Writing and Risk

Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone. – E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

This past month I finished reading (or listening to) the Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2. At one point he talks about encouraging his brother Orion to include all the dark parts of his life story when writing his autobiography, sort of like the advice from E.M. Cioran above. Twain, however, acknowledged that he himself would not dare to include such material in his own autobiography, inasmuch as his aim would be to put himself into a much more favorable light with his readers.

So what's the correct way to write about one's life? There's plenty to be ashamed of in most lives. Do we leave that material on the cutting room floor for the proverbial trash bin? These are certainly not the parts we highlight when meeting people for the first time, and it seems a curious bit of advice to be telling strangers (in a book) about things you don't even share with friends.

I've always carried the notion that our lives are something akin to a retail store with three aspects. The storefront is designed to invite people in. It projects something of an image to people passing by on the sidewalk. The image should correspond to the contents inside the store, of course. You wouldn't put women's clothing in the storefront of a shoe store.

The store itself also has a back room, or downstairs, where inventory and other items are stored. It's an "employees only" space, and is often a bit cluttered, occasionally a mess even. It's not a perfect metaphor, but I've found it useful.

Nevertheless, there's another way to approach the matter. When you study paintings by the Dutch masters, it's the contrast between darkness and light that makes the images pop, makes the story so vivid,

Earlier this week I interviewed the author of a memoir who told the story of what it was like to grow up in a home where his mother was a hoarder.  It's Eddy Gilmore's explicit candor that gives the book its shock value, and makes the emancipation he has achieved all the more powerful.

Naturally it isn't just the authors of books who have to wrestle with where to draw the line as far as what to disclose and what to set aside. We see it continually here in social media where people bare their souls in discussions that may well be better left "off the record." Here's a web forum where this very matter is being dissected: How truthful and honest should we be?

A word that comes to mind for me at this point is circumspect. It means "wary and unwilling to take risks." People who have been burned will not respond well to someone prodding them to "be vulnerable and expand your world."

At the end of the day it's a matter of finding balance. If we spend a lifetime concealing who we really are and what we really feel, it can put us in a fairly lonely place. The deepest and most rewarding friendships are built on trust, and it's in that context we can take those risks and drop the barriers that isolate us from one another. In that context we can experience the deep healing of ontological affirmation.

Just a seed from the mind farm. What do you think?

Love Sick Reveals Dylan's Vulnerabiity

“To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

"Love Sick" is the opening cut on Dylan's Grammy Award-winning 30th studio album. Since he had not recorded any new material in seven years, critics hailed it as a comeback album that in retrospect marked a turning point in Dylan's career. At this point in time he's performed the song nearly 600 times in concert.

Dylan sings in a manner indicative of deep anguish. The stark chord-beat scrapes against the walls of a hollowed out heart before he begins the explication of his internal affliction.

This is a very different tone from the leather-hearted drifter who sang "Don't think twice, it's alright." In that song the narrator is obviously someone who moves in and moves on. He is in a relationship with a woman but it's all physical. ("It ain't no use in turning on your light, babe, that light I never knowed.") Perhaps she is in love with him deeply, wants to please him, but is not comfortable with words. She tries to love him as best she knows how, but he's a complicated young man and he has parts of himself he also wants to share. He realizes their incompatibility and a need to bail.

But he's not nice about it. "You're the reason I'm travelling on," is pretty pointed.

In verse three he says, "I once loved a woman, a child I'm told. I give her my heart but she wanted my soul..." She was needy. He took advantage of her neediness and then moved on. She was desperate, but didn't know what to do.

Then there's the last verse, which must have hit her like a punch in the gut.

I’m walkin’ down that long, lonesome road, babe
Where I’m bound, I can’t tell
But goodbye’s too good a word, gal
So I’ll just say fare thee well
I ain’t sayin’ you treated me unkind
You could have done better but I don’t mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don’t think twice, it’s all right

The song is sung in a manner that is just too casual for the kind of thing that was going on. And in "Love Sick" there is nothing casual about Dylan's lament whatsoever. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, now that he's on the receiving end of having a heart broken, he sings a different tune.

I’m walking through streets that are dead
Walking, walking with you in my head
My feet are so tired, my brain is so wired
And the clouds are weeping

Not only is the pain within himself, it's as if the whole of creation is suffering with him. But it's complicated and confusing. He's uncertain about things.

Did I hear someone tell a lie?
Did I hear someone’s distant cry?
I spoke like a child; you destroyed me with a smile
While I was sleeping

When he reaches the chorus he laments,

I’m sick of love but I’m in the thick of it
This kind of love I’m so sick of it

Verse two is a classic description of what it's like to be hurting. Why is it that when we are most miserable we become so aware of others' contentment?

I see, I see lovers in the meadow
I see, I see silhouettes in the window
I watch them ’til they’re gone and they leave me hanging on
To a shadow

* * * *

Going back to "Don't Think Twice" it should be noted that not all of Dylan's songs of that era were of that ilk. Even in "Don't Think Twice" he's not the bullydog that Mick Jagger was in "Under My Thumb" or "M
idnight Rambler" where he screams, "I'll stick my knife right down your throat, and baby, it hurts."

In contrast, the many-times covered "Girl From The North Country" shows that tender side of Dylan's heart, as do many other such as "Tomorrow Is A Long Time."

As the film I'm Not There attempted to creatively depict, Dylan has many personas. The manner in which he sings "Love Sick" and others of this ilk suggest that he's familiar with the terrain of heartbreak.

* * * *

Verse after verse Dylan lays down layers of pain, each chorus beginning with "I'm sick of love." And finally the last verse concludes thus:

I'm sick of love; I wish I'd never met you. 
I'm sick of love; I'm trying to forget you.

You can see him wrestling with himself, like he's trying to talk himself out of caring so badly. He's sick of love. He's sick of the pain it causes to care. He wishes he didn't care, wishes he could forget. But in the end he confesses how it really is.

Just don't know what to do
I'd do anything to be with you.

* * * *

Here are two versions of the song on video. The first, on YouTube, is Dylan performing the song in what appears to be a staged setting. He successfully achieves the emotional torment that he captured in the original recording.

Meantime... life goes on all around you.