A Year* Of Living Publicly

February 2nd, 2024

(*) Caveat: This actually began in spring, so it hasn’t yet been a full year. I just wanted to echo the title of a movie I watched.

On September 15th, the IRL Movie Club organized its first-ever screenings around the country. Their selection: “Join or Die”, a documentary about the crisis of declining civic engagement and growing social isolation in the US. The IRL Movie Club was putting the demand in the title into practice by trying to spin up local movie clubs around the country.

I watched it later at home, since I couldn’t make it to the theater on the scheduled night. I wasn’t convinced by the diagnosis put forward, and I don’t think that encouraging people to join clubs will solve America’s problems, but the effects of this decline are visible everywhere. I feel it daily. And so I was encouraged by some voices, namely Jane McAlevey and Eddie Glaude, who were able to provide a more critical analysis of how we got here, and what traps we risk walking into without a principled counter to the causes. But it was a different, far more milquetoast voice that expressed the feeling that’s stuck with me the longest:

Paraphrased, what if we thought of our streets less as a way to move lots of cars around, but more as the place where community occurs? It put words to a project I’ve been engaged in for most of 2024.

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About a year ago, I wrote about the emptiness of my block and my stoop. Maybe it was the a broader adjustment to a living-amongst-COVID normal, or maybe it was an unseasonably nice spring and summer, but that notion of an empty block is so foreign now.

I made a point to sit out on the stoop nearly every day. If there was an activity I was doing inside that I just as reasonably could do outside, I carried myself and whatever accessories I needed down the steps, escorted by one of the two cats. I read more, drew more, and carved more down there. Though it may be more accurate to say “more often”, because I’d inevitably get interrupted by people stopping and chatting. Sometimes about what I was making or reading, far more often to admire the (“so well behaved!”) cat.

At least one neighbor was inspired to sit on his stoop more often with his partner in the morning sun. I met every member of a three person family, individually, before encountering them together and recognizing they were all related. They cat sit for us now. I’ve received (and delivered) baked goods to people whose phone numbers I don’t have, but I know they’re two doors down. I see shy people who say nothing but crane their necks looking for the cats when they’re in the shade. There’s a guy who talks a lot of shit about my art and its low quality, but still comes around to take a peek. There are waves and looks of recognition from people I embarrassing don’t remember ever speaking to.

It’s that last one that’s key. I have, or more realistically, my cat has, managed to become a fixture on the block. I’m recognized at least in context. When I started talking to some other community minded folks about this, I described it as “living publicly”.

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The people who pass by are invariably on their way to get somewhere. They’re in transit, but not in a car or bike. Being on foot means there’s a practical possibility of stopping and saying hi, or even just observing what’s going on, since their eyes aren’t on the road. Were I also walking, we’d just pass eachother. It’s essential, in this case, that I be stationary.

It’s also essential that I be on my stoop. I’ve received far more “what’re you reading?” questions on my stoop than I’ve ever received at a park. I honestly can’t remember that having occurred even once from a stranger. In a park, this public place, we enter into a silent contract of shared anonymity. There are some places, like the children’s playground, where that doesn’t hold, but out on the grass it seems the law of the land. The stoop is different. By sitting there with the front door open, I’m punching a hole in the membrane between public and private. This porosity invites the public into my semi-private space. Rather than tucked away deep in the building behind multiple closed doors, I’m living “at home” right here on the street.

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Robert Putnam, the central figure of Join or Die, posits that it was the TV that led to the decline of civic engagement. I’m not convinced. But the notion of screens mediating so much of our social interaction is probably more true than ever. My experience on the stoop indicates that people aren’t exactly stoked about that state of affairs.

It’s remarkable how much some people have opened up to me on our first encounter. Deaths (both pet and human). Legal troubles. Job struggles. Invitations to do some activity together (dates???). Admittedly, this is a sample drawn from the set of people who would talk to a stranger on a stoop, so perhaps it’s not representative of much. But there’s an apparent desire for meaningful connection right there.

A friend of mine invited me to a dinner party where the theme was “deep shit”, but the good kind. Talking about deep, meaningful matters. Here too was another person, or group of people, longing for connection. Given the nature of the evening, I told them all about “living publicly” and how it’s been going. As I anticipated, there was a fair amount of interest and I got several questions that I couldn’t answer at the time. That shortcoming actually prompted me to write all this. One question I was able to extemporaneously answer.

“What’s your goal for doing this? Are you looking to make more friendships?”

“I want to live embedded in a dense web of familiarity”

I don’t want new friends (although those are great, too!). I’m not looking for a group to join (I have a couple that I’m already committed to, that have been incredibly enriching in a short period of time). I’m not trying to feel more safe in my neighborhood (I don’t feel at all unsafe, and really only lock the front door to protect me from closing it poorly and having the cats run away). All I want is to chip away, even just a little bit, at the atomization of contemporary American urban life. It wasn’t always like this, and doesn’t need to be like this.

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In early December, my immediate and extended family and I travelled to Nicaragua to see family and celebrate some important anniversaries. On one day, we stopped in Masaya to visit my dad’s cousin. We rolled up to his home where he was already seated on the sidewalk in a plastic chair, waving to and chatting with passers-by. He saw us and momentarily disappeared into the garage, later emerging with four more chairs. He gestured to the sidewalk and street as he arranged the chairs, and invited us to join him there in his “living room”.