Bright Objects of the Gym

Levi Bryant classifies objects by how strongly they manifest in and affect other things. Bright objects light things up. I think of training partners I miss. Not the ones I don’t miss. My brothers, my friends, people I have loved and continue to love. Different presences that have flavoured my world, my experience, my perception, in different ways.

Alphonso Lingis took issue with the phenomenologists for reducing too much human object use to the idea of function and purpose. We use gym equipment functionally. But when our use is only functional, then it is a reduction. There are other delights in the object use. These only become clear thanks to the illumination of our bright objects.

The relations are reciprocal. Someone who gets you, turns you into a bright object too, someone who lights things up. Lights light lights.

A new gym can be a scary place when entered alone, especially when there are other eyes in there. Go in with a bright object, and it becomes your playground. Your gaze on the place and on others is stronger than any stranger’s gaze on you, or the mystery of any enigmatic machine staring implacably at you.

For Bryant, the bright object makes the assemblage shine brighter, or differently. The inspiring training partner, or the partner who inspires the partner.

I have trained with brilliantly intense people, who have squeezed the best from me. I do not miss them, or if I do, it was not for this reason. The ones I miss are the ones I have laughed with, played with, shared nonsense with. When I trained with my brother when I was young, I used to tie stuff around my head. At first this was a joke about 1980s workout culture and sweatbands. After a while, I accumulated my own collection of ‘training bands’ – normally the necks cut out of t-shirts (another 1980s ‘thing’, yet strangely one we did not feel compelled to laugh at). After a while I couldn’t train without one. In the end, I even got my brother into training bands. I still feel naked if I am not wearing something on my head, especially if I am training alone, though I have never since had the courage to wear a bespoke self-made training band in public.

The bright object knows when to push, when to ease off; when to blast you with their light, when to shade you from it; when to urge, when to nod, when to take some weight, when to touch you, when not to; when to be light, when to be heavy.

Nowadays, unless I am at a weightlifting class, I choose to train alone. I rarely choose to talk to anyone. I might nod to a few people. I am not a bright object. I feel bad about this. But it is my choice. It feels like there are no more people I want to try to fit with, because I am waiting for the return of my bright object.

Those I fit with are in me, in my heart, behind my eyes. They are how I see the world. Without them there, my eyes survey the gym in a way that tints it all with nostalgia, melancholy. But that is just the refraction caused by their lack, moving from my memory and going out through my eyes. As it exists in my heart, the energy is joy, from those times, their light, in my heart.