All of Us, Dots

The artist Yayoi Kusama covers everything in dots. Pumpkins, canvases, walls, her own body, other people’s bodies, entire rooms. She has been doing it since childhood, when she started seeing the world dissolve into patterns, she couldn’t stop seeing – flowers that spoke to her, surfaces that pulsed, a self that felt dangerously close to disappearing into everything around it. She called it self-obliteration. The dissolution of the boundaries between herself and the world.

To me it sounds like the most human longing there is.

Someone who knows me well told me that the artist would suit me. I have always longed for deep connection. Not the kind that stays on the surface – the small talk, the catching up, the questions that don’t want to hear the true answer. But the other kind. The kind where something passes between two people that doesn’t need to be explained. Where you meet on levels that most conversations never reach. Where for a moment, you are lifted clean out of yourself – out of time, out of the noise – because another person is genuinely, completely there with you.

This longing to merge. To dissolve into an exchange, into a shared experience, into another person’s way of seeing. And yet – there is always some separation, isn’t there? There’s a particular kind of sadness that doesn’t have a clean name. You are here. They are there. And no matter how close you get, there will always be a last millimeter that cannot be crossed. A membrane. The skin that ends where the other begins. Which makes me wonder: is merging even possible? Or do we have to accept a last separation, always?

We speak to each other. We tell each other things. We share meals and beds and years. And yet – truly feeling another person, being felt by them, without many words, without effort, without translation – that is rare. Meeting on profound levels, where barely anyone finds their way to.

Maybe it was never really about merging. Maybe what we’re looking for is something quieter and simpler than that – and at the same time, so precious. Not to dissolve into another person. But to have someone want to know our inner world. To be curious about what’s really happening underneath. To be seen there – not just on the surface, but in the parts that don’t come up in small talk.

Maybe that’s the whole longing, right there.

Seeing the sea. Watching a film. Standing in front of a painting, listening to a song – and knowing, in that exact moment, that the other person is with you. Really with you. You feel it before they say anything. The excitement of wanting to share what you’re experiencing, and knowing they already know. The senses, the feeling, everything – and the boundaries blur. You dissolve into the experience, into the universe, into the other person. You can no longer tell exactly where you end. Even if they are not physically with you. Sharing over distance.

It’s disorienting. And for a brief, strange moment – it’s also a relief.

We are just molecules. Chaos. Orbiting each other. Colliding. Bouncing off. Sometimes sticking for a while. And maybe what we’re longing for, underneath all the conversation and the reaching and the trying, is exactly that. To dissolve a little. To stop being so sealed inside ourselves.

Someone once told me we’re all connected through breath. Every breath you take contains molecules that have passed through other lungs – strangers, lovers, people long dead. The air inside you has been inside others. There is something almost unbearably intimate about that. Even slightly disgusting, indeed. But also true in a weird way.

And we all see the same stars – yet each of us stands somewhere else, alone in our own patch of darkness, carrying our own version of the night.

Kusama’s dots feel like that to me. Each one separate. Each one identical. Together forming something that none of them could be alone. All merged, part of something bigger, yet alone.

I think about the people I have felt truly close to. Not just known, not just liked – but felt. The ones where the silence was never empty. Where something passed between us that didn’t need to be named. There are very few of them. I think that’s just how it is. Not a failure of love or effort, but something structural, something built into the condition of being a self at all.

One of those rare people once told me that we could meet at those depths because I let it happen, I give access to it. That touched me. Because yes – I think that’s part of how I work. Wander on those levels. Connecting dots. Feeling the feels. Being an individual while longing for deep connection. I can open the door. But the other side has to see it and choose to step through. Connection takes two.

And sometimes that makes me sad. The thought that some people in my life may never know me on these levels – and this is not a small thing, it’s not a side note. It’s one of the most essential parts of who I am. To be seen only on the surface, when so much is happening underneath – that’s a particular kind of loneliness.

But then again – maybe some people feel me in ways I’ve never even noticed. Maybe connection happens in directions I’m not always aware of. Maybe someone, somewhere, reads something I write or sits with something I say and thinks: yes. Exactly that. And I’ll never know. Maybe it happens with people I would have never expected it from. Maybe they can’t express it or show it, can’t meet me there in an expressive way – but they understand. They feel me in silence.

And just like that, sadness turns into hope. If these are the levels I naturally live on, maybe the next step is to create more spaces where others can meet me there. Give access, open spaces, invite – and be there for the ones who want to step in. Where it becomes possible. Where the door stays open a little wider.

And maybe it is ok to keep a nostalgic sadness. Maybe the longing itself is the connection. The fact that we all feel it – this reaching, this wanting to merge, this sadness at the membrane – maybe that is the thing we share most deeply. More than breath. More than stars. More than the actual connection.

Kusama is 95 years old. She still goes to her studio every day. She still makes dots. Still covers everything in the same gesture, repeated endlessly. Maybe it’s not repetition for its own sake – maybe it’s this endless hope. The continuous search. The refusal to stop trying to make connection visible, dot by dot.

Is merging possible? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it is not about merging in the first place. Maybe reaching out and curiosity themselves are the point. A dot that is interested in another dot opens a door and walks through the one it recognizes as open. Maybe that is the whole story.