Do parts of us only exist as reflected in our relationships? Do we only exist because someone is thinking of us? And what about that tree in the forest? Peggy comes crashing down when someone whom she thinks of as a friend treats her as invisible, doesn’t see who she is. Is it mutual self-perception which defines true friendship?

Our first friendships are creatures of circumstance. The neighbors we play with. Children of our parents’ friends. The kids we go to school with. But from the very beginning some companions engage and inspire us, while others don’t. Sometimes the connection is mutual interests, with others it may be that spark of self-revelation. That magic of bringing out the laughter.

I was an only child until I was 21, with no close kin around, beside my mother and father. On the one hand I became friends with my parents. On the other my companions were my only siblings. Elective kinship.

When we lived on remote islands, where everyone was kin, we discovered people there chose which cousins (they said) they were related to. And because kinship was the only way to relate, we were adopted as elected kin. This made all the sense in the world to me, as I’d been choosing my kin all along.

Maybe friendship, in a mobile atomized culture, takes the place of an extended kin network. If you don’t have family, you make friends. Certainly I felt a different charge on “friendship” in traditional communities where everyone was kin. Nobody spoke of their “friends.” In Jonesport I might have opportunistic solidarity with crewmates on a boat, but that ended with the fishing season, unless we were bound together in the local web of constant connection.

Daily ritual contact defined who were kin in the islands. Phone calls, drop-ins, CB radio chats, meetings at the watering holes. Maintaining your local network is the only way to local solidarity, kin or no kin. Lucky I’ve got a large loyalty bump, and an endless supply of small talk.

Paul

I always felt part of friendship was staying in touch, so paying the local dues in a small town to maintain connections came natural. Still does. There was a while when I was a regular at the local bars in Brunswick, and I still chow down at the corner restaurant, to keep in touch with my local friends.

But my feelings about friendship have changed with time. There was an emotional intimacy about the friendships of my youth. An almost visceral sense of co-conspiracy. We were in it, or up to no good, together. Part of that was a shared imagining. They say the trick of improv comedy is to always validate your partner’s nutty leads. Isn’t that what we did with our childhood friends? You think that’s nuts, try this!

By sharing childhood make-believe we became part of each other’s dream world. As our dreams came true the friends we’d imagined them with became totems of that realization. The story which is my life has a cast of fellow characters. They must be my friends, they’re in my story.

The intimacy fades, though. It may be scientists will find a “friendship molecule” like the Nerve Growth Factor they have identified with first love. Over time our friends don’t give us the same rush of collaborative coziness. When circumstances separate friends in space and time we begin to orbit different planets.

This is where I get mixed up. I used to think that friends were for life. Once we had grokked each other we were part of the same tale, I thought. I spent a lot of my early wandering years going from old friend to old friend. Maintaining the storyline. Nice, nice, very nice.

I soon discovered I was a oddity this way. Old friends rarely sought me out. They were totally immersed in their local scenes. I was always welcome as a wandering loony, but: out of sight, out of mind. Except for a few companions who had that same loyalty bump. They would show up on my doorstep wherever I was. They, of course, became the friends for life.

But this represents an act of will rather than an act of passion, I think. If we make new friends by happenstance, with people we are thrown together with, our friendships last because we keep up the connection. Those who reciprocate our loyalty become our lasting friends. Once the “friendship molecule” has been absorbed, do we have to work at friendship for it to last?

Sounds like marriage. I was blessed to meet my very best friend at 17, although it took me six years to convince her it was mutual. That love molecule is still slopping around in us, maybe. But for sure we’ve needed plenty of willpower to get across the rough water. Peggy still brings out the best in me, although it has taken some convincing to admit she knows better about most things.

Jim

New friendships in later life are a different creature. There isn’t the same need to tell all at once. Where I used to gush personal details, to help others know me, now there are simply too many tales to tell. We still tell new friends our stories, but without such an intense yearning for recognition. Maybe we know who we are, and require less mirroring from others.

There are fewer deep echoes, too. When we were young and on the edge our friends were often wrapped in unconscious content. We were fragments of a great mystery and our encounters were often charged with numinous energy. Together we visited places out of time, and I assumed those soul connections were timeless, too. Sure enough, with some old friends you can pick up where you left off without skipping a beat. But the music seems to have faded with others. Or we have grown deaf to it.

Our old friends are waymarks in the story of us, just like old songs. They remind us of who we were, and maybe still are. And our loyalty maintains the connection, but how deep does the truth-telling go? Maybe we are too old for youthful self-revelation. The mirrors grow cloudy.

I believe the soul connections we make are outside of time, but our relationships in time are easy prey to circumstance. So we may have seen one another’s hallucinations on a Brooklyn night, and known some kind of crazy selflessness together, but I haven’t seen Evan in 40 years.

Chris

Bob

The flip side of the record plays, too. Those whom circumstance throw together can still make timeless connections. If the soul work never ends, there may be magic in any relationship. Synchronicity happens.

I see this most clearly with the Buzzards. At one level we a just a bunch of old guys playing some blues together. When we are working up an arrangement we are very much in the here and now, fussing with the details. We have the solidarity of a common purpose, and the common joy of too much fun. But every now and then, down in the music, we escape the time, even while we keep the beat. That’s what the music is for.