Stories I’ve been telling myself lately: I’m in a creative slump. I’m depressed. I’m only feeling depressed because I’m tired and tiredness still has the power to evoke a deep historical sad in me. I’m afraid of failure. I want to create but I’m alone. I don’t know how to move forward. I’m languishing. I want it to be easy. I want someone to find me and immediately recognize I’m golden. I want to be seen. I still think if I’m not famous or highly (visibly) successful for something in my lifetime that my life will not have been ‘worth it.’ How sad is that? (That last one is my ego, wanting you to know I’m aware it’s sad: that I too am [capable of] judging the story I’m telling myself about success.)
I want to lie to everybody about these things because another story I tell myself is: it’s embarrassing. Public desire is embarrassing. It’s embarrassing in the exact same way Olivia Wilde lying about the Shia LaBeouf situation was embarrassing. It’s Florence Pugh-not-giving-Olivia Wilde-eye contact-at-the-standing-ovation-of-their-film-at-Venice embarrassing. How deeply embarrassing. To be a woman and caught in a lie.
I tell myself stories about all of the ways I feel internally conflicted. Like: I feel an enormous pressure to write something new and good right here, in this place, even though I haven’t even given this link to anybody yet, so there could not be less pressure to write, unless I was writing in my own journal.
I think about this conflict story: how a part of me thinks I could be well and truly happy and at peace “giving up” (letting go) of all ambition and drive. Settling somewhere soft, in the countryside. Being a mother, taking care of a home, communing with birds and trees. How maybe that’s what I’m supposed to do, and where I would find transcendence. In this place I could surrender, free-fall, surpass ego, because there I would be moving away from everything I desire. (Another story lie: that this vision isn’t also laden with desire.)
On the other side of the fence story: a little girl, then a teenager, then a young woman, all of whom stand in a line wearing patchwork frocks (like the ones Maria makes out of pillowcases in The Sound of Music), frowning and saying, but wait: I’m an artist. I’m an actor and I do it well and I want to do it successfully. I’m a writer and I’m capable of writing a book that people will hold in their hands. But also (another lie incoming, beep-beep): otherwise all these years of story and study will be a waste, and I will be a waste. I can feel their longing (and their stubbornness) in the belief that making art is the closest thing I’ve got for what I imagine people are talking about when they use a word like “purpose.”
Speaking of stories. I think of my conversation with a poet last month, talking about The Sun tarot card from the Marseilles deck, the one with two children, one of whom has a tail (erased by later versions). I think of the Gemini-ness of that, of me. I told her how sometimes Jung’s (and now the entire wellness industry’s) “shadow” theories are bullshit can only be taken so far, not because healing our subconscious isn’t important, but because sometimes it isn’t. When we can no longer distinguish or discern the time and place for change & evolution vs the time and place for acceptance & believing our own wholeness, we’ve lost the plot. The bits of ourselves that are hidden and sharp-toothed are also complete and godly, and we don’t always need to fixate on softening our edges into curves or expunging our watery underbelly. Trying to therapy/sage/religion it away is actually, at a certain point, not only not useful, but harmful. Healing can be its own trap: an ouroboros of our (and capitalism’s) making. The story — that we’ve always got more to fix — can be used as a sales pitch, too. But the tailed-self, fire-breathing and bladed, is not only as much a part of us as the rest, it’s vital to our lives. It’s as much our power as any other part of us.
A couple of nights ago I read Heather Havrilesky’s Roll column and it helped me to at least start writing this. Writing is the truth, someone says, or writing is translation. And from these metaphors I remember something (or the tailed part of me remembers), and off I can go. All I need is some kindling, and a reminder that it never needs to be perfect.
A few more stories fears:
I haven’t started the project I have sweet and ripe in my mind because I’m afraid the sweetness will wane and the ripeness will fade and I’ll give up on it before I’ve finished and made something beautiful, something to be seen and shared and put forth into the world.
I’m afraid none of my scripts will see the light of day.
I’m less afraid I’ll never get that great role, or a chance at it. Somehow that feels like it’s really on its way, though rationally it could seem, I suppose, the least likely of them all.
I don’t know if the documentary will be made, but I can sense it’s a catalyst regardless. “I squint, I wink, I take the ride,” as the poem goes.
Of course it’s easy to see when laid out like that: the stories all being excuses to not start, or not continue to keep moving this strong-yet-scared gift of body/brain/creative juice. Fear (that also-tailed monster munchkin that tries so hard to control, to construct an impenetrable web of thick Shelob safety) keeps me caught, all in attempted avoidance of the supposedly nefarious what-if.
Is this the voice of love, or fear? I’m trying to remember to ask myself.
Love laughs when I get muddled up about which life to choose. Sees through that as a defense mechanism. Sees “inner conflict” as a mask I use to keep me from myself, keep me where I am, neat and tidy, so I don’t have to try-fail-hurt.
Love says yes to all of it: the cottage, the countryside, the art-making, the peace. Motherhood, publishing, filmmaking, collaboration. Big visioning. Words on paper. Saying the wrong thing. Writing badly, and brilliantly.
Love says it’s totally out of control, isn’t it great? Love shakes its head with a patient smile and says special, no. Miracle, yes. They’re almost — just not quite — the same thing.
lovely.