The great irony, the great pain of human relationships is that often they are not related: two loneliness collide without real communication, one or both of them direct to the other not as a person but as a projection, which confuses the closeness that is its many illusions – admiration, praise, desire. It's always dangerous and hurtful, and we almost never know – or don't want to listen to the parts of us that know – that it's happening until the turbine of the dynamic spits us out in bewildering confusion and a changed heart.
We interact all the time, of course, in the right ways – to get inspiration from another mind, to see the world through another set of eyes, to expand a set of hearts. But such use is very similar to the relationship between symbionts: two specialized organisms that enhance each other's strengths. Damage occurs when the relationship takes the form of parasite-host or predator-prey, where the user devours what has been consumed and discards it after consumption.
It can be difficult to see these dangerous situations within our own lives, but we can shine a light on them through the lives of others, real or imagined. The great gift of all works of imagination – books, theater, film – is that they bring our experience back to us, focused and clear, unfiltered by self-judgment or pride. That's why, as Zadie Smith observes in her excellent essay collection He is dead and He is alive (public library), the people about whom these works are curious are the “contradictory, lying, self-deceived, willfully blind, drunkards, irresolvable, imperfect, evil, sick, misguided, and divided” people—people that almost all of us have loved, or have had.
In one of the articles, included in the movie Tárhe paints a shocking picture of one with such power: A famous composer who likes to flirt and likes the image, he had some involvement, which has never been clearly detailed, with another woman and ended it suddenly, leaving his lover devastated by heartache and confusion, taking his breath away and giving the world the impression that it never happened:
First, like any bad person, [Tár] trying to cover his tracks. We watch her send emails to everyone she knows in the music community to warn them about an unstable young woman named Krista Taylor, who may be spreading false rumors about her. Then take a look at Twitter to see what rumors have spread around the world. We're starting to get the picture. Krista is a young, aspiring conductor. Tár was his mentor. And (secretly) her lover – albeit briefly… We have never met Krista, but from our words the many pleading emails she sent to Tár's assistant, we learn that the seemingly intense story about Krista didn't register on the radar of her old lover… For Tár, it's like it never happened at all. He's already into the next bug.
It is one of the most comforting experiences in life, because of feeling a deep connection with someone only to discover that it was nothing to them – a fleeting dream, an irrational experiment, a use. Smith writes:
There is a word for this behavior: instrumentalism. Using people as tools. As means rather than ends in themselves. To satisfy your desire, or your sense of your power, or just because you can.
Ultimately, the instrumentalist is left with the emptiness of his inability to communicate. We find Tár “finally stripped down, without theory, without defenses, without preconceived arguments,” facing the consequences of his lies, facing the ultimate truth:
There is no redemption. Nothing can be said or done without feeling it.
The irony, and perhaps redemption, is that the user always loses more than what was used, because one chose to erase and the other remains alive – the experience, no matter how painful, is not lived. A truly living person will always choose experience over resignation, because experience is the heartbeat of life while resignation – the obliteration of experience through denial, separation, and illusion – is always living death.
