“Dave Hickey’s prose transports are like an eye attached to a butterfly attached to a rocketship…”

~ Lawrence Weschler

Dave Hickey’s résumé is impressive. He’s written for Harper’s Magazine, Rolling Stone, and Artforum, plus many other publications. He’s been the Executive Editor of Art in America magazine. He’s owned and directed an art gallery. He’s written and performed rock songs. I could go on (and on), but I won’t, because my point doesn’t have to do with Hickey’s former or current job titles. The single salient point, the riveting thing, is Hickey’s ability to think in a way that’s both deep and sideways, and to write about his thoughts with gripping flair.

Hickey’s Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy is a compilation of essays about artistic culture, with a large dose of memoir. But this is memoir of a unique order, simultaneously cool (as in neat-o), warm (as in open and vulnerable), and intellectual. The topics covered in Hickey’s essays range from Cézanne, and Flaubert, through jazz, Andy Warhol, Norman Rockwell, and the Rolling Stones, all the way to Perry Mason, Siegfried and Roy, and Liberace, with oodles more in between. And all the while, the last sentence read begs to be reread in order to dally a while longer in the company of Hickey’s language and large heart.

From the book’s introductory essay:

“We need so many love songs because the imperative rituals of flirtation, courtship, and mate selection that are required to guarantee the perpetuation of the species and the maintenance of social order – that are hardwired in mammals and socially proscribed in traditional cultures – are up for grabs in mercantile democracies. These things need to be done, but we don’t know how to do them, and, being free citizens, we won’t be told how to do them. Out of necessity, we create the institution of love songs. We saturate our society with a burgeoning, ever-changing proliferation of romantic options, a cornucopia of choices, a panoply of occasions through which these imperative functions may be facilitated. It is a market, of course, a job and a business, but it is also a critical instrumentality in civil society. We cannot do without it. Because it’s hard to find someone you love, who loves you – but you can begin, at least, by finding someone who loves your love song. And that, I realized…is what I do: I write love songs for people who live in a democracy. Some of them follow.”

~ Dave Hickey, Air Guitar, “Unbreak My Heart, An Overture”

“A geek is…any dogged explorer or crazed inventor, anyone who fixates on a project and won’t let go, anyone who builds his own damn rocket! It’s a label to be proud of, in any star system.”

~ Editors, Wired

Remember when “geek” wasn’t a label to be proud of? When geekdom seemed to guarantee unwanted attention from people who were convinced they were more cool? Then geeks got together and developed tons of gadgets the cool set now can’t live without – including the Internet and the World Wide Web, which they showed us how to use – and made lots and lots of money in the process. Somewhere along the way the term “geek” morphed into a source of pride. Now it’s come so far it can be counted on to draw customers looking for technical expertise, and computer assistance companies have come up with all sorts of ways to incorporate the word “geek” into their company names. Here in Vancouver there’s a volunteer organization called Free Geek, whose tag line is “Helping the needy get nerdy since the beginning of the 3rd millennium.”

Gays and lesbians travelled a similar route through the public’s collective mind. They got proud, stood up together, and drew the public’s attention to their self-acceptance. Leadership was offered by groups such as Queer Nation, which used the slogan “We’re here. We’re queer. Get used to it” and led the way in reclaiming what had been a term of derision – “queer” – for their own. In doing so, they softened its barbs, to the point where, today, the Emmy-award-winning television program Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is in its fifth season. When groups of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people paraded down public streets strutting their stuff for all to see, they made their numbers count for something. They stood up as one, proud of who they are. And the general public certainly noticed.

Pam Catapia’s thoughts about wanting to live in a highly sensitive village remind me that geeks and queers have gone before us as worthy examples of how the tolerance-shifting, door-opening power of community starts with finding each other. Geeks got together at colleges and universities, around glowing computer screens, and over the Internet. They populated Silicon Valley and the Microsoft Campus. Places like San Francisco and parts of other cities are known for being more friendly to queers (in Vancouver’s gay neighbourhood, along parts of Davie Street, the city bus stops and garbage cans are painted hot pink – a clear sign of the city’s tolerance). And there are magazines focused on issues important to queers and geeks (Wired magazine is notably geek-proud, for instance). In other words, there are known places that queers and geeks can go to be welcomed, to find acceptance, to get real.

Geeks and queers also have had support from people who aren’t geeky or gay or lesbian, but who want them to be free to be who they are. One such organization is PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), a large international group of supporters.

Let’s get ourselves some of that. Granted, a highly sensitive pride event is unlikely to be a public parade, but I’m curious to learn what our ways of showing our pride are. Let’s find each other and share our stories and gain strength from acceptance – of ourselves and of each other.

How can we go about it?

Self-acceptance

Reach inside. Do what needs doing to become not just highly, but proudly highly sensitive. Re-read the books, explore counselling, search the Internet – do whatever needs to be done to get healthy and to be proud of being an HSP.

Find Each Other

Reach out to other HSPs. Take a few chances with making contact. If an attempt to identify other HSPs or to forge a new friendship with another HSP doesn’t succeed, think about why it didn’t, adjust the strategy, and try again. Repeat until successful.

Focus on Strengths

Rather than putting energy into what’s difficult about being an HSP in our culture, shift the focus to what’s great about being an HSP and what parts of our culture already champion us. For instance, a lot of HSPs do well being self-employed. If that appeals to you, how could you make it happen? Become a cultural detective. Follow clues.

Go public

Speak out. With a growing community at our backs, with a focus on finding the places where HSPs are assets and spending more time there, with good pals who are HSPs, with resources and encouragement on tap because we’ve searched them out and found what works for us individually and collectively, going public becomes easier.

Foster Allies

Anyone who already loves us just as we are is an HSP ally. Through education and invitation more will come. We are not alone.

I’ve rarely read a book more gripping, whether fiction or non-fiction, and it’s gripping on many levels, from learning first-hand about the shipwreck from records left by survivors to being privy to Thompson’s creative process in trying to locate then recover the treasure to the mastermind tactics needed by Thompson and his crew to avoid the cutthroat competition from other treasure hunters closing in on their find. Gary Kinder shadowed Tommy and his crew to write this well-researched book and his words compellingly convey both the history and the action.

“For years [Tommy Thompson] had carefully cultivated a creative mind-set, worrying that if he ever stopped being different, if he ever stopped experimenting, if he ever stopped pushing and questioning and exploring and looking at life upside down, he would no longer think the thoughts that could lead him to ask the questions that no one else had asked, which is what made him unique, which is what allowed him to be what he had always wanted to be since he was a small boy: an inventor. He wanted to take old ideas, turn them inside out, and apply them in new ways; he wanted to suck the world through his senses and exhale a vision.”

By the end of Ship of Gold, I was full to the brim with mental pictures, replete with the reality brought to life by Kinder’s tale, and I was glad to let the book’s words inform my mind’s eye without outside assistance. Then I discovered Tommy Thompson’s America’s Lost Treasure, which is filled with stunning photographs.

By the time Donna and I sat on her couch and opened the cover of America’s Lost Treasure, we had both finished reading Ship of Gold. When we saw the lush photographs – of the treasure, the machines and equipment Thompson and his crew engineered, the crew itself, and more – we found ourselves laughing with the glee of being reunited with dear friends. We kept saying things like, “Look! There it is!” – as though we’d been on Thompson’s ship ourselves and were now looking at photos of our own journey. It felt like making the discoveries twice, getting double the pleasure from the story of the recovery of the “Central America.” Her story, told through Gary Kinder and Tommy Thompson, is history brought back to vivid life, a fascinating look inside the process of invention, and a window into the world of high-stakes treasure hunting.