Braiding the spiritual, personal, & political

#24: On observation & empathy

Hi friend,

VCCA Residency • November 2023

For the past two weeks I was a fellow at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. They were some of the most rewarding & focused hours I’ve ever spent. Even though I protected my creative time & space from interruption or distraction, I was never alone. I was joined & inspired by the makers in nearby rooms, the activists all over the world, the cows in the field, the poems & paintings filling my periphery & conversation, & the skies of the great maker, of “the mystery that is the context for our living.”¹ I carved out intentional time to read the news, to call my representatives, to exchange resources with family & friends, to meditate, to process grief & form joyous connection & solidarity with other Queer anti-Zionist folks at the residency. As I dove into my focused refuge, it was important to me to stay connected. Isolation is a killer of ethics. The practice of the spiritual, the personal, & the political are braided.

I was at VCCA to revise my novel in progress, Tangerapple. Specifically, I spent a lot of time studying story structure. I read Aristotle, studied the 3 Act vs. the 5 Act structure, & played inside non-chronological time. For those that have taken poetry classes with me, you know how obsessed I am with revision. I love the notion of breaking something apart so as watch it come back together (perhaps it will even come back together more wholly, more authentically, more holy.) In writing the first few drafts of the novel, it was mostly intuition that guided my narrative decisions. After all, like most of us, I have spent a lifetime reading books & watching movies. But it is only now, deep into my book’s 4th draft, that I become a more intentional student of story structure. As I tiptoe into the waters of dramaturgy I’m finding it fascinating, for many reasons. My book occurs in the mind of a comatose woman. Therefor, her experience is not “stable,” chronological, or linear. As I study story, I can’t help but think about ableism, about the cultural demand that we “cohere” or are “comprehensible.”

Like so many mentally ill people, I am someone whose story of self fell apart. My brain broke & my sense of the world was cracked by paranoia, delusion, & hallucinations. When I emerged from months of mania I found myself confronted by a paradox: who was I? The girl who wandered her college campus naked, who talked to trees, & believed with full confidence that she could predict the future – or, was I the one who left the mental hospital, medicated, sobered, broken?

Were both of us “real”? Where both me? Were neither?

On which mind could I now depend? Could I “compose” myself, regain “composure” as they say? Do you see how story, or composition, is a way of creating meaning from disparate, fleeting moments? Of pattern-making? Of crafting meaningful links in time? What happens when those links that make up “who we are” are severed, or massively discombobulated by trauma? What is the story then?

Nothing has been the same since I lost my mind at 22. I lost my mind several times from then to 30. I am 39 now & with a lot of steady work, love, & rehabilitation this last decade has been free of psychotic breaks. I have been not only stable, but healthy, bless the path. To regain my self’s “structure,” to “cohere” after such painful & debilitating upheaval, has been a journey. It is a continuous confrontation (& conversation) with what Thich Nhat Hanh calls The Three Dharma Seals²: impermanence, no self, & the extinction of concepts (nirvana). It means observing life’s paradoxes up close. Here are major paradoxes that are with me every day:

• the brain is both fragile *&* resilient

• we contain deep grooves from our upbringing *&* are always changing, moment by moment

• consciousness is always ‘in the room’ with us *&* it is the invisible (impenetrable, indecipherable, enigmatic) organizing principle of our lives

“Freedom” by Christian Azolan

With time-bound arts (movies, novels, poems, songs) you are essentially in charge of shepherding another person’s attention.

I felt this perhaps most acutely when I would perform music. Contradictorily, as sound filled the air, the audience’s silent attention was made more palpable. Their attention was what my music shaped & herded.

What a beautiful responsibility it is to create a work of art. What an amazing power. How do I guide another person’s attention?

So for the last two weeks I worked inside the garments of a shepherd. What structure will my characters best live inside? What movements will best guide my flock, the eyes of a future reader? How will the book move & flow? Will it be like a river, like the shuffling of a card deck, like starlings, or like a tangerine? As writers I believe our 2 main tools are observation & empathy. Without those, what can we write? How can we expect to know ourselves, or others? At VCCA, I made it a moment by moment practice to notice how my daily life’s things were held together. Ordinary objects, extraordinary structures. To take it a step further, one might ask: how is the story of each object organized? What makes it not just a self, but itself?

Every day I would encounter small selves on my path. Holdable structures: A delicious mystery would reveal itself as a polaroid’s image came into focus. The sky was riddled with a snakeskin of impermanent clouds. A lollipop gained the dignity of a museum exhibit’s most refined sculpture. The stained glass of a tangerine in the light was a private cathedral, worthy of worshiping inside.

Becoming literate in story & its structure is not only an artistic discipline, but a political one. As Israel’s army continues shaping their narrative, employing blatant lies & racist propaganda, we must be literate in this bamboozling & drag it into the light.

As the US continues to conflate antisemitism with anti-Zionism, study the story (agenda) being pushed. Be rigorous in your investigation. Ask yourself what (physical & political) structures are deemed important, which (buildings, histories, bodies) are being erased, & who gets to build (name, shepherd the attention of, codify) the agenda of the hour. Please continue to call your representatives & demand a ceasefire. Every single voice matters. Every single moment of dissent adds up. No action is too small. Call, demonstrate, have conversations, be direct, be loving, be consistent, educate yourself, don’t give into the notion of powerlessness. We have power. Let’s stick together & use it.

Our January 2024 ISL session opens for registration today. Join a global network of writers & makers of all kinds invested in community, creativity & equity. The incredible Mahogany L. Browne, Claire Schwartz, & Kaveh Akbar will join me as this session’s Visiting Artists. Word of mouth is the #1 way we reach our students, so please spread the word! Forward a friend this Zine, our Instagram, or Twitter.

While on my residency I kept a careful daily notebook. I want to close with this Agnes Martin³ quote from within its pages: “Artwork is a representation of our devotion to life.” Next to her quote I scribbled: What am I devoted to? Mystery, vastness, children, queers, wives, chosen family, friendship, there are no strangers, interconnectedness, earned spirituality, the mind, the heart. What are you devoted to?

With ample maple syrup,

1. Quote is from the documentary “Fantastic Fungi”

2. Lion’s Roar: Looking Deeply With the Three Dharma Seals: Impermanence, No-self, and Nirvana by Thich Nhat Hanh

3. MoMa: Agnes Martin