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.
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.
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