all of them were certain to elevate my heart rate on a regular basis. Under these conditions I was most likely insufferable, but I also wrote a lot. Obsession, for me, is akin to that gut-level yearning that also spurred my writing in previous years, the stories I just had to get out and would work on incessantly until they were done, thinking of little else. They were never that long, and compared to some of you my output, even at its highest, was much less. These stories were not necessarily related to my current obsession (unless it was Phantom), but the feeling was similar.
That's part of the reason that my constant rumination on Orson makes me happy--I'd missed that feeling. I've missed being absorbed by something, probably because it's one of the few situations in which I feel at all passionate. I think I'm fairly dynamic in real life. I'm not a stoic. But that's just personality, and here I'm talking about the sort of thing that dominates my thoughts and proves to me that I'm still reachable.
This is most likely a little bit unhealthy. After all, there are "better" things to be passionate about--real world situations, real people, relationships. And this sort of passion is inward-directed, reachable only by me and then constantly spilling forth whether my companion wants to hear it or not. In this instance, I am lucky in that Mr. Daroga seems to feel the same and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tkp at least finds him adorable and seems to be amused by the fact of my obsession in itself. (No, he's not my type at all, physically; but as I told her last night only half-joking, I feel this is good for me and represents, er, an expansion of my taste.) But in general, unless you are part of a cult or spend a tremendous amount of time online to the exclusion of your everyday activities, fanatical obsession is a solitary thing. Even when it's shared, the peculiar overflow of excitement is difficult to confer on another, and more often than not serves more as a feedback loop for one's own obsession.
But for whatever reason, and I believe I've mentioned this before, I was nostalgic for those days of all-consuming interest. I'd thought it lost in the face of "real life": marriage, pet parenting, full-time employment and the like. I just didn't have the time or energy to obsess. I was doing more important things. Now I feel that way again, and I want to prolong it and draw it out and revel in it. Why? Is it like the person who keeps starting and leaving relationships, so they can get that new love high over and over? The objects of my obsession always stay close, even when the fire dies down. I tried to jump-start my Phantom thing again, by coming back online and getting involved. I have succeeded primarily in addiction to a cracktastic role-play forum--perhaps that's another obsession, or perhaps it just sparked this one. Perhaps it was quitting anti-depressants that did it.
Whatever the reason, what I hope is that this marks a return to some of my other pursuits--namely, obsessive writing. Back then, my stories were not brilliant, but at least I was telling them. And the compulsion to tell them overcame any laziness or fear of failure or whatever else is stopping me now. I'm not sure I should be so delighted by my own insular fannishness, but I am.
What about you? Do you have an obsessive personality? Did you once and, like me, leave it with some part of your life as you moved on? Or are you astonished that I'm even remarking upon it because it's just part of life? What have you been obsessed with? And that strange feeling--do you like it? Or is it a barrier between you and "real" life?
And isn't Orson amazing?
This is not news to any of you, I suspect, since I talk of little else lately except for the odd foray into Peter Pan outfits. Nor do I think it will soon pass, and you will be inundated with more reviews as I attempt to watch his entire body of work. But I don't bring him up to talk about him in particular, today, but about obsession.
See, it's been ages--it feels like years--since anything's hit me this hard. When I was a teenager, and through college, certain things would grab hold of me and not let go. Sherlock Holmes, The Phantom of the Opera, T.E. Lawrence, The X-Files, all of them had their day(s) and all of them were certain to elevate my heart rate on a regular basis. Under these conditions I was most likely insufferable, but I also wrote a lot. Obsession, for me, is akin to that gut-level yearning that also spurred my writing in previous years, the stories I just had to get out and would work on incessantly until they were done, thinking of little else. They were never that long, and compared to some of you my output, even at its highest, was much less. These stories were not necessarily related to my current obsession (unless it was Phantom), but the feeling was similar.
That's part of the reason that my constant rumination on Orson makes me happy--I'd missed that feeling. I've missed being absorbed by something, probably because it's one of the few situations in which I feel at all passionate. I think I'm fairly dynamic in real life. I'm not a stoic. But that's just personality, and here I'm talking about the sort of thing that dominates my thoughts and proves to me that I'm still reachable.
This is most likely a little bit unhealthy. After all, there are "better" things to be passionate about--real world situations, real people, relationships. And this sort of passion is inward-directed, reachable only by me and then constantly spilling forth whether my companion wants to hear it or not. In this instance, I am lucky in that Mr. Daroga seems to feel the same and
tkp at least finds him adorable and seems to be amused by the fact of my obsession in itself. (No, he's not my type at all, physically; but as I told her last night only half-joking, I feel this is good for me and represents, er, an expansion of my taste.) But in general, unless you are part of a cult or spend a tremendous amount of time online to the exclusion of your everyday activities, fanatical obsession is a solitary thing. Even when it's shared, the peculiar overflow of excitement is difficult to confer on another, and more often than not serves more as a feedback loop for one's own obsession.But for whatever reason, and I believe I've mentioned this before, I was nostalgic for those days of all-consuming interest. I'd thought it lost in the face of "real life": marriage, pet parenting, full-time employment and the like. I just didn't have the time or energy to obsess. I was doing more important things. Now I feel that way again, and I want to prolong it and draw it out and revel in it. Why? Is it like the person who keeps starting and leaving relationships, so they can get that new love high over and over? The objects of my obsession always stay close, even when the fire dies down. I tried to jump-start my Phantom thing again, by coming back online and getting involved. I have succeeded primarily in addiction to a cracktastic role-play forum--perhaps that's another obsession, or perhaps it just sparked this one. Perhaps it was quitting anti-depressants that did it.
Whatever the reason, what I hope is that this marks a return to some of my other pursuits--namely, obsessive writing. Back then, my stories were not brilliant, but at least I was telling them. And the compulsion to tell them overcame any laziness or fear of failure or whatever else is stopping me now. I'm not sure I should be so delighted by my own insular fannishness, but I am.
What about you? Do you have an obsessive personality? Did you once and, like me, leave it with some part of your life as you moved on? Or are you astonished that I'm even remarking upon it because it's just part of life? What have you been obsessed with? And that strange feeling--do you like it? Or is it a barrier between you and "real" life?
And isn't Orson amazing?
no subject
For instance, obsessing over Lawrence means learning about the progress of WWI, the Georgian poets, rape trauma, Sinn Fein, Crusaders, medieval French literature, Arabic, Middle Eastern history, Mesopotamian archaeology, post-traumatic stress disorder, and hey, I've even been to the airfield in Karachi where he was stationed in miserable exile. He even got me through a nervous breakdown because I knew he'd gotten through it: I wasn't alone in it.
It keeps me young, it keeps my brain agile, and I hope I'll never stop falling in love with people.
no subject
is awesome.
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You have put this very well. Obsessions are a sort of lens through which we view the world; they enable us to see so much more than simply the obsession, and in such a different way. Through my current quasi-historical obsession I've learned about things like the Jewish community in Britain, boarding schools, views of homosexuality in the 50s and 60s, musicals, bullfighting, the music industry, bipolar disorder, the effects of amphetamines and barbiturates, parts of London I'd never visited before, and I'm sure a lot more besides.
An interesting challenge would be to invite people to post the side benefits of their obsessions and ask others to guess the main subject... :)
no subject
That's a great idea; both cute and potentially really revealing at the same time.