Enormous Closeness: Thoughts on Friends
Review: Close
I am becoming friends with a colleague at work. They’re an inspiring person, and I’m fortunate to know them.
And so we went to a movie. We saw Close. The movie was based on a book by Niobe Way called Deep Secrets, a study of 150 boys between 13-18 years of age and their male friendships. It’s a beautiful movie and a beautiful demonstration of that study. It documents the vanishing of the language of love as these boys mature and experience their first loss, that of a close friend.
My friend told me about this as the credits wrapped up and later sent me an interview with the director. It was this after-the-movie that brought today’s letter forward.
I am especially thoughtful of this idea, thinking of last week’s letter and discovering my younger self and my long struggle with finding or understanding closeness.
I think of one of my own friends. I became friends with Andrew in Jr. High. He was hilarious. I don’t remember how we started out as friends, probably just being in the same place often enough, but we probably cried from laughter everyday we hung out. Our friendship continued into freshman year of high school. Our moms would give rides home from school. We would talk about music and hang out in the hallways between classes. We were on the yearbook cover twice, just hanging out laughing.
Then he moved to Colorado. I remember feeling sad about this, but, as it would be with an adolescent, I didn’t know how to say that.
When he left, I would still go to our hallways and hangout alone. I did this until I was fortunate to grow closer with other friends from class and outside of school who would visit with me and eventually help me leave the hallways.
I haven’t thought about this in a long time. And it wasn’t until I saw this interview with the director of Close that it came back to me.
Later, Andrew and I would have a reunion as young men. He was returned from the Army and working on building a career in the music industry. I was finishing my undergraduate in English and obsessed with literature.
It wasn’t a moment for cinema, but it was a healthy moment to see him as a young man. It’s difficult to describe this closure, even now, but a phrase from the director’s interview comes to mind: “enormous closeness.” That much was certainly true. Days simply didn’t feel right if Andrew didn’t make it to school and getting familiar with his absence was challenging.
To Make Known
I think that language of “enormous closeness” is radically powerful. What rich language to describe something so vital to life but yet also so often ignored. I love the expression and struggle to understand it at the same time.
Later, when I was reconciling heartbreak after my first love, I would privately commit to hugging my friends every time I saw them. That pain solidified that I need tenderness, and my process in rediscovering this brought me to value friendship in a bright way.
It brings me to dwell on another powerful moment from the director’s interview: “...start to fear intimacy, seeing my fragility as a weakness rather than as a force.”
Losing a great friendship in Andrew and the intensity of loss in my first love demonstrated something vital to me, even if it was without saying. That is: I need people. This is what fragility looks like as a force. Fragility is the state of being impelled forward to see, meet, and love people.
When I think of the closeness I was trying to conjure up as a thought experiment in the previous letter, or the tremendous loss of people in my life, I have to think of it as the breaking point of intimacy. There simply is a need to be close with others.
It is interesting to know that the Latin root of intimacy is the verb to make known. There is a deep, deep need to make ourselves known to others. I cannot remember where I learned this was a weakness, that is perhaps a later letter, but the vitality attached to pursuing intimacy and making each other known in good company is a gift of life.
It’s especially precious for me to reflect that a growing friendship brought me to this realization. Life is rich.
Trevor
Now reading:
