Two years ago, at a time I would define as the worst period of my life, I was standing on a street corner on the perimeter of Harvard Square distributing sample packets of a popular vitamin supplement. It was in February. I remember this because it is my least favorite month and if the company who hired me wasn't so damned nice, eating glass would have been more appealing. It wasn't a bad product. There wasn't a feeling of selling. It was just cold. And I hate cold with a passion. I was looking forward to wrapping up and defrosting under warm covers.
It was our last day of the three that we had been hired to work and Cambridge was at least a familiar area. The comedy club that I frequented was on one end of the neighborhood. Harvard Law school where I did occasional work as an actor in negotiating classes was near the spot I had been placed. Lots of college kids and tourists from different parts of the world bundled up so thoroughly that even in this exotic mix so rarely found in this part of New England, everyone took on the same dull sameness. Well, most everybody.
I don't know how it started. Probably just me handing him a sample and he saying, "What is it?" But somehow it metamorphosed into a full conversation about food and music and comedy and philosophies of life. He was a musician. I was a comic. It was an excellent conversation between two people who were in the right place and the right time with equally gregarious personalities in a mood to talk.
25 years earlier I lived in the East Village in Manhattan. It was a fairly decent sized neighborhood but I stuck mostly to the 20 blocks or so south, west and east of East 11th Street and 1st Avenue. Neighborhood diners and cafes were very important to the culture of young artists of different ilks in our community. We would venture a little west on weekends and hang out in Washington Square Park in warm weather by the fountain. Go out to the same music venues were many of us also performed occasionally. I would see the same person everywhere. He was a fashionable looking man with a striking resemblance to one of the guys in Milli Vanilli. One day I passed him on St. Marks Street and stopped him. "Hi," I said. "I see you all of the time." He told me his name was Ellis. And from then on we knew each other.
In our society, especially in the acting business, there is a certain amount of bullshit spread around, promises that a soul makes in a moment to check out each other's shows, keep in touch, follow up, whatever sounds polite at the time. But you go home and forget because you are tired. Or you may feel like it is a little creepy for whatever reason.Or you just don't want another human in your life at that moment. Michael told me that he had been a music student at Berklee and performed with a band called NoizTank. I found them on facebook, as promised. And I liked them a lot.
Facebook is a profound new way of vetting friendships. It has altered our way of determining who is going to remain a stranger in your life. The truth is, I don't think I would have been real friends with Ellis if we did exchange that particular information. There is always the silent prayer that a new artist in your life doesn't suck because you don't know how to communicate with someone you are always going to have to lie to about their work. But I discovered during that first conversation that I had with Michael that I admired his work ethic. He was also funny and came from a school that isn't for the half-assed. We share a semblance of ethics.. We like each other's posts. I think his new band is great and hope to see them live.
So does this qualify as a friendship? A person that you met on a street corner that you communicate with via the internet. Someone that you have had a real conversation with exactly once. The information about things like family and friends are contained in a carefully selected filter. It is almost like a work friend. Except the origin to begin with this one was a little different. Our communication was based on some form of mutual respect that caused us to stop and continue the first conversation. Something triggered this thing inside our mutual brains that said, "I want to know more. This person makes me curious and I feel safe enough to reveal who I am."
Its a new world. It is possible that we won't physically meet a lot of people we interact with some day. But I like seeing faces and I love live performance. Human energy is lost with a wall between us. If I met him on the internet, statistically we are so different we probably wouldn't have paid attention to each other as human beings. Maybe listened to a song or read a piece of writing produced by one another. But the spirit would be a little flatter and the music that this band plays comes from a real human being who worked so hard to create it because I met the soul it came out of.
So I guess it doesn't matter if he is a friend or not. He is his own category. It is a good one and I consider myself lucky to be involved in the transaction and I guess that is what counts. The universe has offered me the blessing of this good human in my life no matter how briefly in whatever form to make it better. Giving it a name ain't going to change that.
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