You and I

"You and I  

we might be strangers 

However close we get sometimes

 It's like we never met"

When Jeff Tweedy introduced this song at Wilco's concert in Montclair a few months ago, he said it was about how people in relationships can never really know each other -- even when the person is oneself.

He was kind of joking, but it resonated with me.
And it comes to mind as I embark on this bizarre art form, a calculated broadcast of selfhood to the world, starting with people I think I "know" or "know" me.

Who am I? A magazine journalist turned TV writer (now attempting a play and thinking about a novel). A divorced father of two teenaged girls, a New Yorker who has relocated to LA three times in the past eight years for work. Someone who has lost both parents in the past two and a half years and now knows way too much about executing estates and shutting down a law practice.

Who are you going to be? Facebook created a weird subset of friendships -- people I am happy to be in constant touch with mixed with executives I've met once, people I went to school with long ago and didn't even talk to then, people I worked with intensely for nine months -- whose personalities were refashioned in my mind based on their posts on the website. Some affection blossomed; others I worried about even telling my feelings about the Mets.

In real life, I'm pretty frank and direct. On Facebook, I realized I was always careful, though, never to state my true feelings about anything more than a baseball game or a TV show or movie. Well, that's about to change.