planets pledge allegiance to the funk in all its forms. i think about friends alot. the making of friends, the missing of friends, the hows whys and whats of friends. the sociological, psychological, philosophical phenomenon that is friends. what makes two people friends? much of it is a shared experience, value, perspective, interest or ideal. most people i know make friends by being around people and then "clicking" with certain individuals. but what is that clicking? actually, that clicking could be anything. there are too many reasons for clickage to bother talking about here. why people get along is why they get along, it's rather ambitious of me to try to break clickage down. and seeing as i'm a particularly non-ambitious person headed for certain gory death and screaming distress, i'm giving up now to save me from the certain loss of hope and crushing of dreams later. yah! giving up is the other half of the battle gi joe never told you about.



so okay. next. friends are said to be a reflection of yourself. you are who you love and you are who loves you or whatever. by looking at people's friends you can tell things about that person, at least hypothetically. but you have to look at the entire body of friends (not friends' entire bodies mind you, sickos) to get a clear picture of a person because each individual friend fulfills a different aspect of a person. many of these aspects can overlap but in my opinion, each friend should/does add something unique and necessary to your life. if they didn't why bother being friends? the depth and breadth of these connections might be one factor in how close two people are; something that distinguishes friends from close friends and all the unnecessary gray areas in-between.



i read this essay about the similarities between art and friendship. each person, each piece of art (or type of music), strikes a cord within us, and even though nobody else may appreciate it or sense it, we do and that's to our individual taste. by looking at all the the pieces of art that somebody loves, we can gain insight into parts of them that we might otherwise never be exposed to. each art piece or type of music taps into part of our vision or style of life but no single piece or type can capture the whole. friendships are very personal and always subjective. just because you are friends with two people doesn't mean that they would get along well, because maybe their connection to you is on totally different levels and they have no connections in common aside from you. and it's so subjective that one friend can many times be like "wow, how can you be friends with that person and also with me?" that's what i mean by subjectivity as applied to friendship, beauty is truly is in the eyes of the beholder.



there are many aspects of myself that cause me to connect with one friend or another, but not necessarily the same aspects that cause me to connect with another friend. you may have a friend who you shoot the shit with, a friend who you create with, a friend you cry with, a friend you appreciate something with, a friend who you drink with, a friend to sit around and do nothing with. oh whoops, that's also shooting the shit. it's okay, i have alot of those, shooting the shit type friends so i can be redundant.



now, because no single person can align perfectly with me in all my aspects (please don't laugh here) it logically concludes that to expect one person to be your only friend is ridiculous. i can't get everything i need from one person and no one would be able to get everything they needed from just me. so it is foolish to assume that there is a one, a one person who could be your everything. most of us realize this i think, we are not naive, if a bit overly idealistic in certain dimensions. two people can never be the same and striving to make two become one is a monumental and most likely impossible task. then again, the spice girls managed it so nothing is impossible.



the thing about friendships is that your friends are different from you. they are stimulating to the mind body and soul, not just a mere reflection of yourself. nobody wants "yes" men to be their friends. although it would be nice to have some more "yes's" from my particular proximity of men. ahem. you know who you are. anyways. this to me is part of the why of friends. i decided a few paragraphs back to not bother with the how of friends, too daunting of a task you understand. tomorrow i hope to tackle the whats of friends. so pretty much i'll have discovered all i need to know about friends by wednesday and then i can go hang out with them on thursday. i'm so damn efficient it's scary.