Audiencing: in Friendship

3 minute read

Friends are very special audiences: we attend to each other for little reason other than because we like them. Love them even. We turn up because we care, to watch their lives, their shenanigans, and their mistakes and beyond these observations we carry on being their friend. And they, ours. Of course, audiencing is not the entirety of what we do when we are in a friendship but it is a useful way to think about friendship.

Friends choose to audience each other. We are intimate audiences – watching the small and huge things happen in life, building a view of the person we observe and as their familiar audience we gain particular insight – or so we think.

Old friends observe each other over decades. You may know this for yourself, right? I have friends who have watched my life unfurl from teen to adult. Some have dipped out of view at times when lives became busy but they have returned to see me again. Old friends see in a distinctive way. They watch us make repeat choices or hear us complain about the same things, and only they can say, “hang on, you did this (or said this) before when you were in your 20's….!” When they tell me this, I know they saw me then and they see me now. They react and remind me of who I have been and who I am today – attending to me over time.

New friends see the up to date you; where you are now in your life, and from there the friendship grows. I made one such friend at work. Our friendship began as he seemed impressed by me and wanted to be around me, and I him. He observed me at work, and watched as I wrote, with great encouragement. He made friendly suggestions about how I could further my work. I audienced him too – seeing his struggles, helping him finish his studies, and supporting him as he develop his business idea. For a number of years, we attended to each other’s lives, asking critical questions and cheering each other on. That was until he no longer wanted my attention.

The moment it happened was explosive: We were having after work drinks, when he told me that he was leaving his business partner, and was planning on make a financial killing. I saw his belligerent doggedness and I heard his cynicism. In that moment, I could not applaud his intention as he hoped I would as his friend-as-audience, instead I raised an ethical question about it. It should not have been surprising, as it was not unlike me to raise critical questions. Yet in that instance he reacted angrily and ended the friendship there and then.

Abruptly, I was de-audienced. From that minute on, I was no longer his audience, nor he mine. So what happens when friends stop observing your life, and ask you to stop audiencing theirs? New friends or old? People who once chose to generously attend to you, your art, your sport or your work, or just to your daily well-being, ruminating over a beer or coffee? What happens when they stop audiencing you, and you are no longer wanted as their audience?

My friend had given such a particular quality of audiencing that his absence felt like loss. I have no idea if he felt the same, as what I said (and he thinks I saw) made me an unwanted audience of his life. Was my de-audiencing unwittingly my fault? Yes, in fact it was, but naturally so.

In the typology of audiencing – intimate audiences can be unthinking: friends will offer unwanted advice, or raise questions in my case, that are unrequested – and that is actually a trait of the known audience. We think we know those we see, and comment. We think too that we are trusted enough to share those insights or queries. If my friend had understood that this is a characteristic of my audience type would he have done something different? Perhaps, he would have laughed it off, or snapped at me and said, “not really your business”, or trusted that it was a critical friend observing his life so take it as a fair question and say, “I’ll think on it”. Intimate audiences do mess things up, so both the person observing and the one being observed do a lot of relationship management to maintain friendships – we often soften criticism, we gently lie about their idea or book, or whatever they are showing us, because we care about audiencing them more than the thing they ask us to see. Sometimes we don’t and overstep the unspoken line of observation. It is a tricky art – the art of audiencing friends.

Being de-audienced is part of life. A friend’s departure can feel like grief, and at the same time a relief.  Conversely, de-audiencing someone from your life can sometimes feel like the only option.  They have seen something that cannot be unseen.