writing: “the strongest bond I have ever had”

A few weeks ago I was at Harry’s Shoes on the Upper West Side neighborhood of Manhattan trying to fill a shoe prescription as recommended by the podiatrist for a  better shoe for my plantar fascia.

While I was being generously assisted I had this random urge to chew gum.

I began asking around if anyone had gum. No one did. They all looked like they really wished to help me as they delivered the news they didn’t have gum; I must have looked very serious and desperate. I think a good 15 minutes had passed when this woman who worked there came up to me and said, “I went downstairs to dig in my purse. I had a piece. It looked like you really, really wanted to chew gum.” I was so touched and therefore exclaimed aloud: Now, that is empathy! Thank you. Thank you so much.

Others joined to giggle along as I applauded (literally).

Another woman who worked there asked, “Are you a teacher?”

I said, “Well, yes, I guess. Although I have not been asked this in a few years since I have not been in a traditional classroom setting. How could you tell?”

She made my day by stating, “Who else cares so much about the significance of empathy?”

A summer ago I was in Prague and through the wonderful mentor and photographer Jan had the honor of meeting and spending time with Czech Republic’s nationally renowned photographer Jindrich Streit.

Who else cares so much about the significance of empathy? Jindrich Streit had told me that day I met him: an artist.

When I finally broke down in front of him and his wife as we discussed poverty, politics, this life that is just too damn hard sometimes, I expressed how infuriating it was to be surrounded by so many talented writers in Prague who didn’t care about anything but themselves, he said something which Jan translated as, “He says that is because you are an artist.” I told them it wasn’t a compliment because life seemed set against a real artist in many ways.

I have never seen myself as a “writer” or an “artist.”  I have written extensively about that so I really have nothing more to add to those thoughts. And what I am sharing now is not to have a discussion about “who-or-what-or-how-is-an-artist” or “what-is-or-isn’t-art?” That too I have addressed in my own words, offering a “new” perspective—new as new can ever get, which is hardly ever!—for our times through my eyes, as well as through others’ words which resonated deeply.

In fact, I wasn’t aware that so many people thought of themselves as artists, writers, poets, photographers until the birth of social media. This often happens when we have so many people who want to be heard beyond the aforementioned creative nouns: women thinking they are feminists just because they are women, teachers thinking they are actually teaching just because they have a classroom, minorities thinking they understand repercussions of slavery because they want to support civil rights for their own community (which is needed but it is not the same as being able to relate to the impacts of slavery which is not the same as being able to relate to the impacts of imperialism and so on and so forth).

Although I have been writing since I was eight, what I have known with certainty is that I have always been a teacher. Ever since I was very young as soon as I would learn something I wanted to “pass it on.”

The other day my younger sister, on her way to begin her education to become a doctor this Fall, who also happens to enjoy the piano, baking, and creating art, was helping me with an education related brainstorming session. I am so moved by her patience and ability to help and teach so clearly. It struck me that her “passing on” and “teaching” was different than mine but still existed distinctly. It was intentional.

The point isn’t to feel inadequate or doubtful about our process but to sense whatever we come across as help to develop our very personal and unique experience with our craft above all else.

Saying I am a writer is like saying I am a woman. So what else?

There was a time when the phrase “you are a writer if you write” was enough.  It was enough because those writers WROTE. They did what they could to constantly improve their craft. No different than an educator who is a professional and is constantly developing his or her skills to provide better learning and engaging strategies. No different than anyone else who wants to be better at what they do without any other reward for it except that of optimum delivery, which is not the same as striving for perfection, or recognition.

Times have changed thanks to the many forums and mediums available.

I believe John Gardner was correct when he wrote the biggest problem with artists now (he expressed this in the 70’s but is even more true now) is that unlike Tolstoy and Chekhov, artists today don’t believe what they have to offer is important. I wish Gardner was around to see that thanks to social media’s outreach to many different audiences and self-publishing everyone thinks everything that they think is important!

We have become very confused. One’s personal desire to be heard as a human being, man or woman, seems to trump self-reflection which demands what is this compulsion I feel to share? how can I share better? how do I continue the practice so it almost happens without over-intellectualizing the creative process? how do I distinguish between wanting to feel important as a human being in some social setting versus my craft?

I have written about my meeting Jindrich Streit and his wife on a Still Sunday in his village outside of Prague here so I will only share this excerpt from it which is fitting to resolve the above dilemma between thinking I am important versus what I have to share might be of value to another.

Jindrich Streit is humble yet well aware of his talent and vision. He has published over 28 books of his work. He was the first one to begin documenting “village life.” He says what’s missing from artists now is a deep connecting with their content. It’s all for the effect. Spiritual can’t be for performance. Everyone is competing for louder and louder when what they need is to go deeper and deeper. Everything is about performance and not the actual content. Because everything is art, it is each artist’s responsibility to decide what that means for him or her.

So when people ask me if I am writer or an artist my hesitancy isn’t due to lack of confidence which awaits for some artificial endorsement from the outside.  It is because the craft demands a constant engagement which is ever-evolving. It requires a perpetual dialogue no different than about what kind of a woman and human being I am and what I have to contribute and share that is part of my responsibility for being on this earth.

This is not to say one can’t have the so called, quite popular and encouraged, “artist’s/writer’s statement” but a reflection about where you are and how you are viewing what you intend to create only captures one instant in an individual’s development and must be visited regularly.

Life owes us nothing. The Universe assists us to the extent we are willing to assist IT in helping one another. The opportunities expand and shrink in proportion to the work we are willing to undertake and not just to be heard.

I share the following words by author Katherine Anne Porter that deeply reflect how it is like for me. It is not something I “think” about yet I am always thinking about writing, words, connecting stories, words, thoughts, and sometimes it is too much ‘downloading’ from some place beyond me. I am always writing even when I am not writing.

I’ve never made a career of anything, you know, not even of writing. I started out with nothing in the world but a kind of passion, a driving desire. I don’t know where it came from, and I don’t know why—or why I have been so stubborn about it that nothing could deflect me. But this thing between me and my writing is the strongest bond I have ever had—stronger than any bond or any engagement with any human being or with any other work I’ve ever done. I really started writing when I was six or seven years old. But I had such a multiplicity of half-talents, too: I wanted to dance, I wanted to play the piano, I sang, I drew. It wasn’t really dabbling—I was investigating everything, experimenting in everything.

[…]

All this time I was writing, writing no matter what else I was doing; no matter what I thought I was doing, in fact. I was living almost as instinctively as a little animal, but I realize now that all that time a part of me was getting ready to be an artist. That my mind was working even when I didn’t know it, and didn’t care if it was working or not.

~ Katherine Anne Porter

 

When I have written something and am satisfied with expressing it precisely how I ‘see’ and feel it,  and learn another relates, I give thanks for the miracle and continue on.

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