This feels very relevant to me having just moved in with 2 other people, after having lived mainly alone for the past few years. It's only been 4 days but so far it's weird. The vibes! Had my first alone time today cos my houseys are away for the day and, oh boy, all the emotions that'd been hiding started shaking out.
To me alone time is reset/unwind time. I have a mentor who once spent 3 years living entirely alone on an island in the Philippines. His whole human persona thing just walked out the door. Sounds to me like heaven.
Arriving for a year in Tokyo at age 21 sounds like heaven. My first solo trip was at the same age, to a zen monastery where I lived for 3 months. A different kind of alone. In meditation. Other human bodies around, but each going right inside their own selfhood.
It was great. I was depressed and obsessed with god. I was reading loads of different spiritual stuff at the time but when I found a zen book in the library, it rang right through me and I knew I needed to follow it. Did some research, quit the extra year of music uni degree course I was pretending to attend and went to a zen temple in France to get a real education. So we kinda sorta share that Japanese connection 🙃 I often didn't know which of their customs were french and which were Japanese/Zen. It was a whole cute mix.
I was worried all the meditation would suck me further into my own little socially-disconnected spiritual-rapture land, but it had the opposite effect. I grew legs for walking in the world with. Highly recommended 🤗
And yeah, monk vibes are quieter. I love being around human organisms without any "people" present.
Later, when I lived next to, and practiced daily in a Taoist temple, some of the monastics there told me they could always tell when the master came back from a trip away because his vibes were so palpable (they mimed the feeling of it, like a "whompwhompwhaawwwmppp")
Oh my god the master vibes sound effect!!! Love it. I definitely think some people have stronger vibes than others. My kid has very quiet vibes, you can barely feel him in the house. You can chill alongside him and it’s super soothing. My husband by comparison has super loud vibes, I remember my mother visiting us once from Serbia and explaining how she always feels she’s in his way even though he’s always super nice to her and most of the time wasn’t even in the same room but she was like ‘I can feel him vibrating from two rooms over’.
Man I miss her.
This actually makes me think about how senses can sharpen through living a certain way. Like I wonder if people who live alone in remote areas have better vibe detectors because their palate is cleansed so to speak. I remember when I first came to Japan certain foods seemed very bland, but deepened in flavor over the year as my mouth got adjusted to a milder, lighter diet than what I was used to.
I can feel him vibrating from two rooms over. That's hilarious and brilliant.
I once did a vibes exercise in a dance class. One person was blindfolded as other participants walked close to them and around them and the blindfolded person had to report what they could feel. I could feel... A LOT. I guess it kinda gave me permission to report things I felt about people that I normally don't speak. Blindfolds are like truth serums. And I didn't know who anyone was, I'd just describe their vibes. One woman told me later she went through a major process because what i said about her rang so true but nobody had ever said it to her before 😅
Oh wow that’s crazy!! But like in a super good way!! There must be so many of these delicate human senses we don’t notice because our minds are drowning in excess stimulation
I was skeptical of the whole vibe cloud thing when you first mentioned it, but you are pretty convincing. Extreme loner here, who lives alone in the wilderness with his dog.
So many great thoughts here. Very much resonate with:
"Tell me if this makes sense to you, but I feel people carry around them a cloud of atmosphere. There’s a whole vibe around every single person, and when you share the same space with someone, your vibes intermingle. You can feel them even from the next room, even with the door closed. You know that feeling when you step in through the front door, and as you’re putting down your keys you immediately know if someone’s home or not? Vibes."
I don't think that the vibes "don't travel via digital connection" exactly though ... I think they are muted in transmission but can still exist to a lesser degree. Depending on the connection and the content and the intention put into it. Mostly it doesn't translate but some vibes between people still do. Kinda like a phone connection traveling through a place mostly without service.
Yes, for sure. I’m not one to knock technology, in today’s day and age when we’re all dispersed in every corner of the world, I am so grateful for the relationships I can maintain over long distance. Even here on SubStack we sort of hang out and there are certain vibes. But in-person vibes are different for sure.
I just love your writing Lidija. I get the whole ‘vibes’ thing. I’ve house shared in different constellations for many years and I mostly like it. However after some years of cohabiting in challenging circumstances I lived alone for a few years and it was both necessary and very healing.
That said I had my two dogs with me. Their vibe helps and I don’t think I would have enjoyed it without them.
Yes, animal vibes are very soothing, I’ve always found this too. Even my tiny tiny fish have soothing vibes.
I have never lived alone outside that one year in Tokyo but that year was hands down the best of my life (obviously not just because of the solitude hahah). Since the pandemic my husband has been working from home and it has been… an adjustment for sure. To all the vibes. I think ADHD folks might be extra vibe-sensitive, I dunno. Anyway he changed jobs and now goes to the office twice a week and those 8 vibeless hours are made of pure gold ⭐️
It's so hard to leave that button just sitting there unclicked though!
There was that thing on twitter / X when Elon announced they were gonna make likes invisible so you don't know whose liking what and on the first day of it he celebrated that likes were up by whatever many percent but many people concluded it was just because people were liking their own posts! What we do when we know nobody's looking!
I don’t hate that as a notion. I just have a hard time applying it myself. Same as I have a hard time hanging my own art on my walls, but I know an absolute ton of artists that have their own art all over their place.
Oh my, I loved this article so much. I never could articulate why I love writing at night when everyone is asleep. I would just say that the energy is quiet. But the picture you created of their vibe quiet and tendrils drawn in, made a lot of sense and created an image for me now. Also, I try to be mindful of tangibly appreciating things I receive online, but the way you wrote about it, I will be extra mindful to appreciate it like I would in person.
Big believer in the Vibes Theory. Since starting Dear Magician, I have had the experience many times of seeing friends and acquaintances in real life, and them telling me face to face that they read my writing, that they love it, etc. It happened over the weekend with my friend Pat at Folk Festival. He said "Your writing is really good!"
Then he said "Maybe I shouldn't have said anything!"
I said "No, thanks for saying so, because often I write something and very little comes back, and it can be disheartening. It means a lot when people tell me they like what I'm doing."
I'm not the type to ever shill for likes, basically I am never going to say Like, Follow, Subscribe- that is not my way! I'd find it embarrassing!- but still, it does baffle me that people can't push a tiny button after reading something for free that might have taken me five days work. If I read something I love, I will tend to like at the least, more likely I will leave a comment.
Also applies in real life, if someone you know is doing good work, for the Gods' sake tell them so! Let your words fly freely like little birds to settle on the shoulders of a fellow maker for a minute, it costs you nothing but a little bit of thought and a moment of vulnerable realness, and it means so much to the receiver!
Yeah I also can’t do the ‘smash that ‘like’ button!!’ thing. I guess I approach this like making friends. You don’t advertise to friends, you talk to friends. And if they like you they hang around.
The Oscar Wilde quote is perfection!! I think that, even when you're with others, if one of you is scrolling the vibes reduce too. When the other is scrolling is as if they are asleep. I liked your 'drivers vs sidewalk' comparison and find it similar to the idea Nietzsche had of war: killing with a blade requires vibes very different than killing from afar with bow and arrow or with a gun. (I too studied something with absolutely zero chance of practical career application! High-5!). And the freedom of being yourself when you're travelling and you don't have familiar points of reference?! I call that 'leaving home without your name'. Ahhh such a great article!! You're so cool and if you'd like to be more of a person and establish some real-life connections despite the medium, and stretch out your tendrils, check out the Postcard Club here on substack ;)
A Postcard Club sounds amazing, I will definitely check that out! Yes I agree the phone is a hypnotic device. I have a rule with my friends absolutely no phones when we’re hanging out because it’s really such a mood killer.
So what’s your super useless but really interesting degree? High five!🖐️
Yes I also agree about the Nietzsche thing, I really believe people have a disconnect with the act of killing when they are sitting in a control room somewhere and piloting a drone that shoots people miles away like little ants on a screen. Versus having to, like, personally slit someone’s throat and watch the life drain from their eyes.
I like the image of being somewhere without your name, it feels very fitting. It’s nice sometimes to not have to be your regular self and carry all the labels you usually carry.
Yeah it’s funny, we generally laugh at the ‘your aura is purple’ type people, and sure enough many of them might be a little bonkers, but I definitely think there’s more to interaction than we mostly consider.
Like just the fact that with some people you feel immediately at ease and with others you feel immediately wary and they literally don’t have to say anything or even make a gesture. I remember one time when Lu was just two years old - in fact I think we were celebrating his second birthday, some friends came over and Lu walked up to this guy he had literally never seen in his life (who was doing absolutely nothing to attract his attention, by the way, and Lu is usually very farouche), and was just following him around our place basking in his energy with his little face turned up as if this man were the sun itself. What magic of vibes was that? It was weird but also very sweet. The man himself was super surprised and confused but also happy.
Vibes can also go counter to actual behavior. I have known many people who were on the surface super nice and sweet and smiley and didn’t do absolutely anything wrong to me but I just had a deep-seated bad feeling about them, like I knew it was all fake. And conversely others who tried to make themselves seem very rough and abrasive and I was like ‘nah, you’re alright’. It’s definitely odd.
Yes to the people with a prickly or weird vibe who are actually amazing, there can be a kind of double bluff at play. For instance Wizards are often quite grumpy. Performative vs genuine vibes
Agreed with everything you said except the equal sign between Jews and Zionists. It’s never good to blame something on an entire religion/ ethnicity. But yes, it’s extremely frightening that nobody can stop the US/Israel madness.
I understand, I am sure you do not mean it in a negative way. But expressing things a certain way gives room to other people with bad intentions to twist our words, so better to keep that door closed.
It is indeed very painful to watch and I really hope some resolution comes soon.
I was immediately reminded of a song I like
https://open.spotify.com/track/2C6QUOsR7PfEm3EpXOLvjv?si=fWrRuITbSEue7OsgBcPTyQ
This feels very relevant to me having just moved in with 2 other people, after having lived mainly alone for the past few years. It's only been 4 days but so far it's weird. The vibes! Had my first alone time today cos my houseys are away for the day and, oh boy, all the emotions that'd been hiding started shaking out.
To me alone time is reset/unwind time. I have a mentor who once spent 3 years living entirely alone on an island in the Philippines. His whole human persona thing just walked out the door. Sounds to me like heaven.
Arriving for a year in Tokyo at age 21 sounds like heaven. My first solo trip was at the same age, to a zen monastery where I lived for 3 months. A different kind of alone. In meditation. Other human bodies around, but each going right inside their own selfhood.
Monastery sounds like a unique experience! Are monk vibes quieter? How come you ended up doing that?
It was great. I was depressed and obsessed with god. I was reading loads of different spiritual stuff at the time but when I found a zen book in the library, it rang right through me and I knew I needed to follow it. Did some research, quit the extra year of music uni degree course I was pretending to attend and went to a zen temple in France to get a real education. So we kinda sorta share that Japanese connection 🙃 I often didn't know which of their customs were french and which were Japanese/Zen. It was a whole cute mix.
I was worried all the meditation would suck me further into my own little socially-disconnected spiritual-rapture land, but it had the opposite effect. I grew legs for walking in the world with. Highly recommended 🤗
And yeah, monk vibes are quieter. I love being around human organisms without any "people" present.
Later, when I lived next to, and practiced daily in a Taoist temple, some of the monastics there told me they could always tell when the master came back from a trip away because his vibes were so palpable (they mimed the feeling of it, like a "whompwhompwhaawwwmppp")
Oh my god the master vibes sound effect!!! Love it. I definitely think some people have stronger vibes than others. My kid has very quiet vibes, you can barely feel him in the house. You can chill alongside him and it’s super soothing. My husband by comparison has super loud vibes, I remember my mother visiting us once from Serbia and explaining how she always feels she’s in his way even though he’s always super nice to her and most of the time wasn’t even in the same room but she was like ‘I can feel him vibrating from two rooms over’.
Man I miss her.
This actually makes me think about how senses can sharpen through living a certain way. Like I wonder if people who live alone in remote areas have better vibe detectors because their palate is cleansed so to speak. I remember when I first came to Japan certain foods seemed very bland, but deepened in flavor over the year as my mouth got adjusted to a milder, lighter diet than what I was used to.
I can feel him vibrating from two rooms over. That's hilarious and brilliant.
I once did a vibes exercise in a dance class. One person was blindfolded as other participants walked close to them and around them and the blindfolded person had to report what they could feel. I could feel... A LOT. I guess it kinda gave me permission to report things I felt about people that I normally don't speak. Blindfolds are like truth serums. And I didn't know who anyone was, I'd just describe their vibes. One woman told me later she went through a major process because what i said about her rang so true but nobody had ever said it to her before 😅
Oh wow that’s crazy!! But like in a super good way!! There must be so many of these delicate human senses we don’t notice because our minds are drowning in excess stimulation
I was skeptical of the whole vibe cloud thing when you first mentioned it, but you are pretty convincing. Extreme loner here, who lives alone in the wilderness with his dog.
Safe from the vibes ❤️ It must be very soothing.
So many great thoughts here. Very much resonate with:
"Tell me if this makes sense to you, but I feel people carry around them a cloud of atmosphere. There’s a whole vibe around every single person, and when you share the same space with someone, your vibes intermingle. You can feel them even from the next room, even with the door closed. You know that feeling when you step in through the front door, and as you’re putting down your keys you immediately know if someone’s home or not? Vibes."
I don't think that the vibes "don't travel via digital connection" exactly though ... I think they are muted in transmission but can still exist to a lesser degree. Depending on the connection and the content and the intention put into it. Mostly it doesn't translate but some vibes between people still do. Kinda like a phone connection traveling through a place mostly without service.
Yes, for sure. I’m not one to knock technology, in today’s day and age when we’re all dispersed in every corner of the world, I am so grateful for the relationships I can maintain over long distance. Even here on SubStack we sort of hang out and there are certain vibes. But in-person vibes are different for sure.
I just love your writing Lidija. I get the whole ‘vibes’ thing. I’ve house shared in different constellations for many years and I mostly like it. However after some years of cohabiting in challenging circumstances I lived alone for a few years and it was both necessary and very healing.
That said I had my two dogs with me. Their vibe helps and I don’t think I would have enjoyed it without them.
Thank you 😊
Yes, animal vibes are very soothing, I’ve always found this too. Even my tiny tiny fish have soothing vibes.
I have never lived alone outside that one year in Tokyo but that year was hands down the best of my life (obviously not just because of the solitude hahah). Since the pandemic my husband has been working from home and it has been… an adjustment for sure. To all the vibes. I think ADHD folks might be extra vibe-sensitive, I dunno. Anyway he changed jobs and now goes to the office twice a week and those 8 vibeless hours are made of pure gold ⭐️
Enjoy! My partner is away for a few days and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy this time to have the space to myself 😅
It’s just so we can miss them more and be happy when they come back 😊
Question: do you give yourself a like when nobody's looking? 😄
Omg how cheeky!! ⭐️ I have actually seen it recommended to boost the algo but haven’t quite worked up the nerve yet.
Hehe. It's weirdly embarrassing right?
It's so hard to leave that button just sitting there unclicked though!
There was that thing on twitter / X when Elon announced they were gonna make likes invisible so you don't know whose liking what and on the first day of it he celebrated that likes were up by whatever many percent but many people concluded it was just because people were liking their own posts! What we do when we know nobody's looking!
Omg that is gold!!! Perverse incentives and unintended consequences is another great article idea hahah
I don’t hate that as a notion. I just have a hard time applying it myself. Same as I have a hard time hanging my own art on my walls, but I know an absolute ton of artists that have their own art all over their place.
Oh my, I loved this article so much. I never could articulate why I love writing at night when everyone is asleep. I would just say that the energy is quiet. But the picture you created of their vibe quiet and tendrils drawn in, made a lot of sense and created an image for me now. Also, I try to be mindful of tangibly appreciating things I receive online, but the way you wrote about it, I will be extra mindful to appreciate it like I would in person.
That makes me very happy to hear ❤️ I feel like there might be a lot of us who love the night for this reason ⭐️
Big believer in the Vibes Theory. Since starting Dear Magician, I have had the experience many times of seeing friends and acquaintances in real life, and them telling me face to face that they read my writing, that they love it, etc. It happened over the weekend with my friend Pat at Folk Festival. He said "Your writing is really good!"
Then he said "Maybe I shouldn't have said anything!"
I said "No, thanks for saying so, because often I write something and very little comes back, and it can be disheartening. It means a lot when people tell me they like what I'm doing."
I'm not the type to ever shill for likes, basically I am never going to say Like, Follow, Subscribe- that is not my way! I'd find it embarrassing!- but still, it does baffle me that people can't push a tiny button after reading something for free that might have taken me five days work. If I read something I love, I will tend to like at the least, more likely I will leave a comment.
Also applies in real life, if someone you know is doing good work, for the Gods' sake tell them so! Let your words fly freely like little birds to settle on the shoulders of a fellow maker for a minute, it costs you nothing but a little bit of thought and a moment of vulnerable realness, and it means so much to the receiver!
Yeah I also can’t do the ‘smash that ‘like’ button!!’ thing. I guess I approach this like making friends. You don’t advertise to friends, you talk to friends. And if they like you they hang around.
The Oscar Wilde quote is perfection!! I think that, even when you're with others, if one of you is scrolling the vibes reduce too. When the other is scrolling is as if they are asleep. I liked your 'drivers vs sidewalk' comparison and find it similar to the idea Nietzsche had of war: killing with a blade requires vibes very different than killing from afar with bow and arrow or with a gun. (I too studied something with absolutely zero chance of practical career application! High-5!). And the freedom of being yourself when you're travelling and you don't have familiar points of reference?! I call that 'leaving home without your name'. Ahhh such a great article!! You're so cool and if you'd like to be more of a person and establish some real-life connections despite the medium, and stretch out your tendrils, check out the Postcard Club here on substack ;)
A Postcard Club sounds amazing, I will definitely check that out! Yes I agree the phone is a hypnotic device. I have a rule with my friends absolutely no phones when we’re hanging out because it’s really such a mood killer.
So what’s your super useless but really interesting degree? High five!🖐️
Yes I also agree about the Nietzsche thing, I really believe people have a disconnect with the act of killing when they are sitting in a control room somewhere and piloting a drone that shoots people miles away like little ants on a screen. Versus having to, like, personally slit someone’s throat and watch the life drain from their eyes.
I like the image of being somewhere without your name, it feels very fitting. It’s nice sometimes to not have to be your regular self and carry all the labels you usually carry.
No phone with friends is a good idea! And yes, the whole de-humanising such an intimate action (dying, I guess, it’s a very personal thing) is spot on! Me and my philosophy degree (yayy) would like to tempt you to join our ranks with this link: https://open.substack.com/pub/barbshoneycutt/p/bonus-the-postcard-club-on-substack?r=2puiwd&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Yeah it’s funny, we generally laugh at the ‘your aura is purple’ type people, and sure enough many of them might be a little bonkers, but I definitely think there’s more to interaction than we mostly consider.
Like just the fact that with some people you feel immediately at ease and with others you feel immediately wary and they literally don’t have to say anything or even make a gesture. I remember one time when Lu was just two years old - in fact I think we were celebrating his second birthday, some friends came over and Lu walked up to this guy he had literally never seen in his life (who was doing absolutely nothing to attract his attention, by the way, and Lu is usually very farouche), and was just following him around our place basking in his energy with his little face turned up as if this man were the sun itself. What magic of vibes was that? It was weird but also very sweet. The man himself was super surprised and confused but also happy.
Vibes can also go counter to actual behavior. I have known many people who were on the surface super nice and sweet and smiley and didn’t do absolutely anything wrong to me but I just had a deep-seated bad feeling about them, like I knew it was all fake. And conversely others who tried to make themselves seem very rough and abrasive and I was like ‘nah, you’re alright’. It’s definitely odd.
Yes to the people with a prickly or weird vibe who are actually amazing, there can be a kind of double bluff at play. For instance Wizards are often quite grumpy. Performative vs genuine vibes
Agreed with everything you said except the equal sign between Jews and Zionists. It’s never good to blame something on an entire religion/ ethnicity. But yes, it’s extremely frightening that nobody can stop the US/Israel madness.
I understand, I am sure you do not mean it in a negative way. But expressing things a certain way gives room to other people with bad intentions to twist our words, so better to keep that door closed.
It is indeed very painful to watch and I really hope some resolution comes soon.