In closing, Montaigne muses again over who might enjoy his essays, writing:

if these essays were worthy of being judged, I think they might not be much liked by common and vulgar minds, or by singular and excellent ones; the former would not understand enough about them, the latter too much. But they might get by in the middle region.

Given that this is one of the final volume one essays, it is one of the last where he can simply imagine his readers. By the time Montaigne begins volume two, he has achieved literary fame at a level that must have surprised him. He seemed to have reached an audience far and wide, but no doubt left his most enduring mark in his era on that middle region he desired to reach.

Of course now Montaigne is someone read in elite circles. His audience consists mostly of writers, with some philosophers and theologians still finding some value in his thoughts. French school children still read The Cannibals, but even in his home country, Montaigne isn’t canonical text like Shakespeare is for the English.

Today, we might think of these distinctions in class terms. Montaigne viewsd them in more practical terms. He had admiration and respect for peasants, but also understood their limitations and knew it was unlikely that he would reach that audience. But he had something close to contempt for the scholastics of his time — and much of this essay is taken up mocking the foolish intellectual games that they design to demonstrate how clever they are.

Which reminds me that in my songwriting class, one of the directions for our next assignment is “don’t be clever,” which I remarked came too late for me to save my first song, which was nothing but wordplay and jokes at the expense of the song’s main character.

Personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being clever, so long as it is not being used to show off and avoid reaching your audience sincerely. But then again, why does Montaigne care about sincerity if our personalities are these stitched together pieces of mismatched cloth? What are we being sincere about if there is no authentic “me” to display?

This returns me to the subject of the last essay, and perhaps Montaigne is saying that we need to be sincere about our acts of becoming. If there is no core being to show the world, then we need to be honest about our inconsistencies and revel in the contradictions.

In our patterns, some consistencies appear even if at times the boundaries blur. I woke in the middle of the night with a thought that my hobbies demonstrate my drives better than I might understand them.

In songwriting class yesterday, someone remarked about wanting to be a musician when he grew up, and it occurred to me that likely most of the people in the room shared that dream. But that was never my dream and still isn’t now. Music to me is a hobby of connection — I engage in music when I’m feeling a need to widen my circle of friendships. I recognize in most cases that I’m a less talented musician that the people around me. I accept that because being one of the best has never been my goal.

Sports — both those that I watch and in the physical activities in which I participate — are another form of friendship building to me. I understand my physical limitations and never compete with others. I stay in shape mostly to be the best version of me that I can. Likewise, I watch sports and participate in some games not to show off my knowledge or commitment to my teams, but to find some kinship with men, which the older I get, the harder it is to hold onto. I more naturally share and form connections with women these days. Sports are the only means left for me to connect to most men. I should add, by the way, that baseball is my best connection to my mother as well.

Movies have, at times, helped me stay closer to people as well, but for the most part I enjoy them as a solitary activity. Here, I actually have some ambition — I have probably always, on some level, wanted to be a film critic, and I watch movies as if I am one. This has led to the production of numerous books and may lead to more. It does make it hard for me to relate to many people about movies, however, because I have well developed tastes and don’t particularly care of few people share them.

I feel the same way about books. I have taken some literary classes at the Newberry Library and might enjoy adult education classes at the University of Chicago about great books. But I am not someone to join an informal book club and read a popular work — nor am I someone who gets caught up in the fever of the latest fantasy or sci-fi novel in a series. As with movies, I’m pretty much a snob when it comes to literature, and most of what I read is really to help fuel the things I write about.

Writing is the way I earn a living, so I feel obliged to improve my craft any way that I can. But it is something more, and here I reach the peak of the pyramid in all of my hobbies. Writing is my preferred form of self expression. It hasn’t always been my only kind, however. For a brief period, I dove into psychotherapy and thought the expression of my deepest, truest feelings could come from a strong therapeutic relationship.

This steered me into dangerous waters. I discovered, almost by accident, that reaching that point of expression and finding someone willing to share the experience with me was the nearest description I could find for the kind of love I craved. But this warped what was intended as a therapeutic relationship, and if I was seeking out a connection more like ones described by Carl Jung, I was doing so with someone not trained to handle it.

So I turned to finding an anima in other ways and used writing as the means of seeking and nurturing one. But that too turned into an equally perilous venture, because it led to building a deep bond with someone who may or may not have existed, at least as conceived in my imagination.

I continue to seek out forms of self expression not because I have a literary goal in mind or think it will lead to the creation of some kind of legacy work. I write in search of an elusive form of love, the one I most desire and may be the most unattainable.

I wish to be loved for my self expression, knowing that this desire brackets out most ways that people connect romantically and sexually. It’s likely unattainable. And yet I continue on the path. My faint hope is not that this direction will lead me to something or someone. It’s that the act itself is not a form of madness.