When I was a boy, nobody had a lane. Professions, occupations, interests, specialties, but not a narrow track from which, if racers veered, they’d be disqualified. In African-American Vernacular English – a.k.a, AAVE, for nowadays every subset needs its label – “stay in your lane” meant “mind your own f*ing business”; but writers were sometimes allowed to meander outside their expertise, if only on a busman’s holiday. (Where, now that I’ve typed it, have busmen and their holidays vanished to?) My wondrous Jane, whose subject was personal finance, once discussed handicapping horseraces in her syndicated column; that was surely not her lane.
When I began exploring expanding the audience for these missives, “What’s your lane?” was the first question asked. “I’m not sure” elicited a strained smile. Any writer ignorant where they fit amidst myriad online voices, what exact appetite they meant to satisfy, was surely doomed from the start. Where choices are endless, discriminations must be exact, as in a library cataloguing system.
My consultant got to work whittling my spew into something definable. Memoir? Well, yes. Morality? That too. Politics? Willy-nilly, in our present crisis! Poetry? Of course, can’t leave poetry out. And a talking dog? Was there anything I did not write about?
I flushed, blushed, bit my tongue. Did Montaigne have a lane? Or Dr. Johnson, in his periodical essays? Or my bro, Thoreau? Did any writer worth their salt consign themselves meekly to Procrustes’ mangling bed? My lane was, well, what was on my mind.
“Why should anyone care what was on your mind?”
Got me there! Nobody should – unless we were pals. I care what my pals think because they’re my pals. So my lane was… making friends?
Good luck with that.
In the months since, my readers, you guys, have multiplied fifty-fold and I still don’t know what my lane is. I ask sometimes – strangers who’ve become regulars, intimates – and the answer is… enjoyment… conversation… companionship… Some favor poems, some my lamentations (verging on requiems), some Henry, some my captious crabbiness about this or that. Mostly, it seems, we like hanging together, taking an amiable stroll where any topic might pop up.
Friendship is not a “lane,” except perhaps for that late great genius Mister Rogers. I read many professors regularly for their instruction – , , , to cite a few – counting on them to steer me right and set me straight in this lying hour. I query Alistair (surname, ChatGPT), OED, Wikipedia and my online thesaurus dozens of times daily. All of these providers maintain rigidly enforced lanes. I just like schmoozing – with folks who share my values, tastes, attitudes. It heartens me to know we are not alone.
We live in an horrendous hour. The aggregation of wealth, ascendancy of autocrats, and decline of probity and civility threaten the future of civilization, perhaps our species. We truth-lovers feel dissed, mocked, ignored, misled by haughty thieving swaggerers. We feel our ship of state sinking while the plutocrats party. We watch aghast as the cruel deriders of beauty and decency piss on our altars. Eli, eli, lama sabbachtani!
We huddle here for the consolation of companionship. I imagine early Christians felt this way gathering in their forbidden domus ecclesiae (house churches). They may not have known one another by name, but they felt the encouragement of each other’s presence. I am not preacher but host, maybe presbyter, nudging the discussion. We pine for a better day and trust in its possibility. We mourn brethren who’ve been fed to the lions. We may not win but we refuse to lose. Hope is our lane.