"Failing Better: A Conversation With Ocean Vuong" Interviewed By Viet Thanh Nguyen For LA Review Of Books

not to worry mutuals, I’ve recruited a halfling to detect any and all spike traps on your dashboard, just make sure not to scroll too fast so he has time to find them

I’m coming to you because you seem very intelligent - not only in what you post/your taste, but also in your responses. Do you have any advice for integrating contradictory and conflicting parts of your personality? I want to be authentic, but I seem to resonate with very opposing things. I feel a split. Thank you so much ❤️

I've had this ask in the back of my mind for a long, long time and I'm sorry to only be getting to it now.

In all honesty, I don't think that "authenticity" is about eliminating contradiction—I don't believe that's even possible: human consciousness is....profoundly complicated and to even attempt to do so is essentially futile; we are as murky to ourselves as we are to others, and others are to us. I don't believe there is a fixed and final self that awaits us, either at the end of whatever journey we feel ourselves to be on, or at any given moment in our lives. It's not a linear thing to me (it isn't even a thing, to be honest), but more like a rhizome--a kind of constant branching and growing and moving. It is a series of responses that differ year by year, month by month, even hour by hour. The world happens to you, and you happen to it and this happening is constantly shifting. As it should! The real conflict, I think, is to try and surrender to the idea of a finished self that is coherent and complete because to do so A) potentially alienates you from experiencing yourself as you are at any given moment because you are tied up in what you should be, and B) can leave you stranded from the world around you because you're seeking finality in an existence where such a concept, literally, cannot exist.

Contradiction is not inherently a bad thing; we tend to assume that it equates to insincerity or, worse, deception but that is not always the case. I don't know exactly what your "opposing things" consist of, but I do believe it helps sometimes to consider that whatever authenticity you're looking for is not so much found in the opposing things themselves, or in the process of reconciling them to each other, but rather within the response that they evoke in you. The things don't matter as much as the interplay that happens between them and you, because it is in that interplay that you are actually present, or rather a distinct portion of you. There's a beautiful quote by C.S. Lewis where he talks about friendship and how there is a version of you that exists, and can only exist in the way it does, because of how it emerges when you are in the company of a particular person. Who you are with your close friend A may be subtly different to who you are with your close friend B, who may differ again from who you are with your friend C, and vice versa. But none of those relationships are insincere because of those differences and we would never think to dismiss them as such, either. Each of those friends is a different person, who responds to you, and to whom you respond in turn according to their distinctness. They are not contradictory but simply amplify different parts of who you are, in different ways, the same as how a piece of quartz reflects and refracts light differently depending on how you turn it, depending on where exactly that light hits. But no matter the angle, it is still the same stone.

The things that resonate with you are like that, I think; it's not a single instrument at work but rather a small symphony with different movements at different times. And the only real contradiction, the only thing-- at least in my view--that possibly will cause a split, is the belief that you need to force any part of yourself to cohere to a mythical, singular, state of being, which does not--which cannot--exist. Because honestly, it's all our multitudes that allow us to fully engage with the world as it finds us, that actually widen our awareness and give us a capacity for empathy and to accept the distinct otherness of other people and creatures: even more, it allows space for humility in our approach to the world because it accepts that there is so much more beyond the boundaries of what we know or think we know. It allows space for truths rather than A Truth and we've all seen (and are seeing) what happens when you build your entire view of the world, and yourself, on the notion that only one thing can be true at all times.

I think integrating is not always the right word--I think it's more about acceptance, because these opposing things in themselves are not really defining you; they're just the medium through which some part of you (it doesn't even have to be a part of you--it could be a question, an idea, even a passing curiosity) is finding an expression in the world, but this is not the whole and entirety of who you are and it does not need to be either. I've seen it a lot online, especially when it comes to fitting your interests into an aesthetic or neat category to list in your bio and it saddens and infuriates me in equal measure because it is far more limiting than it is freeing. Categorizing like this is about consumability, which is about whittling down all difference and variation (which, honestly, is where the truly exciting stuff happens). Not everything must be categorizable or listable to be valid. You are allowed to like the things you like without feeling as though you must corral them all into a coherent assessment of your entire being.

It is a lot more exhausting trying to harmonize all the conflicting and opposing facets of your personality than to accept them for what they are: different responses to different stimuli, environments, or events, that arise at different times, in different ways. They are not necessarily set in stone; they do not always need to make sense to each other, only to you. Do these things genuinely interest you? Do they excite you? You are no less you for liking one thing and then its polar opposite--you're simply coming into contact with a different part of yourself , or perhaps even just another side of a question you did not realise you were asking, which is always an incredibly exciting and intriguing experience because it means the potential within yourself, this vast playing-field of interests and questions, is never-ending-- it's a growing and responding with and to the world beyond you! It shows you that you are bigger and wider than you thought yourself to be! How exhilarating is that? (On top of that it is also a profound relief to know you are not obligated to be the same person at all times, in all times--you're a customizable character in an, admittedly absurd, but gloriously varied video game that requires literally nothing from you--you are free to show up however you want and add to the absurdity without needing to justify any of it).

I've said it before but as far as I'm concerned the self is not a destination; it's cultivation, like a garden. It's uncovering and recovering and discovering. It's not about the endgame because a garden does not have one; it's just filling time in with fragments of life, in various forms and stages. And I think that's all any of us can really do for as long as we're here--we fill our time in with life as we accumulate it, life that is filtered down to us through the lens of so many relationships and experiences with the world that to even attempt to try and quantify it and explain it all into neat concepts would cost us a significant chunk of the little time we have. I'm not saying that there aren't facets of yourself that it would be useful to question or try to understand, nor am I saying that all contradictions are positive and don't require change (if change is the healthiest thing for you). All I'm saying is that human beings cannot be easily defined and boxed away, and we do ourselves a huge disservice (not to mention immense violence, metaphorically and literally) when we move through life assuming we can, or should be.

At the end of the day, and if I'm completely honest, I'm not a fan of the word "authentic". I've always found it to be uncomfortably loaded--it's a word where the active meaning of it rests not with you but with other people's perceptions of you (it also seems to suggest a binary that I find far too reductive for something as messy and expansive as human thought and feeling). Whatever it is meant to represent is, to me, not some external construct that you fit yourself into; it's simply openness, honesty, and curiosity: about your own limitations, your interests, no matter how varied, the unpredictability that is part and parcel of existing in a world where nothing is guaranteed or certain, no matter how many ideologies we cook up.

All the different versions of yourself that have existed so far--the yous that are, either entirely or marginally, you no longer because you have grown and changed in accordance with the things that have happened to you--the things you have seen, learnt, read, the people you've met, or moved on from--are no less sincere for having been grown out of than the version of you that exists now, which will also be no less sincere than the you that will emerge 5 years or 5 months from now. And even some imprint of those versions--their thoughts, ideas, fears, passions etc., still remain: some louder and some fainter than others, some disappearing for decades and emerging out of the blue, some fading bit by bit, and then entirely. There is no towering and ultimate Self that unites all of these; our being here is a brief, beautiful palimpsest that just keeps going and growing and growing. The best thing we can do, I think, as we go about our small and often confusing lives, is accept and acknowledge them as such, and hold, perhaps, a small space in gratitude that we, tiny as we are, get to be part of this kind of expansiveness.

The Soul of the Rose (or My Sweet Rose) by John William Waterhouse // “Till There Was You” covered by The Beatles

“She is so stubborn, her heart has an argument with her head every time it wants to beat.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

I just want to disappear into this universe. Be the sun and the sand,  the wind and the water  moving aimlessly. I want to be the dance  between the earth, the sky and the waves. Be the energy that holds  everything in its place. And then I just want to appear as a tiny human being and open my eyes and open my heart to see myself.

Anyone who's ever done anything creative needs to fucking see this.

"Doomed by the narrative" is sexy and all but i think the narrative wanting to save a character who is utterly set on dooming themselves isnt as much of a thing and it's so good as a concept

Hi we did it