Real Friends, Blog Friends

Big Dan Champion writes "Popping Culture", an excellent blog by any measure.

He's also in the midst of - from the sound of it - a grueling round of chemotherapy for cancer.

He writes in this wonderful post about the "blogfriends" who've been with him while he's been homebound during his chemo, in this case Sheila "Red" O'Malley from The Sheila Variations, itself one of my favorite daily reads.

It touches on a lot of subjects I've been wanting to dive into for a long time, and does it better than I could have.

Dan wrote:

Is it possible for one of your best friends to be someone you've never met, or someone who is only partially aware of that you exist?

Of course, it was possible when I was a kid. Sherlock Holmes and the kid from Danny, the Champion of the World were dear friends, and they don't, in the strictest sense, exist. Still, as an only child with the nearest neighbors over a quarter mile away (and the nearest kids my age miles after that), all those fiction novel characters were my best friends.

When I was a kid - there were no kids my age in my neighborhood until I was eight - I could sort of relate, although I tended toward non-fiction.

But it as later - in my thirties, really - when I really understood both isolation and the phenomenon Dan describes. For a long time, my social life degenerated down to work and kids. And nothing else. Not that that didn't fill up the days - I was hardly alone!

We'll get back to this.

We sort of get to know people, real and fictional, by their actions, their words, moral stances, how disclosive they are, how open they seem, and a million other unspoken or subliminal signals that we pick up on and latch on to in our minds.

In the case of real persons, either authors or bloggers or whatever, we imagine ourselves connecting with what we find attractive about them, in the same way that I wanted to be Holmes' sidekick or the way I wanted to be Spider-Man because of, not despite, his real human problems.

Remember the Plain Layne crisis?

While I doubt Odin Soli specifically set out to plumb that exact human phenomonon, his blog - and the emotional turmoil that wracked so many people during the story's denouement. People out there are dying for some sort of connection.

I think that a less-rational, more needy, even psychotic mind turns this into something unhealthy sometimes, in the way Hinkley did after watching Jodie Foster on the screen enough times. He connected with her perceived traits, then psychotically assigned traits to her that only existed in his mind.

We all know desperate, obsessive bloggers whose whole existence is wrapped around getting rises out of other people.

But that's not what Dan's about:

Still, if you read someone enough, you can get to know them on some real level. After reading Dave Barry columns for years, I think I have a fair sense of how Dave might react in certain situations, and I find myself able to adapt my own humor to the positive ways he creates humor himself. I think, as we all do, that Dave and I would be great friends. Of course, in reality, we might not have two words to say, but it is the illusion that matters sometimes.

I say all that to say that since I've been homebound with cancer, Sheila of The Sheila Variations has been one of my best friends while probably just barely knowing I exist. She occasionally links to Popping Culture and sometimes posts messages here, but like everyone, she has her own set of friends and her own world in which to exist.

Still, her writing is unfailingly disclosive and she cares about a number of things that are important to me. That disclosiveness makes her an easy read, even when she's on a deep topic.

Sheila is exceptional that way.

For this 36-year old, trapped in a house for months now by a body that is literally trying to kill me, knowing I can point my browser to Sheila's website and unfailingly find something intelligent or humorous or heartwrenching or nostalgia-inducing has been a gift, and even if she never knew I existed, I would count her as one of my best friends of the last several months.

And really, it works both ways. Maybe these are my last days, and I'm taking a new friend into eternity. Maybe Sheila reads this and sees the incredible healing power that just writing honestly and personally can give. Maybe I live another 50 years and forget all about The Sheila Variations. Still, she was part of this part of the journey, part of the team that's working to keep me alive, whether they know it or not.

For starters, I'll urge all of you who are so inclined to pray for Dan. I don't know him from adam, either - but he writes a wonderful blog.

And it's an interesting point; I've made some great friends via this blog. Some I've managed to actually meet; my real, non-electronic social life has bounced way back as a result of this blog and the people I've met.

And beyond that, I've gotten to know a huge number of other people, if only by what they write. Beyond the whole political muckraking thing, which was and remains the main attraction to blogging, the social aspects are a never-ending wonder.

Posted by Mitch at March 16, 2005 06:34 AM | TrackBack