On Natalie Goldberg, Frank O'Hara, Anthony Bourdain, Religeous Writing and Authenticity

Watching an episode or two of Anthony Bourdain on Netflix has become part of my nightly ritual.  Currently, I'm watching episodes of The Layover.   With all the drinking he does, and all his bleeped out language, it may seem incompatible with my religion.

However, my uncle, who was always active in the church, was a big fan of Ernest Hemingway.  When I was younger that seemed like a contradiction, and I assumed because Hemingway's fiction is clearly from an atheistic perspective that my uncle probably had a lot of secret religious doubts.

I no longer think that is necessarily true.  I don't admire writers for shared beliefs; I admire them for artistic integrity, or for having the guts to "go for the jugular," as Natalie Goldberg would put it.

I don't think she necessarily means the big thing, but she does mean the elephant in the room.  It's just that not all elephants are large.  Some sit tiny by a dust ball next to the wireless modem on the antique drop leaf table, and still they suck up all the air.  One doesn't have to confess all to write well.  Sometimes that actually becomes a form of dishonesty--rewriting ones own life to give it drama it doesn't have, not by lying, but by presenting an unbalanced focus on tragedy.

I think Frank O'Hara went for the jugular, which for him was an honest take on day to day living:

an invitation to lunch
HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT?
when I only have 12 cents and 2
packages of yoghurt
there's a lesson in that, isn't there
like in Chinese poetry when a leaf falls?
hold off on the yoghurt till the very
last, when everything may improve

     (from "Five Poems,"  Lunch Poems)

So does Bourdain.  He has these great lines like "I don't think you should put ketchup on hot dogs; I'm pretty sure God would not like that."  What could be more authentic for a chef to say, even an atheist chef?  Bourdain is real in a world of pretense and that is enough for me.

That's one thing I dislike about Mormon culture.  Duty to uphold the image sometimes makes authenticity difficult.  Before coming back to the church, I wrote whatever I wanted to; now I choose my words very carefully.    Yet, it is only through the authentic voice that the spirit is felt.

I'm in the middle of reading an amazing story by James Baldwin, "Sonny's Blues."  It's got that solid reality to it that Natalie Goldberg talks about when she urges writers to "go for the jugular":

I read about it in the paper, in the subway, on my way to work.  I read it, and I couldn't believe it, and I read it again.  Then perhaps I just stared at it, at the newsprint spelling out his name, spelling out the story.  I stared at it in the swinging lights of the subway car, and in the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own face, trapped in the darkness which roared outside.

Steadily unfolds a story of being black in America unflinching and unexaggerated.

I'm old; I'm unknown; I live uncomfortably between two worlds--that of a devout Mormon and that of a devout liberal artist--and so there is probably no way I'll ever have any impact on either my religion or my art (the chasm between the two worlds is just too wide), but if by some freakish chance my voice is heard beyond the echoing chambers of my own mind, it will be because I was brave enough to live in that uncomfortable space and not do the easy thing by choosing one audience over the other.  For to do so would be a lie, and only the authentic has a lasting shelf life.

Being authentic doesn't guarantee that a writer will make it, but not being authentic does guarantee a writer will eventually be forgotten.

The Waters of Yellowstone, Part 1: I Stand All Amazed

My son Tyler photographing Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone, June 2014
 

If magma is the soul of Yellowstone, water is her eyes.  Unlike in Hawaiian Volcanoes National Park, we never directly see the molten engine that drives her--and if we ever do, it will be an instant before incineration for us and Armageddon for the entire globe--but through her waters we come to know her well.  This first hit me when we visited in June of 2014.  Although I love the sound of her name, it is not very descriptive of who she really is.  It describes the colors in her Grand Canyon and the color of many of the geyser basins, but Yellowstone is so much more than these.  The 136 square miles of pristine water that is Yellowstone Lake is enough to warrant a national park, not to mention the 63,500 gallons of water per second that flow over Yellowstone Falls, and the varied bubbling, spitting and spewing waters of half the world's geysers which are located within her boundaries.  Simply put, the waters of Yellowstone are astounding.  If you ever find yourself in a bad spot and life has lost its meaning, do whatever it takes and get to Yellowstone.  Whatever power you attribute her art to, the fact that something that beautiful exists, makes all of creation from maggots and Donald Trump to Eagles and Mahatma Gandhi worthwhile. 

Yellowstone Falls

If that seems like a hyperbole, you have never looked out on a herd of bison grazing along the slow, blue Yellowstone River.



The Yellowstone River

Bison grazing near a pool of melt-water, late June 2014

Perhaps that is why I have avoided writing this post for so long.  As a writer, I seldom feel words are inept tools for capturing life.  But, with Yellowstone, it's different.  What is there to say?  If she were a song, she'd be Pachelbel's "Canon"--perfect.  But she's not.  It's one thing for man to show off, and quite another for God to shake out his splendor.

The rest of my life I may struggle with reverence, but looking deep into the waters of Yellowstone, I stand all amazed.

Text and photography © Steve Brown, 2015

 

The Soundtrack of One Life out of 108 Billion, Entry 4: What Does the Fall of Saigon Have to Do with "That's the Way I Like It" by KC and the Sunshine Band and Central Utah?

Photo by Steve Brown: U.S.S. Midway, San Diego 2012

April 30th, 1975.  Dense gray topical skies.  Palm fronds whip every which way as helicopters touch down outside the American Embassy.  Petroleum burns black along the skyline. Panicked people run down the street, bright, silk floral print shirts, trailing them.  A mother caries a baby in her one arm, drags another child (half running, half falling) behind.  There is pushing, shoving at a white iron gate, terror in the eyes, dread for those too late.  A mother turned a way, sobs and collapses to the ground.  Men claw their way up a wall. Over all the noise is the steady rhythm of the blades.

Lan, age 9, is part of the symphony that is the Fall of Saigon.  What specific clamor wakes her up in the middle of the night while sleeping next to her little sister in the belly of an aircraft carrier on her way to a distant land, I do not know.

Reports came in from the outskirts that the North Vietnamese were moving in.  10:48  Kissinger was notified of the desire to activate "the Frequent Wind" evacuation plan.  Approved minutes later.  The radio was to play Irvin Berlin's "White Christmas," the signal for American personnel to move immediately to the evacuation points.  Technology is always at the hands of humans.  Helicopters moved in.  American service men would be the first.  South Vietnamese elite (those who would be retaliated against) had a chance if they had the money, the political ties, the luck at being at the right place at the right time.  It happened so incredibly fast.

What is her story?  What are the images that flash behind her soft eyelids kicked about during REM like silk sheets on hot humid night while she cuddles close to her little sister?

None of this I know about while playing on the merry-go-round behind the swimming pool or floating a pop can down an irrigation ditch while walking home from school.  None of this can I even imagine when my stepfather asks me if I want to drive out to the trailer park by the mushroom plant (an indoor farm) to meet the new families from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

I don't believe I saw her that day.  I could have.  There were so many.  Four cultures briefly coming together.  There was sweet tea that I'd never tasted, chicken fights (boys carrying each other on their shoulders) in the gravel lane, and delicious dishes of meat and rice that men brought out from their single-wide trailers to show hospitality.  There was lot of pointing, a lot of laughing (the only common language), a lot of saying "that number 1," meaning good, and a lot of saying "that number 10," meaning bad, and I suppose a lot of pretending too as worlds collided in a small trailer court next to an indoor mushroom farm beside a freeway in a big, western valley filled with yellow wild rye, sage brush, and black rubble-rocked extinct volcanoes.

When I do see her a few weeks before the end of third grade, I'm drawn to her beauty the way only a child can be: intently, unpretentiously, without fear or guile.  The two third-grade classes have combined, and we are watching a film about these two science guys who journey through the body. It's set up like a news cast, and they are following the spread of influenza through the blood stream. The class has seen it a couple of times, but it's our favorite.  We're on the floor, and I'm throwing pieces of paper at Lynn because I like her. The secretary walks in with three Asian kids and our teacher stops the movie.  The two boys I already know from the evening my dad took me down to the trailer court.  But I don't look at them long.  Lan is all I see. Her long black hair and dark, warm, almond shaped eyes have me.  And she dresses cool too. Tight, white bell-bottom slacks, a white t-shirt, and a silk flower-print disco shirt, untucked and unbuttoned.

This is before my body chemistry changes in seventh grade and shyness kicks in.  It's not long until we are chasing each other during recess, not long before she's at the top of the slide, swinging her hips, that silk shirt open, blowing in the breeze as she sings, "That's the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it," her long black hair swaying side to side.

All at once I get disco.

But I know nothing, absolutely nothing of what she has seen or the world she has come from.  All I know is that smile has no boundaries.

I was a child growing up in a big, western valley, almost cut off from the realities of the twentieth century, but not quite.  A human catastrophe on the other side of the world gave me a great third and fourth grade that I otherwise wouldn't have experienced, a bit of positive fallout from a war destroyed the lives of millions.

See related post:  That's the Way, Uh-huh Uh-huh, I Like It: Second-Hand Memories of the USS Midway’s Rescue of 3,000 Vietnamese Political Refugees