Maybe I’m awkward
When he was 37 years old, Walt Whitman wrote “Song of Myself” a 50 page magnum opus in his magnum opus, Leaves of Grass. This poem, which I read for the first time this week, is a long and sprawling awareness. An ode to life and to death. To Earth, to humans, to existence. At some moments it’s unfathomable in its perfection and at other it’s psychotic in its detail. It’s terrifying in all the right ways, truly a masterpiece. No notes.
Whitman self-published Leaves of Grass for the first time in 1855 and then kept editing, revising, adding, subtracting and otherwise messing about with it all the way until he died in 1892. From the time he first published, meaning that beforehand he spent at least a little time beforehand writing, until his death, was over half the time he was alive. He also had loads of jobs and Leaves of Grass was kind of a side hustle (which, by the way, got him fired from one of those jobs).
Do you ever think about your magnum opus? Does everyone have one or do we need to have a pedantic argument about the definition of “artist” or “writer” or “musician”? I would think that it doesn’t matter what exactly you do in the course of your life, we are built to create and be creative. Surely every one has something they create, even if it’s creating a warm atmosphere for guests or creating awkward silence with your awkwardness. What impact does the awkward silence have on the people experiencing it and could it be that someone else’s experience in that moment is closer to an epiphany then you might have thought? Have you had a magnum opus of awkward silence that caused a stir in someone else that led to them creating their own magnum opus? Probably not something that is knowable.
Random aside: Frankly, it was an awkward silence that led me to a personal rule about not attending parties on boats. This personal rule kept me safely ashore while others were busy lamenting about having gotten on the boat at least once, and I’d wager that it I lived in a place where boat parties were more common, it would have saved me multiple times. The rule can be extrapolated to being about personal freedom and choice, of course. You need to be able to leave the party.
Back to the matter at hand, a synonym for magnum opus is a “masterpiece”, which is defined as “a creation that has been given much critical praise”. Critical praise. Sometimes the praise part happens after you’re dead though, as was mostly the case with Leaves of Grass.
A summary of the questions currently in the air:
- Can anyone potentially have a magnum opus provided they do the thing and tell people about the thing?
- What is your magnum opus?
- What is mine*?
*If I knew wtf it was, I would start working on said masterpiece. I’m late.
- Song of Myself by Walt Whitman > https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45477/song-of-myself-1892-version
- FBT on Brain rot and bots > https://www.laurahilliger.com/?mailpoet_router&endpoint=view_in_browser&action=view&data=WzI5MSwiMDA0MjFkY2QwZmU1IiwwLDAsMzgzLDFd
- Philosopher’s Stone (guess how I got here, jfc) > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher’s_stone
Maybe I’m anti-conformist
image credit goes to the European Center for Not-for-Profit Law
I don’t really think of myself as a poetry person, but I have, over the years, tried to put classic literature and poetry into my mind. I try to put all sorts of things into my mind because I’m pretty sure my brain is deteriorating at an alarming rate, and despite the fact that “Song of Myself” has a few lines about how death is a lucky occurrence, despite my life-long, passive, suicidal ideation and despite the idea that if your brain dies, you cease to be, I’m still doing that very mortal behaviour of trying to save myself.
Every one is seemingly on vacation, and I’m still here, so it’s a good time to be considering solitude. On my bike ride to the office, I was introduced to the concept of “civic solitude” vis a vie the always excellent Philosophy Bytes podcast. In one respect, the term is kind of shorthand for “being a good citizen means being educated and thinking about stuff sometimes.” I guess that’s useful if you ever get into an argument with an overzealous party-line parroter? “Sorry, Greg, I think you need to participate in some civic solitude instead of continuing to watch Fox News.”
More interesting around this respect is the reflection that we don’t really have non-partisan public spaces for our civic solitude to exist (emphasis mine):
“Public spaces have become saturated with calls to partisanship. In the United States today, not only in the United States today, where you buy your groceries, you buy your coffee in the morning, what kind of car you drive, what kind of occupation you work at, where you live, even within large cities like Manhattan and New York, are all hives for co partisans. Shopping at Whole Foods is a partisan coded activity. Partisanship is correlated with how much time you spend in a park. Liberals are much more likely to be in parks than conservatives. If you’re a conservative, you’re much more likely to vacation close to a lake where there’s fishing. In other words, it’s not merely just Walmart versus Target, which is also heavily partisan coded in the United States. It’s not just yoga pants versus camouflage.” Robert Talisse
Yoga pants versus camouflage!? What the hell am I going to do with my camouflage pattern yoga pants!?
In another respect the term “civic solitude” seems to be about considering anti-conformity as a form of democratic behaviour. We humans have an innate need to belong. We sacrifice (and are bullied) to fit it. Being your own authentic self and not giving a toss what other people have to say about it is uncomfortable and it’s impossible for some people.
Anti-conformity isn’t necessarily a safe behaviour, so maybe if you are aware of your conformity and choose to conform anyway (e.g. wear the right colours to the football stadium so that the home team fans don’t give you trouble), that’s ok. And maybe if you are a person who thinks being anti-conformist is easy you should sit down and have a thinky-poo about your privilege.
Nuance is important. There are never just two sides. Being able to pick through the complexities of human existence does, indeed, require some solitude. More so though it requires the friction of being confronted with ideas that you hadn’t yet considered and being open to the friction.
- Robert Talisse on Civic Solitude > https://philosophybites.com/podcast/robert-talisse-on-civic-solitude/
- ‘Generations of women have been disfigured’: Jamie Lee Curtis > https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/jul/26/jamie-lee-curtis-interview-plastic-surgery-power-age-freakier-friday
- Why Now Is the Moment to Back Up the Web > https://wiobyrne.com/now-is-the-moment-to-back-up-the-web/
- When We Get Komooted > https://bikepacking.com/plog/when-we-get-komooted/
- Signal President Meredith Whittaker calls out agentic AI as having ‘profound’ security and privacy issues > https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/07/signal-president-meredith-whittaker-calls-out-agentic-ai-as-having-profound-security-and-privacy-issues/
Maybe I need help
A problem, I think, is that we aren’t as open to friction as we used to be. We are afraid of friction leading to fire because we’re inundated with dumpster fire at the moment, and we have been for a while.
I’m certainly scarred from having approached someone thoughtfully and rationally and kindly and having had them flip out on me. I am 100% worried about my own ability to keep a rational and kind head on when some of that friction revolves around human rights. More and more I find myself uncontrollably angry at people who do not understand solidarity.
(Featured image originally from this Barcelona based artist)