Attachments

The midwest winter day
darkens and chills my home.
My mind struggles
To find reasons why to live.
I light candles, room to room
But they don't light my spirit.
When you get to this age
Life's a game of jacks.
You throw the ball in the air,
And before it can bounce,
Life beats you to the grab.
The jacks disappear,
A loved one here,
A body part there,
Your face in the mirror,
Disfigured with age,
Your bank account you couldn't save.
I've lost so much, and I know it's true:
Life doesn't care what you're attached to.

Renelle West
November, 2006
Canton, Ohio

To Speak, or Not

     My last blog post was about approaching what we have to say in a way that invites dialogue and healthy interaction. The comments posted there have prompted me to share a paragraph from my novel "Shadowbox" that I'm now writing.
     In this scene, the protagonist Jen, who has recently become homeless, learns that she will be hired for the job she is interviewing for only if she agrees to never speak. Here is her thinking on this matter:
     "Yet this idea of not speaking wasn’t new to me. I’d considered it before. I’d always suspected my reasons for speaking were all wrong. I was often aware of talking because someone expected me to say something. Sometimes I spoke to impress people or make them like me. And I knew I often made up excuses, little mini-lies or outright lies, to keep from having to commit to doing something I didn’t want to do. And I’d already gone through so much in my life that I couldn’t admit to or talk to anyone about, I’d be grateful to never again have to answer a personal question. I even wondered how many trusting friends I’d buried over the years in the avalanche of my opinions and judgments they hadn’t asked for. That was one very bad habit not-speaking would end. But not speaking at all, ever. . . ?
     "The General’s eyebrows were raised above soft, hopeful eyes waiting for my answer. I had to think some more. Speaking was my main line of defense—at least I thought that might be true. Would the General be on hand to protect me? I’d never know if I didn’t give him the chance. Either I was willing to commit to this bizarre job situation and its scary rule, or I’d have to go back to my car for a cold night’s sleep and an unknown future. Did I really have a viable choice? Could I live without ever speaking?"
    Sorry, readers, but I'll have to leave you hanging about her decision and the consequences. She has taken on a life of her own, and her decisions and behavior continue to surprise me!

With All Due Respect. . . Really?

     When a friend says to you, "Rich (or Nancy, or whatever your name is), with all due respect. . . ," you know what's coming next, don't you? Your friend is going to criticize you. He or she is going to say something intending to do one or more of these: reprimand or scold you, intimidate or belittle you, make you look or feel stupid, shame you, point out an error in your thinking, or make your behavior, judgment, or decisions appear to be wrong.
     One writer in the online Urban Dictionary defines "with all due respect" as "a statement meant to diffuse the impact of an insult." Another writer defines it as "a statement that when you hear it, you know that your reply should be 'FUCK YOU!'"
     Maybe "with all due respect," was well-intentioned by the first person who used it as a phrase that was meant to be sincere and friendly: yes, I hear you. I understand you, and I respect you and your way of thinking, but maybe you might want to consider my viewpoint.
     The business English course I taught online for the University of Phoenix stressed the importance of "tone" in business correspondence. The reader can't see the writer's facial expressions or hear the tone of voice, so words and phrases have to be inherently respectful and friendly.
     Unfortunately, listeners and readers have now linked the cliche "with all due respect" directly with the disrespectful message that follows it. Regardless of friendly smile or warmth of voice, the whole tone of the message, from beginning to end, is a slap.
     There's something deeper here for us to consider, a reason why we might want to become aware of our approach to others. 
     Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt (pronounced "Hite") in his important book, The Righteous Mind, writes, "The human mind is designed to 'do' morality, just as it's designed to do language, sexuality, music. . . . human nature is not just intrinsically moral, it's also intrinsically moralistic, critical, and judgmental. . . . an obsession with righteousness (leading inevitably to self-righteousness) is the normal human condition." In other words, accept it; love it; it's who we are!
     Haidt writes that it's our role in society to challenge others' beliefs and keep others going in the directions that benefit all of us, and we're very quick to straighten others out. "We are terrible at seeking evidence that challenges our own beliefs," he writes, "but other people do us this favor, just as we are quite good at finding errors in other peoples' beliefs."
     Our feedback to each other has been and continues to be critical to our survival in our communities, our countries, and in the world. We need discourse, dialogue, debate more than ever.
     Haidt gives us guidance about how we can more easily change others. I recommend reading his ideas in their entirety to understand his analogy of a human being as being made up of both an elephant and a rider. I'm going to paraphrase his ideas more simply, and when you read this, you'll say it's common knowledge. I'm sharing it here, knowing that knowing something and putting it into practice can be two different things that don't always happen together.
     The more hostile a discussion, the less likely either side will change. People lean away from hostile people and conjure up more reasons for why they are right and the others are wrong.
     When there's sincere friendship, affection, admiration, and a desire to be liked by the other person, people will lean towards each other and be more willing to try to find the truth in the other person's viewpoint.
     So that brings us back to the beginning idea of this post. If we want our viewpoints heard with the possibility that others can incorporate them into their behavior for the betterment of themselves, which impacts us all, it's probably better to not preface our criticism of someone else with a phrase that has come to mean the opposite of what the words say.
     We don't get through life very easily without guidance and feedback from others. We need each other.
     With all due respect to speakers and writers who use "with all due respect," this cliche has lost its sincerity and respectability in the friendly, affectionate, respectful discourse that we all need so very much!
 

Artists are Brave Thinkers, Not Negative Thinkers!

     Maybe you already know this about people in the arts: we're not qualified judges of our own work. I think I could say that for most of us, if we considered our judgement of our creations to be credible, we'd never release anything to the outside world. 
     The truth is that we're brave. We work hard to perfect our creations, and when we've done the best we can, we take a deep breath and turn them out to be judged by others. We risk humiliation, loss of respect as artists from others, the inevitable criticism, and worse, being ignored, passed over completely. As a singer, songwriter, and published author of magazine stories and articles, and now a book, I've experienced all of those devastating consequences.
     If you've watched American Idol in their initial tryouts, the ones who don't know they can't sing in tune, or who haven't put in the time and hard work to hone the craft of a pop song singer--they're the ones who brag that they're amazing. When the judges advise them to stick to their day jobs, or worse, laugh at them, the unskilled performers react with surprise, outrage and tears. The singers who aren't bragging about themselves are the good ones.
     I believe artists in all disciplines who have put in their 10,000+ hours of hard work are not able to judge their own creations because they know too much about their craft, and they've refined their taste to a standard so high, they're certain their abilities will never reach it. This isn't negative thinking. It's being brave, knowing that their highest expectations for achievement are unrealistic, yet they persevere and then make the choice of whether to hide it away or send it out to the world. 
     We can't help it: each one of us is an original, unlike anyone else in our field. We know it's wrong to imitate someone else's work, yet it takes guts to express our own voice, be who we are. We're working from the inside out, like gophers, blind to the outside world, and we know it. We try to mitigate unwanted consequences by working in teams or in concert with others who can help us get outside perspective on our work.
     I could write a book about the inner life of an artist. My sister, my editor Terry, and a few friends pushed me along in the final year of writing my first book, Life with a Buckskinner. Without them, I would never have finished that book. They encouraged me to keep writing, listened patiently while I read aloud, and gave me valuable feedback. My sister and friend Darcy pushed me to keep asking the publisher of one of the books that contained one of my stories for his permission to reprint that story. When he ignored my requests in emails and phone calls for months, I became more afraid and unsure of the worthiness of the whole effort. I was especially aware of my fears growing more intense at the time I turned out that book. It was a memoir, and very revealing about my own shortcomings. I was terrified and I published it anyway.
     As a singer with my top-40 showband, I figured out in the first few months on the bandstand, that if I could please myself with my voice I heard coming back to me through the speakers, I had half a chance of pleasing the audience. And that was my only chance. If I stood there worrying about what they thought of me, focused on the outside of myself, I would never be able to overcome that paralyzing stage fright I was living in.
     I tried my best to please myself, but my standard, based on the music from that era of the 1970's, was very high. There were nights I wished I could drop down through the stage floor and disappear. I never felt like I reached my standard, but that didn't keep me from allowing my band leader husband Whitey to record and critique my performances so I could improve. It didn't keep me from showing up on the bandstand every night. Once, after four or five years of performing on the road, I told Whitey that if I'd known learning to be a pop and jazz singer would be so difficult, I would never have auditioned for his band.
     Every night when I sang a song in a nightclub--and I worked six nights/week for more than 12 years--I always tried to sing that song better-better-better than the night before. 
     A few months ago, I received in the mail a set of three remastered CDs that had been recorded on reel-to-reel tape in a live performance of our showband in 1974, after our band had been together for only a year. Now in my late 60's, I listened to myself singing as if that were someone else, and couldn't believe I'd been such a dynamic vocalist in those years, singing perfectly in tune, with such a wide, flexible range of clear notes and the talent to turn a song into original phrasing and nuance of musical interpretation. 
     Then I found the entry I'd written in my journal on July 7, 1974, recounting the night of July 6th when that recording was made, and the night of July 7th when the band members gathered in the recording studio to choose and mix the songs. At the very end of that entry, I wrote this: "I'm sick to death of hearing tapes. I definitely do not like the quality of my singing voice."
     Obviously, I've proven I stink when it comes to judging my own work. So it isn't my job to judge. It isn't even my job to believe in myself or in what I can create. It's my job to do my best to let my characters come to life and create that story. I write because I love the process of creating.
     So for this novel I'm writing, I'll do the best I can to put out a coherent, cohesive story. I'll send the chapters out to my editor and readers willing to take this journey with me. I'll read the chapters aloud to my friends who will listen. And then, based on their comments and my intentions for this story, I'll edit-edit-edit. And then I'll let it go. I'll pass it on for others to do what they do best: decide for themselves whether to read the story or not, and if they do read it, decide whether the story was worth the time it took to read it.
     And as for me, I'll be bravely writing the sequel, because somewhere locked in my brain, it's waiting to be let out. Isn't that what creative expression is all about anyway: letting out what's inside us, and then letting it go and moving on?