friendship

Instant Friendship

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I’m sure I’m bringing nothing new to the table when I make the claim that instant communication has changed what friendship is all about. It might not have altered the definition of the word, but it has radically changed how we go about expressing it. You only have to take both the mobile telephone and the internet away for a moment to consider the implications.

I was at a party last night when this particular dilemma crossed my mind, and it occupied my brain for the greater part of the journey home across central London. I heard in passing a friend mention how he’d been on the phone to another friend of mine just that morning. In and of itself it shouldn’t have unsettled me, but it did, because in the entire time I’ve known that friend, I couldn’t remember a single occasion I’d called him on the phone. In fact, in the last fifteen years or so I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of friends I have spoken to over the phone, two of which one can write off instantly for being girlfriends (on the popular assumption that a relationship necessarily requires such amenities). For some reason, I’ve never been the type to ring up my friends. It’s not for want of things to say – I’m an infamous chatterbox in good company – but I’ve simply never known what to say over the phone.

Should this trouble me? On a purely superficial level, no. Friendship isn’t calculated on a basis of words per minute. And yet in today’s hyper-connected world, it’s very easy to feel that if you’re not the kind of person who enjoys texting, WhatsApp groups or catchups over the phone, you’re failing in your task as an attentive friend. Why wait months for your next personal encounter when you could fire off a quick Facebook message? People often say it’s the little things that count, and it’s the “little things” like this that social media and it’s various offspring facilitate. You can, of course, turn up your nose and say you’ll hold out for the next time you meet in person, but that is easier said than done when we must necessarily part ways to pursue our various careers, which may well be far away – another hurdle of modernity. The fickle hand of progress draws us together with one hand whilst the other does its level best to drive us apart.

I must endeavour to write more letters. We all must. Far too much emphasis is placed on speed and frequency of communication these days. One should consider that, if we lived in a time without social media, data or the telephone, insecurities such as these simply wouldn’t exist. But because we can now be reached at the touch of a button, we should be reached. There’s no excuse for sloth. You can apply the scenario to work; it’s the same problem there. There’s simply no escaping it now. We’ve made ourselves slaves to our own desire for immediacy.

Working in a boarding school has left me with little time or energy to write as of late, be that my books, my blog or even my letters. At the party last night I found myself speaking to “close friends” I had not spoken to in all of a year, two in some cases, to my shame. My workload is set to increase twofold next year, but despite the obvious hurdles I have yet to face, I mean to turn that trend around. I have to do what I can. Snail mail may not provide the instant satisfaction that WhatsApp delivers, but there is a genuine sense of joy to be found in patience. And patience is surely what friendship is all about, when it comes down to it.

I can only hope my friends have been patient with me. BB x

Pendulum

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I’ve been teaching myself how to say goodbye this summer. It’s a skill that must be learned as much as any, and one that, like most other things in life, improves with practice. After an exercise like a year abroad – where one has ample opportunity – you get to be quite proficient at the procedure. Sooner or later, with school and university fading into the ether, it becomes all the more apparent that some of the friends you once thought so close will, like so many treasured sandcastles, fade away with the tide. Staying in touch with the ones you love is a choice; moving on is a fact of life. Work, love and death all conspire to put a strain on ties that were once inseparable, and in some cases, blot out all but memory. This summer I’ve witnessed all three.

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Whilst I was up in Durham rehearsing for our Edinburgh Fringe show, I received the sad news that my dear friend Maddie had passed away. For almost five years she had fought the cancer that beset her upon her return from Uganda. It took her in the end. I’d like to think that when the time came, it was her will to go. She was like that; she did things her way. I was so shocked by the revelation that I spilled out the entire story of our friendship and our Ugandan adventures to a man I’d really only just met, who very kindly shouldered the outpouring with sage understanding. If it hadn’t been for the show, it would have paralysed me for another day, I shouldn’t wonder.

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There’s surely a special place for you, wherever you are, Maddie. Rarely has any one person had such an impact on me as you did, and at so crucial a junction. Whenever I needed somebody to knock some common sense into my wandering mind, you were there, with your dry wit, your raw honesty and your harmonica. You were a star and a half, in a sky full of people whom I call stars on a regular basis. I’m sorry I didn’t come with you to the dance party in Buhoma, that I allowed my hunt for the roller to delay me from getting your class photo in time, and that I never did watch Joyful Noise with the rest of you. I’ll remember you by the Top Cat theme that was your alarm, your endless cut-off attempts at Somewhere over the Rainbow and by the two machetes you insisted on having made for you. I’ll remember you also by your staunch refusal to search the dormitories, your ‘washing-up’ dance routine and your sheer bravery. But most of all, I’ll remember you by the fact that yours is the first real goodbye I’ve ever had to make.

Godspeed, Maddie. You’ll be a beacon to me forever.

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Having said my goodbyes to one dear friend, three weeks later found me making a different kind of farewell to another. Just as the Edinburgh Fringe was a delayed farewell to my beloved Lights, Andrew and Babette’s wedding was the moment delayed after Graduation to take my leave of some of my nearest and dearest from my degree. I surprised myself; where death and departure had brought me to the brink of tears, it took the spectacle of the first dance at the wedding reception for the dam to burst. I felt like I had known the man for fourteen years rather than four. I guess that’s what weddings do to you. This is where we diverge, the parting of the ways of a group that has been a core of my life for the last few years. And as you all set out to work in Albion, I’m the one leaving you all behind as I chase my dreams in Spain. Still I wish you all the best over the coming years, Mr and Mrs Moomin.

Godspeed, but not goodbye.

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A funeral and a wedding. A loss and a gain. The Lord giveth and he taketh away, and other such phrases to that effect. Two roads have split off from my own and gone down paths I cannot follow. I could hardly have asked for a more humbling way to take my leave of this fair country before I make my own way in the world. In autumn, of all seasons, just as England puts on her most beautiful coat of all.

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In my book, there are three kinds of goodbye, all of which I have now learned to use:

See you around. The easiest of the three. It could be a week or a while until we meet again, but I know that it will be soon enough.

Farewell. The second. The future is immense, and when and if we see each other again is beyond my knowledge. For my own sake, I hope that we do.

Goodbye. The last and the hardest. By my own definition, goodbye is final, and in all but the worst cases, made in the indefinite absence of the subject.

I must take my own road soon. It leads me first to Spain, that much I know, but beyond that is anyone’s guess. It has been a most educational summer. BB x

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Love out of Love

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

100 Days of Writing: Day Two

It’s been a long time now since I was in the vicious grip of infatuation. And long may it be until it gets me again! I don’t remember ever feeling so free or so happy over the last few years, and I suspect it’s got a lot more to do with me growing up than anything else. Today’s topic would have been easy enough to tackle, but the stipulation was that it had to be in verse…

Now I’m not a massive fan of poetry, even good poetry. And poetry about love is seldom good. Reading some of the tripe you came up with in younger years is gut-wrenching, to say the least, but if you thought that was hard, trying writing it when that’s all in the past… The words don’t come to you as quickly as they did then, when a bleeding heart makes for an endless inkwell (with the verbal talents of a stroppy teenager). And isn’t there something about the very art of love poetry which belies imbalance?

Nevertheless, orders are orders. So here’s Day Two: The Unrequited Love Poem.

Chasing Cars was playing
As we stepped into the light
And we went our separate ways.
I went up the road
And she went down.

There’s no easy method
To describe a broken heart
When the breaking is so soft.
‘Let’s be friends’
Hurts much more than it should.

Looking back is easy
From the freedom of release
When the world is more than two.
You can see
When you were blind before.

The traffic light is blue
The battle flag is waving
But it’s painted all in white.
There are no rules
All’s fair in love and war.

—–

Her every word is wisdom
And her laugh is summer rain
And hearts, parts and cupid’s darts
All blind you to the pain.

I’ve heard that nice guys finish last
Or something of that kind
That romance died off years ago
And love is hard to find.

The front row of the theatre
The poems she shared with you
They all mean next to nothing
If that’s what a friend would do.

Pity is a murderer
Luck does not keep giving
Fate is just a child’s word
Hope is unforgiving.

—–

It saddens me to think that when you’re young and love’s the end
The worst thing you could bear to hear is to be called her friend.

—–

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I am not a massive fan of poetry. Unless it’s Arabic poetry. I can totally dig that. BB x

Lee, Martha and Aidan

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Every once in a while one of those days comes around when everything that could possibly go wrong goes wrong. Yesterday was one of those days. It’s tempting fate to tell everybody you meet that it’s okay, you can stay out late tonight, because thank God it’s not tomorrow you have those extra three hours in the afternoon… and Fate is a devious little minx.

I think I got back from Martil at around two forty-five on Monday morning. It must have been close to that, as I recall the clock on my bedside table read three o’clock when I was setting the alarm for seven. I’d spent every last dirham of my small change – even those super-helpful half-dirhams – in a taxi spree over the weekend, so four hours’ sleep or none at all, I was simply going to have to walk this morning. The result was that I almost missed breakfast, zombied my way to school and pretty much sat through the morning class just blinking to stay awake. To make matters worse, I started ghosting during our preliminary discussion, cursing in my head every time my teacher came to the end of an explanation, questioned it (limaadha?), answered it, and went on to add yet another point (wa aidun). It can’t have been any longer a discussion than usual, but it seemed to drag on for hours.

Twelve o’clock was never more welcome than when it came, but five minutes before the hour one of my teachers popped his head round the door and informed me that my afternoon class – you guessed it – had been moved to Monday instead.

I didn’t have my Moriscos book. I didn’t have the necessary reading done. I didn’t have any coins for a taxi. I hadn’t had nearly enough sleep for a six-hour day. And now I didn’t even have enough time for lunch in between.

Kat came to my rescue and threw a few dirhams at me for the ride home. I made a beeline for the taxi ranks, rode home in the usual cramped conditions and collapsed straight into bed when I got back.

One hour later I was up again and motoring through the Spanish text in the Moriscos book on the Hornacheros, since I simply did not have the energy, even after an extra hour in bed, to power through twelve pages of Arabic. I barely had half an hour for that, as the host family (thankfully) insisted I have a quick lunch, which they’d sped up on my behalf.

And you know what? The punchline is as predictable and as priceless as the set-up: it turns out my teacher had got a little confused and my class need not have been moved at all, as it was meant for Tuesday anyway.

He was very apologetic on the whole swallowing-up-my-entire-afternoon front, but I didn’t really mind by that point. I think I’d simply given up caring. A Texan friend of mine once told me ‘you can sleep when you’re dead’ when I was in a similar frame of mind (refresh your memory here), and this time I bought it. Besides, it was a very enjoyable topic of discussion. At any rate, I didn’t exactly have long to dwell on it: Alex shifted his departure some seven hours earlier, and so I did the unthinkable and asked to leave class early, because come Hell, high water and all the paradoxes of Jahanna I was not going to let my dear friend leave without me.

I confess that I didn’t expect to spend my last hour with Alex helping him to dry-clean his clothes with a hairdryer. If the hotel staff had actually hung them out to dry like he’d asked instead of putting them through a second wash, I’m not sure what we would have done. But that made things a little easier, I guess. We walked down the alley from Reducto and every other Tetouani going about his business gave him something akin to a farewell salute, entreating him to return one day. It was quite something to see.

Five minutes later we’d exchanged farewells, shaken hands and gone our separate ways. It was both the easiest and the hardest goodbye I’ve ever had to make. Goodbyes are like little heartbreaks, I suppose; the more you go through, the easier they get. All the same, it wasn’t easy seeing that little yellow taxi turn out of Plaza Primo. I’ve been lucky enough over the last six weeks to have such a good friend so close at hand, especially after all of nine months in Spain on my own. I was looking for a good friend. I found one.

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This post is dedicated to you, bud. To a top hiking buddy, to shouldering all of those god-awful Clarkson impressions, to keeping me afloat with my Arabic, to stopping me from unleashing my personality test on everybody I met, to hearing me out when I had only war to predict and to being an all-round friend. It may be some time before our paths cross again, but they will. I promise. Until the next time, bud. BB x

Island

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It’s going to sound strange, but one of the hardest things about working in a school for me is seeing so many groups of children buddying up, being the best of friends and generally having a wonderful time of it. It’s heart-warming, soul-stirring… and also a little sad, when I stop to think about it. It makes you reflect a lot. Of course, there’s the odd kid like me in the ranks, but they’re (fortunately) very much in the minority.

Let me tell you what I mean.

School is a transitional stage. A crucial stage in life, granted, but a fleeting moment in the blink of years. The friends you make at school are, in all likelihood, bound to slip away into the ether over the years, like treasured childhood toys. Those that stick around are the fruit of a particularly strong friendship, and I don’t think it would be too far-fetched to state that that kind of friendship is slipping away too in the digital age, when anyone and everyone is attainable at the touch of a button. Nothing that’s precious is that easy.

Like I said, transitional. Your classmates are seldom your friends for life, especially if you move away. So it’s hardly practical to feel a little envious of the friendships your students have… Right?

Nonetheless, I confess that I do. Teaching brings you into contact with so many amazing, bright young things. Kids that make you laugh. Kids that make your heart melt with their kindnesses. Kids that blow your mind with the things they know. There’s more than one student of mine I’d point the finger at and say to myself ‘I would definitely have hung around with him if I went to school with them’.

This attitude is more than partly my fault. I’ve been a solitary individual since I was tiny, knowing myself better than I ever knew anybody else. That was probably born out of stubborn selfishness, but it’s developed into a keen understanding of my limits, my desires and my needs that I’m truly grateful for. That, paired with a blunt adherence to the honest truth, no matter how painful, doesn’t necessarily make for good friend material. But then, neither does the mindset; the constant searching for a best friend, that most unattainable of treasures. I don’t half wonder whether, like I did with my Princess, I set my standards too early on with the equally fictional Gabriel.

Growing up in a village was a major roadblock, unassisted by the fact that I went to a grammar school miles away, with the result that all of my friends lived on the other side of the county. My little brother managed it. I didn’t. There were certainly no kids in my village that I knew well enough to call ‘friends’; the few that I did know vanished one by one in an absurd streak of bad luck, and those left closest to me in age were the ones who chased me out of town once when they saw me out and about with my camera.

I wasn’t a loner. I always did have a large circle of friends, about whom I could flit easily. But I don’t know whether I ever truly fitted in. A social chameleon with a painful self-awareness. In those circles I usually played the role of second-fiddle, third wheel, the one on the outside looking in. The tag-along to a pair of solid mates. The boy in an otherwise all-girl friendship circle. The singleton in a group of couples. A constant crush of ‘Do you ever feel left out?’, ‘Is it them or me?’, ‘What am I doing wrong?’. I was doing a lot of running away back then. What I needed was a male role model, a camaraderie. Something to glue the works. My dad’s operatic circle and disinterest in outdoor activities hadn’t left me with the best preparation for the masculine environment of an all-boys school, even a long-haired, arty grammar school for boys.

Estranged at the age when sex, cars, football and a dozen other deeply uninteresting things became the talk of the day, I gave up on men and turned to women in search of a best friend. My justification was that the conversation level was generally better. I stand by that.

I guess I messed up somewhere. I surprised everyone by dating a girl and ‘not being gay after all’. I lost her for reasons beyond my control. In that year and a half – two, if you count the moping – I managed to ignore my former companions and lost out on the solidification of lasting friendships. I was left floating and I had nobody to blame but myself.

Here I am, seven years later, still floating. I’ve met so many wonderful people and made so many amazing friends, but that mythical best friend continues to elude me. That person who is always there. The one that makes me laugh. One I can always rely on. One who understands my passions and my many idiocies and can counter them or let me learn from my own mistakes when needed. There are at least three people in my life who answer to that description, and one of them is my mother, but my life choices have separated me from them for the foreseeable future.

My problem is that I think too much. I know me, and so far knowing myself has led me to distance myself subconsciously over the years in the knowledge that one day I’d be leaving England for my grandfather’s country. It’s made me isolate myself for my own good and prevented me from ever desiring or even understanding any kind of relationship that lasts less than forever and involves less than total trust. I’d like to blame a handful of people who openly told me they couldn’t trust me as a kid for that last one. But I am what I am, and what I am needs no excuses. Take it away, Gloria Gaynor.

I expect it’s the final hurdle that’s brought on this wave of introspection. What I should really be doing is packing, or better still working out what I can chuck so that I can feasibly get everything else home. Stuff. It truly is the bane of our lives. BB x