This week, I had the opportunity to attend a seminar with Adam Robersmith on the topic of “public intimacy.” This was aimed towards folks who practice intimate emotional connection as part of their work: actors, activists, sex workers, and clergy. He defines public intimacy as “the act of revealing a genuine self in a public setting.” The concept of intimacy is something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past while, and this class was a delightful discovery that there is a great depth of writing and research on this topic. I sense this will be the beginning of a rabbit hole for me!
From my vantage point in the United States, we use the word intimacy most commonly as a euphemism for sex. As if being naked and rubbing some bits together inherently provides one with some deeper knowledge of another. Sure—you know what the other looks like naked, you may even see a side of them that few others do—but intimacy is not required for nor acquired through the act of sex. In Robersmith’s dissertation, he talks about intimacy as epistemology (a word I have to look up in the dictionary every time)—a way of knowing. The question is: what are we knowing? This is where the clarity breaks down if we don’t follow through on being specific. Robersmith discusses how true intimacy is created through knowing the other and knowing ourselves, and perhaps most crucially: allowing ourselves to be known by the other. This requires vulnerability (scary) and truthful communication (hard).
Some of my most intimate relationships, where I feel truly known, are with people whom I’ve never had a sexual relationship. They are also fully voluntary relationships, not ones that are shaded by familial, financial, or other obligations. Perhaps this is part of the key: truthful communication can be more accessible when we enter this brave space of what feels like a sort of surrender. While it would hurt to lose this kind of relationship, its continuance is completely up to us, not dictated by outside forces. We may not take the relationship for granted. It is held together by our care and willingness. It is not merely a desire to share knowledge of ourselves, but also to receive it from the other.
Though it can seem like reception is a passive act, I think it actually may be the harder of the two. Many people are ever-willing to give help, and struggle greatly to receive it. Reception requires vulnerability, which demands bravery. As has been said by many people in different ways, courage isn’t a lack of fear, but a willingness to move through it.
Benz & Shapiro1 talk about how communication motivated by an intent to protect (the self, the status quo, harmony, etc) blocks the truthful exchange of knowledge. In this shifting, horrifying world, it is a natural impulse to try and hold to what seems familiar or stable. Learning new things about ourselves and others carries the possibility of upending the status quo. It takes a leap of faith to reorient ourselves to what matters most. Is it the preservation of familiarity and relative comfort, or is it the desire to truly know and be known?
But let’s go back to the concept of public intimacy. It strikes me that the professions of the people Robersmith studied all function as conduits for emotion. As I listened to him speak, I thought also of the role of professional mourners: wailing, crying over the lost as a way of shepherding others into grief. Acting as a lightening rod for the emotions that are felt but not expressed by others: giving them permission to unearth what has been buried, stuffed down.
Many people are made extremely uncomfortable by displays of emotion, particularly public ones. I would argue that the discomfort is located in fear—a fear that these emotions will surface in them, that they will lose control, that the force of these repressed feelings will shake apart their lives. It’s not an irrational fear. These are real possibilities. This is why acts defined as public intimacy are so terribly threatening to those who wish to control and maintain power.
I think of people who lived lives fully as themselves, displaying a brutal courage and commitment to being true & truthful, being fiercely devoted to being known, despite the sometimes deadly consequences. I think of every social panic, based in a rabid terror of people conceiving of a way of being that diverged from the comfy (for some) status quo. The resurrection of the idea of “social contagion,” most visible currently in the panic over trans people. Don’t you dare be yourself that way—other people might get ideas!! It’s no shocker that the most fanatical homophobes frequently are discovered to be gay themselves. They are trying to control free expression because they are terrified of themselves and how their lives and social status will change if they allowed themselves to be moved by this brave display of self.
I have a lot more to say on this topic, and a lot more reading I’d like to dive into. There will be more to come! I’ve blown past my self-imposed publishing deadline this week* so I will leave it here for today.
*Because I’ve been working on a brand new act that debuts TONIGHT at the Révéler Experiences Cabaret! I think the last time I made a truly new act was 2019. The cabaret always sells out, so snag your tickets right meow!
If you can’t get a seat at the cabaret, you can engage with a different facet of my work at the opening reception for the Art Works All-Media Show tonight! My first and most ambitious (that’s how I roll) linocut, pictured above, was accepted into this month’s Dark Art show, and will be on display for the next few weeks.
Bentz, Valerie, and Jeremy Shapiro. 1998. Mindful Inquiry in Social Research. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, Inc. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452243412.