Anatomy of Obsession

Recently, I went to an exhibition at the LA County Fair. On display were polymerised bodies in various states of undress, that is, stripped of skin or muscle or bone or arteries, etc., or a combination thereof.  As fascinating and educational as it was, when I happened upon a woman in a glass case precisely sliced up into steaks, I felt uneasy.  It wasn't Snow White. 

In Jewish ritual if you come in contact with death, whether a corpse or a grave, you are required to purify yourself by washing your hands with water (aka, 'water of life').  It also reminds you of the ongoing gravity of that encounter.  The sliced and diced corpse was a real human being, not a piece of butcher meat.  And it felt wrong, like some line had been crossed. No matter how antiseptic and shiny and plastic the cadavers looked, they had still been animated by a soul.

The crossing of lines seems to animate certain sections of the RA community as well.  RAFrenzy started the ball rolling on the ongoing self-reflection of being an Armitage admirer by pondering, not for the first time, whether she should call herself a "Reluctant Fan"- she keeps fighting her feelings. One of her commenters suggests she call herself "Fan with a Conscience".  Mulubinba, in a neat response to the thorny question of whether fans should wait outside a stage door, proffers some sound etiquette guidelines.  Meanwhile, Servetus, in one of her latest posts on being a "fan" represents quite accurately, I think,  what goes through the minds of quite a few admirers of the Armitage, the ones who self-reflect.  It's almost as if they're in so deep they are not sure where the boundary is.

In the Armitage community, it seems that there are the makings of a little cottage industry for self-examination! I think that this is the first time, in my experience of fandoms, that I find people so conflicted about being part of the Armitage juggernaut, swept off their feet and swept away. Servetus even goes so far as to wonder if a sort of I-thou relationship might be possible with the Armitage, even at a distance.  That's pretty deep. (Well, perhaps, I suppose it's possible, as long as the "thou" is accepted as being eminently less knowable than G-d or at best a reflection of G-d.)

And people worry about Himself.  People wonder if we're too pushy, too crazy, too demanding, too vocal, just too much for the delicate likes of him, oy vey! Our passion will overwhelm him, suffocate him.  Which brings up the topic of protectiveness.  For example, if people paid big bucks to see the 24 Hour Plays at the Old Vic, with drinks afterwards, well, then it's a professional meet and greet. Nothing wrong with fans approaching him.  My heavens, he even got on the bus with the rabble! Nothing wrong with taking photos either, whether inside, or at the stage door. And he'd better get used to lights flashing in his eyes and a mob because he ain't seen nothing yet.  Yet, people fret about such behaviour.

It's interesting that the loonies (case in point, see comments by anonymous 6.44 am) are overly possessive, rigid and dictatorial and downright creepy, but at the other end of the spectrum there are others who feel tremendously protective of him and basically seem as if they're walking on eggshells in their response to him.  Like them, I want to disassociate myself from the foaming crazies, and not be counted as one of them in the public mix.  Alas, we are all publicly counted as one of them because they are the most vocal and most intrusive. As always, the former ruin it for the rest of us.  But why do we need to walk on eggshells in response?

I suppose I'm lucky because I hold no conflicted feelings and thoughts about the Armitage.  The more I read blogs and comments, the more I realise that it's his work that I feel protective of, or more precisely, his talent. I am greedy in that I want him to give me more characters that transport me. The fact that his gifts are all wrapped up in a seemingly sensitive, mensch-like and handsome package just complicates things.  But, I accept the whole of him and that includes the handsome, if not yet the mensch.

I don't read much about him, and rarely listen to his interviews, but even in reading other blogs, I realise that the more I know about him the more I don't know him.  I can make guesses, but that is all.  Regarding his character, he seems too good to be true.  If I have conflict, that's probably it. I think that's compounded by never getting a real grasp on his personality, because he is elusive. I am not cynical by nature, just cautious by experience, and "too good to be true" raises massive red flags to me.

On a personal note, just the fact that he's crazy about skiing, is a workaholic and, in effect, seems to be an adrenalin junkie suggests to me that superficially he and I would not get along!  I also find him tremendously attractive but not sexy. He really comes across as a regular bloke.  I think his brain is sexy, but showing himself to be a fairly modest man in real life, he doesn't ooze sex out of his pores; for that, we have Guy of Gisborne and I am satisfied (sort of).

I do remember feeling a bit embarrassed in my teens while standing in the store riffling through Mills and Boon romances.  Well, this was just not me!  It was not an acceptable part of myself.  This did not fit with an image of myself and to what I aspired.  It was déclassé. Ironically those books triggered my interest in other countries, in travel and in opera of all things.  I've had obsessive crushes since I've been 12 years old, and inevitably they inspired poetry, stories, research on various topics, drawings, an unpeeling of the layers of myself and greater knowledge and acceptance of feelings and thoughts. Everyone and everything and all experience is a potential muse.

Those experiences also allow me to state without shame that my first feeling at seeing the Armitage's old female friend by his side at the Old Vic party again was unalloyed jealousy.  It came and it went.  Oh, here it comes again, this time it's envy.  I know why it happens.  So, nevermind the Armitage. But it does happen.  I'm not going to say, either, that I'm happy for him or happy to see him with someone, or happy to see him with no one.  I don't know what makes him happy.  I just know how I respond.

Perhaps we dissect ourselves or others for fun, but sometimes it does take the fun out of things. I admire and envy those who have the gift of light-heartedness.  Generally speaking, that the Armitage has been objectified, I have no doubt.  The extent to which it happens, and the detail in which it is indulged make me cringe. I think that people's fantasies should stay in their journals, be shared with their friends or psychiatrists, and not spill out on public pages.  Way too much information.  The objectification is a natural byproduct of fandom, but I really object to his complete taking apart.  Reminds me of the awful display above. This is where I draw the line.  There is something unseemly about it.

I don't have any answers for why people have such difficulty coming to terms with their admiration or its intensity.  All I can offer is a "perhaps": perhaps it doesn't fit with one's image; perhaps one does not want to be seen as part of the great unwashed, or more closely, part of the rabid fringe; perhaps there's a part of ourselves that we find unacceptable, or feelings we find unacceptable; perhaps we have one shred of hope that someday we might meet him and that colours our possessiveness/protectiveness; perhaps we don't know how to have fun.  Feeling that we obsess and spend our days and nights thinking and discussing an actor does seem rather nuts. As nuts, I suppose, as an obsession with baseball, football, opera, ballet, and all their respective talent as well.

Yet there is obsession, and obsession.  Ninety-nine per cent of the fandom is not going to stalk anyone.  An obsession is harmful if it engenders ongoing unpleasant thoughts and feelings, and interferes with your functioning or relationships.  It's a simple standard for what is not normal. 

Then there is the other obsession, the one I celebrate, which engenders  beautiful words, beautiful pictures, beautiful acts,  beautiful relationships, and beautiful play.   Which elevates all that is wonderfully human in us. When we are angsting, it's a good thing to remember.

excerpt from "In Praise of Positive Obsessions" by Eric Maisel 

The common wisdom of therapy has it that obsessions are always bad things. As a feature of its namesake disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or as a feature of some other disorder, an obsession is a sign of trouble and a problem to be eliminated.

But the main reason therapists find themselves obliged to consider obsessions invariably negative has to do with language: an obsession is invariably negative because clinicians have defined it as negative.

Clinicians define "obsession" in the following way: an obsession is an intrusive thought, it is recurrent, it is unwanted, and it is inappropriate. Defined this way, it is obviously always unwelcome.

But suppose a person is caught up thinking day and night about her current painting or about the direction she wants to take her art? Thoughts about painting "intrude" as she balances her checkbook or prepares her shopping list. She can hardly wait to get to her studio and her rhythms are more like Picasso's on painting jags than like the rhythms of a "normal" person.
This artist is obsessed in an everyday sense of the word - and more than happy to be so! ...

For a contemporary intelligent, sensitive person, it may well make more sense to opt for a life of positive obsessions that flow from personal choices about the meanings of life than to attempt to live a more modest and less satisfying normal-looking life that produces dissatisfaction and boredom.

After all, no one can say how normal ought to be defined. In what sense is it normal to work at a job that constricts you and bores you rather than risking everything on a life that challenges you, even as it frustrates you?

Much of what we call normal behavior is simply based on fear. Indeed, the average person might even prefer a negative obsession, despite its horrors, to a positive obsession rooted in excitement, passion, and active meaning-making, so wild and unafraid would he feel if he were obsessed that way.

My wild guess is that the Armitage often gets swept away by magnificent obsessions. Heh, what's good for the gander is good for this goose. Foolish passion, indeed!

Happy Hanukkah to my fellow Jews!