Jeremiah Tolbert

We don’t get out much lately, Sarah and I.  When we do, our idea of a good evening would be at the the­ater, not in a large pub­lic space where we inter­act closely with strangers who may or may not be a lit­tle bit drunk.   What we cer­tainly don’t do reg­u­larly is take advan­tage of the great live music here in town.  But Saturday night, thanks to Paul Hummer and Moriah, we went to a show at a local bar for a band called Post Paradise (who were fab­u­lous by the way.   A cello in a rock band!).

As we waited for the show to start, my atten­tion wan­dered to the crowd.  It felt good to see a bunch of strangers around me and to talk to some of them.  I’m a clas­sic intro­vert, and I tend to avoid unnec­es­sary social inter­ac­tions.  I hadn’t real­ized that my life as a free­lancer has me so socially iso­lated that for a brief period of time, I actu­ally greatly enjoy being around a group of interesting-​​looking strangers.

And it tick­led part of my writ­ing brain that’s been dor­mant for a while.   I started con­coct­ing sto­ries for all these strange faces.  I don’t know why it sur­prised me, because I love people-​​watching.  It’s just that you don’t get much oppor­tu­nity to do that when you spend 10 hours a day star­ing at the same two mon­i­tors and the base­ment wall behind them.   I spent a lot of time won­der­ing if I was stunt­ing my growth as a writer by being a free­lancer who rarely leaves the house.   Again, I was faced with the idea that extro­verted writ­ers have an advan­tage when it comes to the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of people.

Paul, who is a fel­low work-​​from-​​home guy, chat­ted with me about how we both spent time watch­ing the crowd, and how it was pos­si­bly related to our work envi­ron­ments.  He gets out a hell of a lot more often than I do, though.   I feel very poorly social­ized com­pared to him.

Ultimately, I had to remind myself as I some­times do, that I am an ape.  I’m a smarter than aver­age ape (prob­a­bly solidly aver­age among the hominids), but I’m still an ape, and my genes carry the evolution-​​shaped needs and desires of my ape ances­tors.   I think we’d all be bet­ter off to be reminded of that fact from time to time.  I need to com­mis­sion an artist friend to make me a memento simia,  an ape replac­ing the skull of the tra­di­tional memento mori.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go pick and eat some nits off my mate.