Art/Work Podcast

When Darcy Met Lizzy: Some backstory

You might think I’m exaggerating when I tell you that I think one of the reasons it took me so long to come out was Mr. Darcy. I was raised on the BBC miniseries Pride and Prejudice with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth. My father gifted my mother, an ardent Austen fan, the VHS set for her birthday in 1997. I was seven years old. From then on, whenever my sister or I were sick and we stayed home from school, we’d all curl up on the couch and watch six hours of Regency England. Seven years old is probably a little young to be indoctrinated into the world of romantic comedies (the enemies-to-lovers trope in literally every romantic comedy ever made was started by P&P), but I could not get enough! There was something about Mr. Darcy that captivated me. I loved the way he stared at Elizabeth with such ferocious intensity. I loved his brooding, unsociable manners. I loved how, over time, he grew warm and tender and let his real self shine through.

When Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice was released in 2005, my friends Daria, Joanna, Xiao, and I went to see it on opening night at the local theater. The next day, I went to see the movie with my Mom. I then went to see the movie on my own six different times! I was fifteen years old, didn’t have a car, and I’d walk to the Esquire to see the movie. I loved the tension between Darcy and Lizzy. That hand flex, am I right?

But growing up, my family and I didn’t just watch Pride and Prejudice. We watched Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion. And we didn’t just watch these films when we were sick. On Sunday evenings, drinking our root beer, huddled on the blue corduroy couch watching Austen, my mom, my sister, and I all sought something we desperately needed. We each saw a dream that filled a hole in us. I learned to watch movies through my mom’s eyes. Yes, these films were about love—but to me, they were something more. When I watched Mr. Darcy declare his love for Elizabeth Bennet despite her “lack of connections” and dysfunctional family, I saw someone willing to look at a person’s trauma and love them anyway. In Sense and Sensibility, I saw that Elinor’s constant insistence on being good and strong prevented her from being vulnerable and that Marianne’s desire for romance and passion blinded her to real life. These movies made me feel seen; I saw myself in Elizabeth, trying to prove herself in a world of people who didn’t understand her. I saw myself in Elinor, protecting the happiness of others before her own and refusing to follow her own dreams until she broke.

I grew up wanting love! But I didn’t just want love! I wanted Mr. Darcy’s love! This was confusing because even though Colin Firth is, of course, a major babe, he’s not my type.

But there was something in this story that made me feel like it was possible to change! That we really could become more patient, loving, tender versions of ourselves. We really could leave our prejudices and pride behind and see one another for the flawed, complicated humans we are! Dear god, how badly I wanted to believe I could change for the better! That I could change for good!

How When Darcy Met Lizzy all started

So, a few years ago, I started telling everyone that I wanted to adapt Pride and Prejudice but make Mr. Darcy a woman. And everyone kept saying, that doesn’t make any sense! Women couldn’t own land or property! It’s not true to the history! And I kept saying, I don’t care! I want it! But I think a part of me, the part of me that is definitely not like Elizabeth Bennet, really wanted people to approve of my idea and think it was interesting and that I was smart and a super genius. And, since that wasn’t the response I got for my idea, I decided that I wouldn’t write it. At least, this is the excuse I gave myself at the time. When, in all honestly, it’s probably that I didn’t believe in my idea and I didn’t think this book had any value in the world. Why does believing in yourself seem like a herculean effort?!?!?

Then, in January of 2021, I had a massive emergency surgery, and I couldn’t leave my bed for weeks. I was in a lot of pain and pretty existentially depressed. A friend recommended I watch Bridgerton. I initially scoffed at the idea because I thought it was going to make a mockery of the world I loved so much. Boy, was I wrong.

I loved it! I immediately decided two things:

* I needed a Regency-era suit jacket so I could look just like Simon. (This is being made as we speak by a beautiful and talented human, Bailey Raynor. Thanks Bailey!)

* F**k history! Let’s dream up a world—a past, present, and future—where we belong!

While all this was percolating in my mind, I was writing a hybrid memoir-novel about my father’s death from his addiction. I was submitting it to agents and publishers and getting a lot of great feedback and then requests to edit this and refine that. Over time, the process of submitting and writing had become incredibly depressing. I was not only getting rejected after getting my hopes up, but I was also losing sight of what made the book special to me in the first place. I spent so much time trying to make my book appeal to various tastes and desires that it stopped being my book and became just an amorphous blob. And writing was not fun anymore. I didn’t get any joy from it. I avoided writing.

So, last October, I decided to finally write Gay Pride and Prejudice. Not for anyone else, but as an exercise. Could I make writing fun again? Could I go to my desk every day feeling joyful and alive? And the answer was: Hell Yes!

I had SO MUCH FUN writing Gay Pride and Prejudice. Not only have I seen the BBC production and the Joe Wright production more times than any sane person would admit to, but I’ve also read the book more times than I’d like to admit to. I feel so close to Darcy and Lizzy and it was so fun to bring them to life with my own imagination.

p.s. AI made this :) I will pay a real human to make something soon.

The decision to self-publish When Darcy Met Lizzy

I briefly considered printing off Gay P and P, putting it in a drawer, and closing that chapter forever. But I really wanted to share it with the world! And I wanted to share it my way (yes, I am a self-aware control freak).

I wanted to write Pride and Prejudice exactly like the Pride and Prejudice I had grown up loving. If this was a movie or a TV show, it would be considered an adaptation, and it would be much easier to do. But as a book, the fact that When Darcy Met Lizzy so closely follows the traditional plot is a deterrent for publishers. I am technically allowed to do this because Austen is in the public domain, but it’s not something books do. I wanted to keep the plot pretty much exactly the same. I wanted to keep the lines I love so much: you must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you, and my good opinion, once lost, is lost forever. I wanted to give little Sammie, glued to the TV in her grandmother’s living room, the gay romance she deserved!

So, because this book is basically glorified fan fiction, and I want to keep it that way, I couldn’t really pursue traditional publishing avenues.

But, I thought, what if there’s a little baby gay inside someone else out there, a little baby gay who wants a gay Mr. Darcy as much as I did? If that baby gay is you, this book is for you!

Or maybe you’re not gay; you're just a female-identified person who wants to a different world where you’re not beholden to the patriarchy, and you can be free. If that female-identified person is you, this book is for you, too ❤️

Or, maybe you’re just someone who just wants to read a story about two people who fall in love despite their initial judgments and prejudices, and you want to add some extra spiciness to your life. Then, this book is also for you 🥵

But, more than anything, I just want to bring a little joy to this otherwise pretty dark and depressing world. I want fun! I want playfulness! I want to take the traditional world and turn it upside down! LETS BREAK DOWN WALLS. Even if just in our imagination :)

I could just release this book as an e-book and be done with it and maybe it’s the perfectionist Virgo in me, but I feel like anything that’s done should be done well. So I want to make a beautiful book you can hold in your hand! I want an audiobook version (because who are we kidding? No one really reads anymore anyway), and I want to do it all really, really well.

But that’s expensive! I need to print the hardback copies; I need to pay an editor, I need to pay the recording studio, the actor, etc.… Also, I have to pay taxes on anything I raise through Kickstarter. So, I have to raise 30% more than what I actually need (I really wish I could channel my inner Maggie Gyllenhaal).

In other words, publishing When Darcy Met Lizzy on my own is all really, really expensive. So, I need some help making my dreams come true.

Too soon for a political meme 😬?

Before you contribute, here are some things you should know (I am looking at you, my mom’s friends!):

* This book is NSFW! It’s pretty spicy. I’d like to say that it’s tasteful, but it’s not a “closed door” book, if you know what I mean 🙈 This book is definitely Sapphic Romance with an erotic twist.

* When Darcy Met Lizzy takes place in a speculative world where women can be gentlemen, gender is fluid, and ladies and non-binary folk get it on. If this content bothers you, you’re probably signed up for the wrong newsletter.

* This book is for fun! It is for joy! It’s just meant for all you Austen gay nerds out there who are tired and just want to curl up with some comfort food. I am not reinventing the wheel here. I am just trying to put a smile on your face.

If you choose to contribute, please know I don’t take you for granted! It still boggles my mind whenever anyone reads an essay or a poem of mine. I feel so lucky and grateful that, given a world of choices for what to do with your time, anyone would choose to spend time with my work.

If you can’t contribute but like the idea, please share it with all of your rich, gay aunts! If you don’t have any rich gay aunts, share it through the interwebs?

I love you all so much. Keep your head up! Bring love to the world, if you can <3

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.artworkpodcast.io

This summer, I watched Twisters with my mom and sister. I had seen the trailer and thought it looked tacky and ridiculous, but our goal was family bonding and mild entertainment, so I didn’t need much. I left the theater as giddy as a teenager. I F*****G LOVED IT. Why?! 

A few reasons:

* Country music is my jam. I have no shame. 

* Yes, I am v gay. But Glen Powell?! Woof. How can a man wear a white t-shirt with a cowboy hat in the rain and not be too cheesy to bear? Please read this amazing substack about why Glen Powell is a true movie star. 

* I have a major hero complex. (Spoiler alert) A girl with a complicated and tortured past drives into the eye of a storm and pretty much certain death to save everyone she loves and redeem herself? Count me in! 

A little backstory: 

My hero’s complex has been a long time in the making. It started with Mulan. I had a drawing book filled with illustrations of Mulan with her horse, Kahn. I went to bed every night, fantasizing that one day, I, too, would save my country, my family, with the strength of my loyalty and the power of my convictions. I’ll Make a Man Out of You was the soundtrack of my life.

I’m never going to catch my breath, say goodbye to those who knew me.

The hero I found after Mulan was Alanna of Trebond. Alanna: The First Adventure was published in 1983 and written by Tamora Pierce.  Alanna cross-dresses as a boy and trains to become a knight. 

The final notch in my hero complex was delivered on my thirteenth birthday. My uncle gifted me The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers on DVD. Every night after my family fell asleep, I watched the entirety of the film alone in my room (in addition to a hero complex, I might have a little OCD 😬).

Nothing in my real life could compare to the pure, unadulterated joy of watching Aragorn, torn and broken but still standing, arrive at Helms Deep and force open those great oak doors just in time to save the people of Rohan. I, too, wanted the strength to rally a wounded group of people! I, too, wanted to survive when all the odds were stacked against us!

I cried when Legolas—angry and resentful about being trapped in a palace of rock awaiting ten thousand, huge, blood-thirsty Uruk-hai to brutally attack—says to Aragorn, “They’re all going to die!” and Aragorn says, “Then I shall die as one of them!”

What loyalty! What selflessness! What a hero!

The problem with heroes:

A few summers ago, I attended a writer's workshop with a well-known queer author. It was a generative workshop, and I was looking forward to creating in a queer space. On the first day, the author told us all that if we ever wanted to succeed in publishing, we would need to follow the Aristotelian plot structure. She mapped it out for us: inciting incident, rising action, climax, blah blah blah. It was not the queer, genre-bending workshop I hoped it would be. Sure, she's most likely right. You need to follow the expected structure to get published, at least by the big publishing houses. This plot structure is so ingrained in our psyches that we notice when a film or book doesn't follow this pattern. If a movie doesn't have a dark night of the soul or denouement, you feel hungry when you leave the theater. You crave the seductive burst of serotonin released when you watch a hero assigned an impossible task struggle against all odds and ultimately succeed.

The Aristotelian plot structure is how I teach the students I tutor how to write. I often have them watch Lessons from the Screenplay, a YouTube channel that examines the plot and pacing of famous films. There's also a book called Save the Cat that many novelists use when writing their first novel. It teaches a writer to lead a character from an inciting incident through the dark night of the soul and out the other side. 

Who doesn't love a good hero? Like I said, I am a hero fiend—a wannabe. And we have had so many! Where to begin?! Odysseus? Moses? Jesus? Muhammad? But heroes have three major problems. First, the hero is always singular. Yes, they can have a fellowship (Lord of the Rings slightly subverts this, so LOTR fans don't come at me), but in general, the hero is one single being. He is also problematically often a he, but I don't have either the time or energy to get into that right now.  This singular being spends the entirety of the story fighting the villain. The big baddy. Think the Emperor in Star Wars or Voldemort in Harry Potter. This villain is his own entity that can and must be defeated. Sometimes, we get a little humanizing backstory for the villain, like Tom Riddle's mom was isolated by society and abused by her father, but aside from a few facts, Voldemort is just a tool to demonstrate that while Harry was also orphaned and raised by people who didn't love him, Harry was able to do good; Harry was able to stay true to his innocent, pure, authentic, heroic self.  And this takes us to the second problem with the hero: the hero is good. 

A hero is someone you can root for, so he needs to be good! He needs to be fighting something big and universal. Aragorn is fighting to defend Middle Earth from Sauron–a force that plans to destroy all that’s good and green in the world. Luke is fighting the Emperor, who wantonly blows up whole planets. And, except for the dark night of the soul part of the book or movie, the hero doesn’t stray from his good objectives. He is the champion who fights the unbeatable foe, who rights the unrightable wrongs! (unless you’re talking about the anti-hero, which is much more nuanced and arguably creates better fiction–think Native Son or Giovanni’s Room)

The third and final problem with this whole setup is the idea that there is an end. The hero goes on a journey, and that journey ends. An end means a beginning and a conclusion. The bad guy dies, the curtain falls, and good springs eternal. 

Why do I care that this structure is the dominant storytelling structure for Western civilization? I care because we expect it and if we expect something, it means that it's so familiar it has become invisible. There is a Fernando Pessoa quote: We are stories telling stories.  If that’s true, what happens when the story we are made of and the story we continue to tell contains three truths: that there is a singular good guy and a singular bad guy and that all suffering will end if the good guy murders the bad guy? We become a species that can't tolerate nuance, that can't understand our enmeshment with all the other living creatures surrounding us. No matter where we live or to which ideology we belong, we think of ourselves as the good guys instead of what we truly are: humans entangled in a world so interconnected it is impossible to be good, even if we want to. (Provided we could even align on a universal definition of goodness).

The first problem: A hero is good. 

Aragorn appealed to me because of his stoic strength. He watches, observes, and barely speaks, but when he does, he’s honest. He puts the whole of Middle Earth before himself. He loves Arwen and doesn’t want to see her suffer. He’d rather let her go than let her die. He’s not possessive. These strengths make him unique as a man and a king, leader, and warrior because he embodies historically and culturally feminine traits: putting the joy of others before his own, putting his pleasure last, fighting for those he loves when all hope is gone, being quiet, observant, and unassuming.

Who does this selfless martyr, the son of an ancient and revered line of men destined to rescue humanity, remind you of? Aragorn’s classically “feminine” traits—compassion, altruism, and generosity—are the tenants upon which Jesus based his actions and teachings. So, not only is Aragorn the pinnacle of masculinity for all nerdy boys aged 8-100, but he is also a feminine Christ figure—an image of purity and virtue. 

In our culture, we want to be perceived as good. Who’s to say if this is the influence of Christianity or our ego, but we’re constantly telling stories about ourselves to feel we are the valiant and virtuous hero of our lives. In bygone eras, we crafted our stories of ourselves through which neighborhoods we lived in, the events we were seen at, and the clothes we wore. How we physically moved in the world managed how well we embodied good thought and right action. But, with the dawn of Instagram, it’s storytelling on steroids. The internet has become the new place to flaunt our right ideas and our correct beliefs. Not only are we trying to prove our “goodness” in the material world, but the immaterial as well.

Heroes also get us confused about what it means to take action. To be a hero, you must take a stance! You must declare yourself against evil with grand and heroic gestures! You can’t just be good; you must put your character on the line! There’s nothing heroic about buying a coffee at your local coffee shop. That’s not action! Going to the grocery store, the atm—those aren’t actions! Who is there to witness me?! To take action must be radical and performative. And once we’re seen, we want to construct our character so as to put us on the side that we believe is good.

Some people believe that what I, as a singular individual, post on the internet is taking action and that by not posting, I am not only apathetic but committing harm. With Instagram and the internet, we all believe there is a right side and a wrong side, and not only must I be on the right side, but I must publicly posture this position. This is divisive thinking. It’s polarizing and dangerous, but is it unexpected?

Problem two: A hero is singular

In her book, The Second Body, Daisy Hildyard says humans have two bodies. 

In normal life, a human body is rarely understood to exist outside it's own skin… You are encouraged to be yourself and to express yourself to be whole, to be one. You need to take care of yourself, it says. You need boundaries. You have to be either here or there. Don't be all over the place…. Even the patient who is aneasthasized on an operating table, barely breathing, is illuminated by surgeon's lamps which are powered with electricity trailed from a plant which is pumping out of its chimneys a white smoke that spreads itself out against the sky. This is every living thing on Earth…. You are stuck in your body right here, but in a technical way you could be said to be in India and Iraq, you are in the sky causing storms, and you are in the sea herding whales towards the beach.

I read this book, loved it, logically believed it, and still didn’t feel it to be true for me. I thought that my body, my life, my self, was contained within the boundaries of a white, medium-height, thirty-something woman. I thought I could choose what actions I wanted to take, for good or evil and those actions would be enacted by my physical body moving around in the world. Ultimately, I thought I had the power to control the impact of my body. 

I “daylight” as a technical writer. For a long time, I avoided truly learning about technical stacks, frontend, backend, blah blah blah, until it became clear that if I didn’t begin to take my work seriously, I’d be out of work. But I didn’t want to work for the big bad tech company. I did want their amazing health benefits and competitive salary. I thought that if I didn’t fully understand the work we did, it would be pretend and I wouldn’t really be participating. I wouldn’t be a character in the story that destroyed San Francisco, that contributed to the ever-growing wealth gap, to a downtown Seattle where men and women park their Teslas and then literally step over the body of a houseless person on their way to the office. But passivity does not negate complicity. So, I started to learn how applications are built.  I studied computer architecture to understand how technology works: everything from your phone to the place you host your blog to the app that holds your bus pass. Once I had a basic understanding, I wanted to laugh at my naivety.

Imagine you are buying a coffee at your local coffee shop. You’ve picked this coffee shop because it’s not a chain, and you want to support local businesses. You also know they use compostable cups and energy-efficient practices. Sounds great! So you buy the coffee, a physical action made by your hand and the baristas. But wait! That action is then broken down and sent all over the world. Something as simple as a transaction at the company Square might be created from a hundred or more tiny pieces. Each of those pieces has a little job and a destination. There is the physical you standing in the coffee shop and then there is an army of yous feeding off the energy in rural Virginia, stored as data in Amsterdam, sorted through a data table on a computer in Hyderabad. In the modern world, our bodies and the consequences of our actions are nearly infinite, and to completely abstain from harm, we’d have to make like Into the Wild, and we all know how that turned out. 

I’m not trying to justify my choice to work in tech (although who am I kidding? Who doesn’t want absolution); I am trying to suggest that now, more than ever, the idea that any human could be considered boundaried, singular, or wholly good is the stuff of myth. We are enmeshed. Every choice we make, even one so seemingly innocuous as ordering an espresso, has a consequence. Everything we do–from ordering a cup of coffee to opening this newsletter has a global repercussion. Post whatever you want on the internet, but no amount of political posturing on TikTok can make you the hero. Our complicity and our responsibility are much more complicated.

The third hero problem: The story/time ends when the hero kills the villainBut I didn’t just love Aragorn because he is good. I wish I could say I admired him for his demure acceptance and quiet fortitude. But at that moment in The Two Towers when Howard Shore’s score quickens and Aragorn raises his sword, I get a thrill because I know he's about to beat his enemies back! In a series of glorious shots, you see Aragorn’s bloodied knuckles against the hilt of his sword as he slices through one Uruk-hai and then another, all perfectly timed with the beat of the drum. Heads roll.  It feels good. In this violence, there is the physical expression of a body fighting back against the world, saying: I'm alive! I'm here! This is the life I will fight for! You shall not pass! 

Even though the battle scenes in Return of the King won the film an Academy Award, mass cinematic death and destruction didn’t really take the stage until the dawn of Marvel. Marvel movies are frequently featured on the YouTube channel Lessons from the Screenplay. These films are basically designed as a crash course in Aristotelian plot structure. There's always the bad guy, and there's always the hero, even if they have some dark, complicated past like the black widow or they’re insufferably cocky and arrogant like Tony Stark. 

The Marvel series started with a villain we could understand.  The first Marvel film, Iron Man, came out in 2008 when we were all still painfully aware of the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. The villain in Iron Man is Terrence, a corrupt weapons manufacturer–pretty human scale. Yes, there were a lot of explosions, but not too messy or too bad. Then you have the first Thor, and aliens get introduced, but it's still pretty tame. The little New Mexico town is destroyed but looks mostly abandoned anyway, and no one really dies. Plus, Natalie Portman is a hot scientist. But the villains had to get flashier and bigger as the series progressed. Soon, you have an alien spaceship swimming through the skies of New York, crashing into hundreds of buildings and flattening them into cement dust. People are screaming. The death toll of such a battle has to have been in the millions. But by the time we have gotten to this movie, we are nine movies deep into the Marvel universe. Suddenly, when people get squashed and flattened, they're just little CGI blips, snuffed out in a nanosecond before the next shot. It didn't take very long, but in less than a decade, global, planetary warfare became something that didn't even phase us—instead, it’s a blockbuster.

Then something very interesting happened.

For millennia, the hero's journey has always had to end. It was a one-way road. Villain vanquished, hope springs eternal. Then came Marvel’s Infinity War. At the end of the film, half the population of the universe (not just Earth) is turned to dust. Dead. Never to be seen or heard from again. Can you imagine the gravity of such a loss? Could you imagine if half your family, half your city–just died? One minute, you’re looking at your wife over a cup of coffee, and the next, she is gone.

A little aside about death and loss: 

When I was young, my family went to a church called The First Divine Science Church. One of the ministers, Karl Kopp, wrote plays inspired by William Blake; he honored children and made sure there were roles for young people in all his plays. After my parents got divorced and my dad moved to California, I latched on to Karl like his very own imp. I stole into the church library to pour over his books of poetry, which, while beyond my comprehension, I cherished in my bones. I still remember when Karl, my hero, over 6 feet tall, a gray-haired giant, was standing on stage with us at rehearsal when he suddenly collapsed. It was like watching a tree felled. He suddenly caught at the knees. We all ran to his side. When he stood up he put his hand on my shoulder and gave me a little smile. I never saw him again. He was the first person I ever loved and lost. He was diagnosed with ALS and went quickly. I tried to visit him at the hospice, but he wouldn't let me in the room. I remember being so angry with him for not letting me say goodbye, but now, after holding the hand of three dying people, I can see why he wanted me to remember him as the lyrical, nerdy giant, not a man who couldn't move. 

After Karl died, I started having panic attacks about death. I began to think I was dying at night, that my heart had stopped, and it was the end. I had panic attacks in physics class, before bed, in the park. Periodically, these panic attacks will return the way they did when I was 15, and I'm faced with the truth that this life of mine will end. 

The self-centered aspect of death is still there for me–what will happen when I lose my own life? What will happen to my memories, etc… But now, after the death of my father and several friends, I am learning about what it’s like to lose the people we cherish the most. Losing a being you love is a grief so profoundly painful you have to escape your body to lessen it. It’s why when people grieve, they don’t eat, they don’t sleep, they literally want to deny their bodies.  

We can't live constantly awake to the truth that one day we will lose everyone we have ever loved lest it paralyzes us, but we can't escape the truth of it either. Because if we ignore death, if we don't give it our attention, we also don't give life attention. Death grants life weight. And vice versa.

Back to the third problem: 

In Infinity War, half the population of the universe dies. Imagine what it was like to lose your parent, your sibling, your friend. Now, picture that on a massive, interplanetary scale! Is there a name for that colossal grief? Until now—for all of history, the story was the story! The hero dies, and then they’re dead forever. But suddenly, in 2019, the Marvel movies declared that the dead don’t need to stay dead! Half the POPULATION OF THE UNIVERSE dies, only to be resurrected in the next movie! 

And just like that, superhero movies entered a battle with time. 

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that all the superhero movies now have to do with time. Time has become the villain. Because that’s what we’re really fighting, right? This is what we’ve been at war with all this time. Our true enemy is this: that there is only one time, and it is now. There is only one choice, and it’s the choice I’m making right now. And the present isn’t something you can make more of! It’s not something you can put in an accelerator program and grow. You can’t put it in a high-yield savings account and check on it five years later. Now isn’t something you can buy or multiply; it is singular and defined only by one thing: our attention. 

Our fear of our finitude is not new. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky wrestled with it in the 1800’s. Dante confronted death in his own way in the 1200’s. What’s new, I think, is our belief that we can stop our own death, that we can prolong our experience in time. Modern medicine, our ever-increasing lifespans, botox, and a capitalist society obsessed with exponential growth have given rise to the belief that our battle with death is a fight we can win. And now, our stories have shifted too. Now, when the heroes lose, there’s a second chance. 

Sure, there might be a multiverse. In a book I read about time, I learned that it moves slower at sea level. The moon is making our days longer. It’s true, time is fluid and not linear, and maybe it’s theoretically possible for you to die in this universe and still be a famous chef in another, but the truth is that our perception of time, in this universe, in this now, can and does end. One day, there will be no more now. 

The moral of the story is:

The problem with the hero's journey and stories about the one righteous hero fighting against the villain is that in real life, when that villain is vanquished, the story doesn’t end. The curtain doesn’t fall. Time goes on. The only thing that ends is that person’s, that “villain’s,” now. 

I think we’ve lost our cultural understanding of what it means to die. This isn’t a Marvel movie. We can’t turn back time. When people die, those deaths aren’t something that happens in a nanosecond before we cut to Robert Downey Jr’s face.

Marvel is proof that in fiction, at least, we’ve run out of villains. There’s only time. Which isn’t really a villain, provided you can look it straight in its toothy, scaly jaw and recognize: I cannot run, I cannot fight—I can only surrender. And when we surrender—surrender to this one, precious now—it becomes even clearer that if there’s anything we should not be doing with our wild, precarious present, it is depriving someone else of theirs. When we end someone’s life, it’s over. This is not a game. They’re not a number on a chart. Their now is just as fragrant and rich as this moment of mine: sitting on my front porch in the sunlight, my dog at my feet. I don’t want to lose this experience, I cherish it. So what right do I have to take it from somebody else? And I’m under no illusions. That is what I am doing. While I sit here, with my coffee and my pup, I am depriving someone else of their now. Because I am not singular; my body and my actions are nearly infinite, and my tax dollars, my 401k, and my newsletter hosted on servers powered by Amazon are all politically and financially entangled. The multiverse is already here in our present. Yes, my body is here in Olympia, Washington, but it is also in a bomb dropped on a country I have never seen with my own eyes. 

I no longer want to teach my students to model the hero’s journey in their writing. It’s barbaric to me now: two forces–one for good, one for evil–pitted against each other. In Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, she sums up the history of literature as having two essential pieces: a hero and a conflict. She says, “I differ with all of this. I would go so far as to say that the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag… A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.” 

I don’t want to teach young people that stories need to follow a structure I have blindly adhered to for most of my life. What if we wrote without antagonists and heroes? What if we wrote as if we were beings held in a powerful relation to each other? What if we lived this way, too?

In high school, my teacher, Jana Clark, had us read an Ursula Le Guin story called The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas. In the story, we’re told that the prosperity of one little town is dependent upon the extreme suffering of a child. The people of the town are given a choice. They can live with the knowledge that their world, their laughter, and their joy are contingent on the misery of another, or they can walk away, never to be seen again. My teacher asked us if we would walk away. As young, idealistic teenagers, we all said Yes! I will walk away! But the truth is, we don’t. This is Omelas, and none of us are walking away.

I've recently been attending ACA meetings (Adult Children of Alcoholics), and we have our own serenity prayer.

Higher power, grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one that I can, and the wisdom to know that one is me.

It’s true, I can’t be a hero, and you can’t be either. And it’s also true that I have very little control over the infinite versions of myself scattered across the globe. And, while I don’t have a solution to the problem of Omelas, I know that, at the very least, in the end, it’s just as Gandalf says: the ultimate choice is what to do with the time that was given to us. And, as much as I can, I want to choose to commit acts of kindness from within the body I can control.

Afterthought:There is an end, but there is also a way to make time, if not grow, at least expand. Attention. 

Mary Oliver wrote:

It has frequently been remarked, about my own writings, that I emphasize the notion of attention. This began simply enough: to see that the way the flicker flies is greatly different from the way the swallow plays in the golden air of summer. It was my pleasure to notice such things, it was a good first step. But later, watching M. when she was taking photographs, and watching her in the darkroom, and no less watching the intensity and openness with which she dealt with friends, and strangers too, taught me what real attention is about. Attention without feeling, I began to learn, is only a report. An openness — an empathy — was necessary if the attention was to matter. 

P.S. I didn’t think of this all on my own. Duh! I am greatly influenced by the work of my dear friend, Daria Reaven. Listen to her here and read her here. 

I also loved Against Purity by Alexis Shotwell and The Second Body by Daisy Hildyard.  

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.artworkpodcast.io

This essay is very old but I watched “The Iron Claw” over the holidays and it sent me into a rage about stories and the way we tell them and reminded me of what I wrote in this piece. So, if you’ve already read this, move along :) If not, this is Part 1 of a new series about fiction, stories and dreaming.

p.s. the audio crackles. I still haven’t bought a fancy mic/podcast set. Perhaps one day! For now, pretend I am FDR and these are fireside chats and that this is the best audio quality the 30’s have ever seen!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.artworkpodcast.io

Dear Friends,

Damn, has it been a dark winter. I feel like a bunch of my closest friends have been going through some dark s**t these last few months. It’s been a bit of a bummer.

And yet… Monday was the equinox and my yard is beginning to unfurl and release her tender, spring flowers. I can smell new life every time I leave my house.

On Monday the UN released another climate report. It’s bad. Very bad. But not unexpected. I’ve been sitting on a conversation I had with my friend, Huan Manton, in January about Climate Change and our responsibilities as individuals. Now seems like the perfect time to share it with you all.

We talk about a lot of things but the heart of the conversation hinges on this truth:

"It’s warming.

It’s us.

We’re sure. It’s Bad.

We can fix it.”

- Kimberly Nicholas, Phd.

I want to focus on this part:

We can fix it.

How can we fix it, you might ask?

Through community and through love (along with some more practical solutions).

Going forward, it is our choices that will define us. And first, let’s choose love, let’s choose community.

Huan always makes me feel more hopeful and I hope he will make you feel more hopeful too.

Love,Sammie

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sammiedowning.substack.com

This podcast is made for anyone out there who doesn’t feel that they deserve pleasure and doesn’t even know how to get the pleasure that they deserve. And finally, I’m here to celebrate women’s pleasure and women’s bodies and discontinue this cycle of shame and harm.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sammiedowning.substack.com

Lovely humans!

Summer has finally made it to the PNW. Thank god. I was starting to lose my mind in the deluge of grey and water.

And yet, rain aside, this landscape feels familiar in my heart. I was in Bellingham the other today, eating oysters and overlooking the Sound and I was dumbfounded by the profound sense of familiarity I had for a place so unfamiliar from my home. I grew up surrounded by sandstone, limestone and shale but as I watched the unique, radiant blue of distance islands, I felt as if I was always destined to live near water. It makes me wonder if somehow my Scottish ancestors have left their longing, their home, swimmingly present in my blood.

So, here’s to summer! To adventures! To the blue of distance!

In this newsletter I interview my dear friend, Alyse Knorr, talented writer and professor, about why I NEVER KNEW that all my favorite writers were gay.

This is not a joke.

A brief list of my favorite writers who are ALSO queer:

* Virginia Woolf

* Carson McCullers

* Rachel Carson

* Emily Dickinson

* Mary Oliver

* Walt Whitman

* Louisa May Alcott

* Shakespeare

If you want to listen to one of the letters Virginia Woolf received from her lover, Vita Sackville-West, watch this super sexy reading by Jodie Comer. Please, Jodie Comer. I beg you. Read me lesbian love letters all day long.

This interview might seem tangential from the theme of romantic love but queer erasure and the literal, physical practice of removing queer love from our classic texts has caused unfathomable cultural damage that we’re only just now beginning to repair.

It’s time we start sharing queer stories and make sure that young people know that their role models, their mentors, and their leaders contain multitudes.

Shout it from the rooftops! Tell your grandma!

*p.s. I’m new to the world of interviewing! It turns out interviewing people for podcasts is really hard and kind of awkward, even when the person you’re interviewing is a good friend! Thanks for bearing with me on this adventure, lovely humans.

Reading list:

Want to fact check this episode? Here’s a reading list!

* My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, Jenn Shapland

* Open Me Carefully, Edited by Ellen Louise Hart and Martha Nell Smith

* The Emily Dickinson Reader: An English-to-English Translation of Emily Dickinson's Complete Poems, Paul Legault

* Love Letters: Vita and Virginia, foreward by Alison Bechdel

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.artworkpodcast.io

First, I should say that this is a newsletter about money. Specifically, artists and money. And even more specifically, women or non-binary or queer folks and money. But it is also for anyone, anywhere who feels disempowered because of money.

If you are totally fine with money, this newsletter is not for you. Just wait for next month where I will be back on track with an essay about love :)

I will also mention that this world is facing a financial situation unprecedented since 2008—inflation was already at a 40-year high and has now increased even more. Gas prices are ridiculous. Rent in Denver is seeing record spikes. If you’re feeling strapped, stressed, scared, or just completely panicked—you have every right to feel that way. Gone are the days of the Patti Smith Just Kids sort of poverty. Even that bleak portrayal of the starving artist is not possible anymore. We can’t just wing it.

Why am I talking and thinking about money now? Recently I moved from Denver to Olympia, Washington and it is triggering some memories from the first time I moved to the Pacific Northwest when I was 23. So, I am going to first tell a story about my relationship with money and then I am going to go into practical tips and tricks. If you just want the action items, read ahead! If you want to hear a story, listen to the podcast (I didn’t type it up).

I think money is the most important thing, women, queers, and artists are ignoring and I believe it’s the one thing we can’t ignore.

But before we get to the money stuff—my friend Alyse wrote a book about Golden Eye (the video game) and it’s available for pre-order!

“It is the definitive history of GoldenEye 64, the 1997 hit video game for the Nintendo 64 based on the Bond film of the same name. If you love games, or know someone who does, or even if you're just a fan of an interesting story of teamwork in tech, this is a fun read about how a group of total rookies in the middle of nowhere, England broke every rule in the book to make one of the greatest games of all time.”

Alyse is talented AF. She writes poetry and has a podcast about Sappho and Queer Pirates.

You should pre-order her book!

Also, I was on a roadtrip this past week with my mom and it made me think of this audio essay I made about Carhenge. I hope you enjoy!

DISCLAIMERS:

* I am not trying to fight capitalism right now.

* This is some politically passive s**t.

* This is me saying: on a crashing plane put your own god damn oxygen mask on first, because believe me, when I was 23, death seemed like the only way out of the disaster that financial disempowerment (along with intergenerational trauma) had wreaked. If you feel that way, you’re not alone and you can get help. You deserve your own breath, your own oxygen, your own life!

* I am a privileged white woman. There is no getting around this fact. I went to an arts magnet school, that was free but provided me with a great education. I got a full scholarship to college through a program called The Daniels Fund. And even though I was eligible for free and reduced lunch, my mom still packed us lunches when she could. We were not in abject poverty. I can’t deny these privileges helped and still help me.

* The truth is—you must make at least 40,000 dollars a year to just have a basic life. Like meet your needs. No travel. No classes, no extra money to put out your record or your zine or your book. But you need to make closer to 65/70 a year to have extra for savings. (I got this fact wrong in the podcast). That’s hard to come by these days! It’s not your fault, and you’re doing nothing wrong! It is legitimately harder to make ends meet today than it was when your parents graduated college. But in order to become financially solvent you might need to make some tough choices—like move in with your mom or your sister or sleep in your friend’s basement. It sucks and it’s not fair and I’m sorry!

* I couldn’t become financially solvent without having a full time job with health care. I tried. I tried everything and I couldn’t make it work. So this is probably not the best guide for all the freelancers out there. Some people might consider it selling out BUT I have never in my life made more or better art than I have now with a steady and consistent job.

* The moral of the story: not being financially solvent, not being able to pay your bills or find housing and constantly being afraid for your future impacts your decisions and your ability to be a person. You might be like me and stay in a toxic relationship because you literally feel that you have no way out, or you might not be able to invest in that zine you’ve always wanted to release or take that art class. Not being in control of your money gives away your power.

Virginia Woolf said it, Gloria Anzaldua said it—you need a room of your own, you need agency to do any work at all.

You need to be powerful, self-assured and safe in order to make great and daring art.

THE FIRST STEP:

Let that resentment go.

I remember being taunted in middle school because I wore clothes from the ARC on Broadway. This was before Macklemore made thrift stores cool. In high school everyone in the entire school went on an international trip except for a small group of ten or fifteen of us who couldn’t afford to go. So, while all our friends went to St. Petersburg or Mexico City we watched international films and ate Italian food. I saw Cinema Paradiso for the first time thanks to that experience. I will be forever changed by that film and that experience but when I was fifteen, in that dark theater? If you had touched me I would have incinerated you with my hatred and my resentment for everyone in my life who I felt had so much more.

In college there was this beautiful girl from California who was always traveling. I would obsessively gorge myself on her Facebook photos taken on yachts off the coast of Italy, her selfies in London. I think she was/is actually a very nice person, and I could have tried to be her friend if I stopped hating her for everything she had that I did not.

I wish I discovered earlier that some people really do have it easier than you and yes, that really sucks. I wish I had felt it, let it in and then let it go. Cause that s**t will fester and transform you into a grotesque monster (spoken as someone who only recently let this go, and still gets flare ups from time to time). You may be a victim in a fucked-up society designed to keep you down, but that’s not going to help with details. Do not sacrifice any more of your power!

THE SECOND STEP:

Stop avoiding s**t.

If you’re my friend, you know I have avoidant tendencies (I literally have 5-10 unread emails RIGHT NOW that cause me intense anxiety and guilt for not answering).

But DON’T AVOID your bank account. Don’t avoid the reality. Sit down with yourself, your sister, your super badass grandma and face the dark side.

THE THIRD STEP:

Mental health.

If I had seen a therapist while in my toxic relationship I guarantee I would have left them six months in. But guess what? My mental health was something I avoided.

LISTEN TO ME WHEN I SAY THIS:

Everyone needs a therapist. EVERYONE. I don’t care who you are. You need a therapist. It’s not a character flaw, it doesn’t mean there is something wrong with you or that you’re sick or a bad person. It just means you are human, and humans literally can’t do this alone. In the words of my grandmother, life is hard. So if you don’t have a therapist, get yourself to a therapist now.

If you’ve experienced any kind of trauma, especially sexual trauma, I promise that you need help and I promise it will get better and I promise that talking to someone is the first step.

I am currently medicated and in therapy and I can honestly say that I make better decisions for my well-being now than I did even a year ago.

You can find some subsidized, sliding scale or free therapy in Denver in the resources below.

Also, it’s worth noting that if you’ve been the victim of sexual assault, you can often receive free services.

THE FOURTH STEP:

Borrow 1,000 dollars from someone who loves you (doesn’t have to be a parent—someone out there loves you!)

I didn’t have this, but it would have made everything easier. The truth is—you can’t budget when you live paycheck to paycheck. If you know anyone, literally anyone, ask them to lend you a thousand dollars. Don’t worry! You’ll pay them back .

NOW FOR THE PRACTICAL S**T:

Budget:

You need a Budget.

Like you really need a budget.

Like stop everything and make a budget now. Not a dream budget, but a real budget based on your REAL expenses.

Throw your credit cards in the trash. They’re a trap. ONLY USE YOUR DEBIT CARD. Or use cash.

I use this system and it’s very, very helpful. Basically it’s an envelope system. You take out a limited amount of cash based on your budget and only spend what’s in the envelope.

You can use some free apps for creating a budget like MINT, or you can use this app that I think is amazing: YNAB.

If you’re freelancer—get this book (or email me and I will send it to you)—it helps you learn to budget if you don’t have consistent paycheck.

But basically, the rule of thumb for freelancers is instead of saving month to month, you should save for six months, budget for six months and work from there. So how much is your rent for 6 months? Your car insurance? Your phone bill? Groceries? Fun money? Save that all and budget from there.

So, if you’re a freelancer, you might need to borrow more than 1,000 to get you on your feet—but remember what I said, don’t worry—you’ll pay your loving friend, sister, mom or neighbor back.

Debt:

If you have debt—don’t pay it all off right away if that means you won’t have any money leftover because then you will just get into more debt! It’s better to pay off your debt in chunks and have savings than it is to throw all your money at it and not save anything. Remember, no credit cards!

Books about money:

You’ll probably always struggle with money until you heal your money wounds. For me, I often spend money as if I were that twelve-year-old at Slavens Middle School being made fun of for my thrift store clothes. Or I spend money like I’m still that girl sitting alone in the theater at Denver School of The Arts when all of her friends are all over the world. No matter how many beautiful clothes I buy, how many trips I go on, I will never fill that void with money. You could see the whole world, you could travel to 18 countries a year, but if you feel empty or if you hate yourself (as I have) you will never fill that void. You need to face your dark side of your insecurities in order to get on the right side of money.

Vice versa, are you someone who feels like you’re broke when you have six months emergency money in your bank account? Do you feel strapped for funds when, in reality, you’re doing okay and can make your payments on time? Maybe it’s okay to let a little loose and release yourself from the story that you’re broke when you’re really not?

Here is some reading I’ve found helpful to heal my money wounds:

* Emotional Currency

* Scarcity  

* Mar Grace has a beautiful podcast about money and being an artist.

Mental Health:

* The People’s House—I met my therapist here and I paid him $20! At the time it felt like a HUGE financial commitment to pay $20 a session—but I am so grateful for the experience.

* Maria Droste—Affordable counseling in Denver.

Medical Care:

* I was in a lot of medical debt and I wish that someone had told me that you can negotiate with hospitals! You can literally set up a payment plan for ten dollars a month! Don’t get a credit card to pay for your medical bills! It’s a scam and evil.

* The Center in Denver can help you find health insurance if you’re struggling. They helped me!

Free Financial Advice

* Savvy Ladies is marketed towards cis women, so I understand if it’s off-putting, but they offer FREE consultation services with a financial planner and they offer a lot of classes to help you learn about budgeting, buying your first home and finding healthcare etc…

* Gaby Dunn has a great podcast called BAD WITH MONEY.

* A free forum to learn and discuss financial questions.

All my love!

Sammie

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sammiedowning.substack.com

Hi hi!

Interrupting our regularly scheduled programing to announce that finally, after many, many years, my chapbook, Wound Light, is being released by Bottlecap Press. Yay!

The chapbook follows a young woman navigating loss at every scale–from climate change and geological time to the death of a father and the loss of a romantic relationship. While at times sparse and desolate, Wound Light simultaneously displays the fecundity and wonder of life on Earth. It is a book that is both hopeful and yearning.

I’m super proud of this poetry collection and I am so grateful that after all this time it’s in a place where I can share it will all of you! I’ve recorded a little virtual reading of two of the pieces included in the book.

*Sean’s Fly Company (from the podcast) (sorry for forgetting the name Category 3! How could I have possibly forgotten!)

I’m currently in the process of moving from Denver, Colorado to Olympia, Washington so I am not sure if I will have a newsletter for June. We shall see!

Arachnocampa Luminosa

Riding dark water where openness feels the same as closed. Then—a ceiling of light. Puncture wounds in darkness congealed to turquoise pools. That a creature can produce luminescence from within its body: a cage transforming sustenance into radiance, morphing the inner blackness of the earth from a place with no beginning, no end, to a field of stars where end and begin stream toward irrelevance

Don’t tell me about protein or enzymes. I won’t listen. I might be interested if you told me that creatures capable of illumination contain Luciferin: the light of the body, a fallen angel. But I don’t care to dissect further

The how of a thing is not nearly as great as the know. We should be frightened that the biblical know grew flat and impotent from our less devoted tongues. Language lost her disciples. Jesus knew Mary. Perhaps. I do not care—the only thing of which I am certain is the power of a phrase, words capable of dethroning mythology when left to their own devices. Words that must be castrated lest they destroy

When did I understand become: we have discovered that x = y and there is solace in the equation. When did I understand you become: it is clear I am required to empathize, not—

I know you

You entered and infused me. I discovered you were made of embers when my body formed a shell around your coals. We’ve cooled and crusted and yet still we burn. To say I know the light of glowworms is to say: your light suffuses. Knowledge of your existence spawns within. I am prey, lured to light on a train of silk—snared, unwittingly nest bound

I know there are creatures, together creating galaxies, not caring enough to ask if their stars are the only ones or if they are enough

How I Came to Know You:

About The Big Bang, I remain unconvinced. The science is unsatisfactory. Like lukewarm pasta. A little wormy and swollen going in.

But I do believe a body formed from a cloud of interstellar dust and fell in on itself, hot and heaving, burning off anything nearby that wasn't worth the weight. Until all that heavy matter spun into discs around a burning orb.

Imagine—at first the planets were cold.

I could say it is because I arrived at the show too early. I interrupted you on the stairs. I could say it’s because the bathroom was occupied, and you were late to do your makeup.

Earth began as a molten core with thin skin. She would have stayed that way if not for the big burp. Geysers, eruptions, methane and ammonia—and suddenly the world was warmed and ready for life. But once living things appeared they began to feed, starved and gluttonous. The planet should have frozen and died—her gases consumed.

Or I could say it's because I failed high school English and my teacher took pity on me and so I went to a school where no girls wanted to kiss me back. I could say it's because you quit that job at Columbia or because you never found light in Glasgow or because on an island six-thousand miles away, I caught eels with my bare hands and herded fawns through the hills but never found a body I wanted to touch.

Why did Earth live? Because algae changed its color from light to dark and back again and the transformation was enough to radiate heat. But even then, that should not have been enough. The globe would have become glacial ice with only a small band left alive near the equator.

I can see by the look on your face that you think I’m on another one of my climate doomer rants. Just give me a sec! I’m getting there.

The answer is wind. Wind that carried the heat of the algae across the globe and back again.

Nothing is more suspicious, more improbable, than life itself…It would be doing unnecessary violence to the laws of chance to suggest that so many singularities came by coincidence to the third planet of a minor star. So, in the face of such wild improbability, it becomes necessary to look for connections.[1]

Don’t worry, I’ll help you load the car in a second. I’m almost done.

What I am trying to say is that I know. I know what it's like to be afraid to stay because you can feel the heat of that apparition—the you who left, who made a different choice, the you who holds the potential for a warmer life. I know what it's like to be haunted by the army of yous who took a different path—the one who stayed at Columbia, who never met me on the stairs—circle the earth with their ghosts.

I don’t blame you. You’re right—in a lot of ways choosing is like death.

But what I mean is: our planet was once only rock, and it is true that life is nothing but an aberration, like sand against skin, rubbing the world raw, splitting what once was into what will be with nothing more directed than consistent pressure.

An unplanned accident.

But if something comes from nothing and returns, is there such a thing as nothing? Or is the very word misdirection? Like the color black—infinite fullness disguised as absence.

This world, this life, this moment with you on the couch in April, is an experience that could have been lost if only the wind had blown north longer than it had flown south. A near miss. The web of choices that brought me here to your hand, to this night, contains a quantity of divergences that no human mind can bear. The likelihood of this moment is so unfeasible it feels stolen.

I shouldn’t have any of it, so how could I possibly want more?

So yes, what I am saying is: I'd rather watch you leave me than have never found you. Unplanned accident. Luminescent anomaly.

[1] Heaven’s Breath: A Natural History of the Wind, Lyall Watson

Thanks for attending this virtual reading. Now go smell a flower!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sammiedowning.substack.com

Hi hi!

This week I’m sharing an audio version of an essay that is forthcoming from Porter House Review. It’s about nude photos, female pleasure and it recounts one of my top-five most embarrassing moments :)

I’m going to invest in better podcast recording equipment shortly. But for now, please forgive the grainy quality and just imagine you’re huddled around a radio in an old farmhouse in Kansas as a storm rattles the weathervane.

I just returned from a visit to see my little sister in Athens, Georgia. She is a haven and a sanctuary and I will love her forever.

Live long and prosper,

Sammie

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sammiedowning.substack.com

Hi beautiful humans,

IT IS THE BIRTHDAY OF MY FAVORITE HUMAN: FRANCESCA (FRANK/FRANKIE) DOWNING. I love this woman so much I wrote a book about it. Happy birthday, dear heart <3

When we were little, we watched two movies pretty much every other day: Robin Hood and The Three Musketeers. At the end of The Three Musketeers there is a music video for the song, All for Love. We’d rewind the music video and dance in the living room to Rod Steward, Bryan Adams, and Sting jamming out (I blame these movies and this music video for my issues with romantic love).

Here’s to you, kid! It’s All for Love :)

*p.s. I know there are typos in the below essay. I am tired. Please forgive me.

I’ve been having a difficult time with fiction recently. I’ve tried reading a variety of books and nothing seems to stick. When my copy of The Paris Review arrived in the mail (me=snob of snobs!) I started every story and read a few lines and then moved on, frustrated and annoyed. Where’s the heart?! Where is the life?! Then I came to a piece written by Annie Ernaux. It’s a stunning excerpt from her journal written while she was having an affair with a Russian officer before the fall of the Berlin wall. I dissolved into the piece. When it was over, I looked up and noticed that I was not in Paris in the 80’s but in my apartment. It felt so real! So intimate! So unashamed to be ashamed—to be grotesquely obsessed, filled with desire and anguish. I then went on to read a piece by Kathryn Scanlan (who are you, you mysterious genius?!?) about a horse trainer. I knew it must be a story (based on the very little information I can find about Kathryn Scanlan, I know she was never a horse trainer) but I couldn’t put it down. Finally! Fiction that was engaging! But when I came to the end of the story I noticed a footnote that said the story was constructed from a series of interviews. It was fiction. It was crafted and honed and manipulated for story and tension and yet it was also real. I could feel the life in the work—pulsing and human—like the smell of a person who just woke up, sweaty and a little sour. I want that raw honesty! Give me vulnerability or give me death! Fiction feels like a heavily buttressed cathedral with structural and methodical wings holding the roof aloft. I want to worship in the grass under nothing but space.

A few days ago I went to a bookstore and asked the clerk for On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, a book I’ve read already but wanted to look at again.

I said, “I looked in biography and didn’t see it.”

He said, “It’s not a biography.”

“Oh, do you have a section for memoir? I didn’t see it”

And then he laughed and said, “It’s a novel. It’s fiction.”

I was embarrassed to be mocked and embarrassed because I knew it was a novel. But I also believe that it’s not really a novel. It’s a work of art that belongs to no genre. You could call it poetry as easily as you could call it fiction.

TL;DR- If you don’t have time to read this essay, just read this:

For the love of all that is holy, can we please live without labels?!?! Who cares if a book is memoir or fiction or somewhere in between? Memoir is a misnomer. There is nothing “factual” about memory. The only question I care about when reading literature is: is it real?

Autofiction

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous could be described as autofiction. Autofiction is difficult to define, but I think this quote by Christian Lorentzen is helpful: “In the past, I’ve tried to make a distinction in my own use of the term between autobiographical fiction, autobiographical metafiction, and autofiction, arguing that in autofiction there tends to be emphasis on the narrator’s or protagonist’s or authorial alter ego’s status as a writer or artist and that the book’s creation is inscribed in the book itself.”

Marguerite Duras is said to have pioneered the genre with her book, The Lover. The Lover is about a fifteen-year-old French girl in Saigon who has an affair with a twenty-seven-year-old man. It spans years and countries and ultimately describes a woman’s attempt to reckon with the past that built her. The Lover is not a book of fact and anyone who attempts to read it that way is an unimaginative slug (yes, I am a judgmental person, sorry not sorry). People have criticized the piece for not being “accurate” to Duras’ real life. Although she did state that the book was completely autobiographical, according to her interview in the New York Times:

“Truth, in the Durasian universe, is a slippery entity. After "The Lover," Duras said, in Le Nouvel Observateur, that the story of her life did not exist. Only the novel of a life was real, not historical facts. ‘It's in the imaginative memory of time that it is rendered into life.’"

While The Lover is not fact and it is not true, I do believe that it is real. What do I mean by real? I don’t mean: actually existing as a thing or occurring in fact; not imagined or supposed. I suppose my definition is more spiritual and amorphous. I believe The Lover to be true to a woman’s emotion and true to an experience. The book is an honest, vulnerable excavation of what made this woman herself. The Lover is real according to the spirit not the world.

I’m not sure if any of you remember the Million Little Pieces scandal, but I’ve been scarred by it for life. James Frey sold his book about dealing with addiction as a memoir and went on Oprah describing his experiences with addiction. But lo and behold! He exaggerated. Frey originally wrote a novel based on his experiences, but it was denied by most publishers so he made it a memoir. Why would a memoir be more attractive to publishers than a novel? Because we live in a society that likes to hang our hat on reality! We want to say—this is what really happened! We want reality where, if life were a cake, we could slice out this man’s experience and eat it. His story is so real we could hold it in our hands! Even though we’re continuously duped by social media, deep fakes, politicians and systemic and structural manipulation we still believe there is a single source of truth to be had! We believe there is a “real” life physical enough for us to hold.

Frey has said he "stands by the book as being the essential truth of my life". And yet he was crucified by the literary community and accused of literary forgery. Since then writers live in fear of the scandal of someone combing through their work and fact checking how many times they’ve had a root canal. So much for Duras’ “imaginative memory of time that it is rendered into life.”

I would say, presumptuous as this may be, that On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is also real according to the spirit. And I would go so far as to say that what sets the book apart, what makes it spectacular is the reality of its emotional spirit.

But where is the room for creative freedom, for art, and for craft if all writers fear being indicted by the community as literary forgers? The answer is: calling every book a novel and that little disclosure at the front—

“This work is fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.”

The Problem with Memory

My novella, The Family that Carried their House on their Backs, is technically speculative fiction but, if we lived in a world that wasn’t so aggressive about fact and fiction and the truth, I could call it a memoir. It’s true, my dad did not turn into a wolf and my mother, sister, and I are not nomadic people with houses literally stitched to our backs. But, the book is real.

When I was in my final semester of college I wanted to write about what it was like growing up with an addict as a father. House began as a poem describing what crack cocaine does to an addict’s lungs—it causes pulmonary alveolar and interstitial edema which, in X-rays, looks like a tree or a blossoming flower.

But after I wrote the poem, I realized that the reality of the piece prevented any true feeling. The work felt impotent. In the end, I didn’t want to be trapped by the confines of what had really happened. Memory is fantasy; what we carry with us has little to do with fact, everything to do with feeling.

Memory is defined as an organism’s ability to store, retain and retrieve information. It’s been clear to psychologists for some time that trauma can mar the brain’s ability to perform these functions. That is to say: trauma can so radically transform the landscape of memory that often it is nearly impossible for a person to return to their regular thought patterns.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve struggled with conveying my memories to certain members of my family, often because those people don’t hold those same images, feelings or thoughts to be true. When I set about writing this novella, I wanted to avoid the trappings of fact versus fiction. Instead, I wanted to create a world that felt, smelled and looked exactly like the world in which I’d grown up: the world from which I’d watched my father slowly disappear, in which I’d watched my mother stripped of her agency. I didn’t want to build this world within reality because, in the end, belief in reality is belief in fantasy. What I remember and what my mother remembers are two different universes. I wanted this novella to feel like a story passed down for generations until the truth of what happened begins to feel like myth.

Writing requires craft. What makes a book a work of art and not just a series of sentences on the page are the creative choices the author made while writing.  Every story can be written a hundred thousand ways. What point of view are you going use? What’s the timeline? What tense? In the end, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a work of art— special and transcendent, not because of its relation to fact or fiction. What sets it apart are the craft choices that Vuong makes in order to maximize the emotional weight of the story and to wring the reader dry. When you finish that book you’re spiritually consumed. You’ve fallen into a space outside of your time and body. Vuong’s lyricism, insightfulness, and poetic syntax carry an emotional weight that builds and crashes through you. He manipulates time and space in order to ensure that every scene maintains maximum impact. He integrates memories and poetry and utilizes that juxtaposition to help the reader infer hidden intentions and draw their own conclusions. If Vuong were confined to the truth of what really happened, there would be less freedom to craft that crash and the book would be the poorer for it.

Let us consider the phrase “the truth what really happened.”

I’m sure you have all heard about the flaws in eye witness testimony. One of the most famous fictional representations is the 1957 film Twelve Angry Men. I am about to spoil this film, so skip ahead if you don’t like spoilers. Twelve Angry Men centers around the trial of a young man accused of murder. One of the main witnesses claims that she saw the young man in the apartment across from hers. She says she woke up to a startling sound and saw the young man clearly in that single moment. Henry Fonda points out to his fellow jurors that this woman couldn’t have seen him clearly because she wears glasses and she couldn’t have seen the young man without taking the time to put on her glasses.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has an entire report about why eye witness testimonies fail:

The first step toward correctly identifying something you’ve seen before is seeing it accurately to begin with. Research over the past few decades has revealed much about how vision works. Visual sensation is the initial process of detecting light and extracting basic image features. Sensations themselves are evanescent; only a small fraction of what is sensed is actually perceived. Attention is the filtering process by which information sensed by the visual system is selected for further processing. Perception is the process by which attended visual information is integrated, linked to environmental cause, made coherent, and categorized through the assignment of meaning, utility, value, and emotional valence.

TL:DR:

Perception is your brains organizational process as it attempts to make sense of what it sees. And what our brain actually sees is very little.

Bias fills in the blanks when visual information is uncertain, fills them in with what we believe is likely to be out there based on prior experience. Formally, this characterizes vision as a problem of statistical inference, in which the observer infers properties of the world from data in the form of retinal images. Bias refers here to prior probabilities (“priors”)—knowledge or dispositions derived from experience—that enable the observer to make context-dependent inferences about the environmental cause of visual stimulation. For example, prior knowledge that bank robbers carry guns enhances the probability that the bank robber will be perceived with gun in hand, even when the sensory evidence is equivocal.

But there is a catch: This same system that grants certainty of perceptual experience in the face of noise is also capable of filling in the blanks with the wrong information. In other words, misinformed biases cause us to perceive or make decisions about things that don’t exist. The coat rack may be experienced as an intruder in the hall, the shrubbery is mistaken for a police car, or the woman at the rendezvous point is wrongly identified as a friend. Similarly, uncertainty and bias can yield a situation in which information sensed by an eyewitness is of poor quality but the witness nonetheless perceives what he or she expects to see.

TL:DR

Our brains were designed to fill in the blanks. We see very little of the actual physical world and our little, lizard brains were trained to use context and bias to complete the picture.

Why am I talking about eye-witness testimonies and vision in an essay about fiction vs. autofiction vs. memoir? I’m using it to prove my point that memoir does not exist.

Memoir is defined as a writing based on an author’s personal memories. They are interpreted to be “factual”. But, factual and memory can never be synonymous. Not only because our brains fundamentally cannot be counted on to record the truth in any given moment, but we cannot be relied upon to recall such events accurately.

The reason James Frey was shunned by the literary community was because he wrote about his experience and used craft to make it more interesting, to intrigue readers, to enhance tension—which is what writing is! Augusten Burroughs faced a similar issues with his book Running with Scissors. Do I think that Augusten Burroughs exaggerated the story? Yes. Do I care? No. Because I’m not delusional enough to expect my art to be fact.

I trust artists to ingest the world—evanescent and elusive—and craft an artifact that represents the core of their perception.

Subject vs. Object vs. Truth

I’ve stated many, many times that I want a single truth. I want there to be an answer! One unadulterated and pure truth! Specifically related to death and love. Those are the two unknowable forces in my life that I’d really like to pin down. Just stick them to the floor and violently shout, “Stay!” But I have also acknowledged that despite my profound, visceral desire for truth, I don’t believe in it.

In my attempt to understand truth I’ve read a lot of philosophy books (only a few of which I actually fully understand) and I think the correspondence theory of truth resonates most deeply with me.

Proklos (In Tim., II 287, 1) speaks of truth as the agreement or adjustment (epharmoge) between knower and the known. Philoponus (In Cat., 81, 25-34) emphasizes that truth is neither in the things or states of affairs (pragmata) themselves, nor in the statement itself, but lies in the agreement between the two. He gives the simile of the fitting shoe, the fit consisting in a relation between shoe and foot, not to be found in either one by itself.

Truth then, is like our vision. Truth is like human memory. Truth is the act of perceiving the world and creating an agreement between ourselves and what is presented to us. (Obviously this gets sticky when it comes to outright lies—I’m not trying to excuse politicians that craft stories to justify drone strikes that murder civilians). What I am saying is that it is impossible to consider our reality without considering ourselves.

If we can’t trust our eyes or our memories to translate “the truth of what really happened?” what are we doing when we write and when we make art?

Michael Singer says:

When you were ten years old, did you ever look in a mirror? Did you see what you see now? No. Was it you looking? You’ve been there the whole time haven’t you. That’s the core. That’s the essence of everything we want to talk about. Who are you? Who is that that is in there, that is looking out through those eyes and seeing what you’re seeing… When you look out at the mirror, you are not what you see. It’s what we call subject object. You’re the subject. And what you are looking at is the object.

We can perceive an infinite amount of objects. All our lives we are looking at objects beyond ourselves. We perceive the world through that being that is us.

The act of creating art, then, is similar to the act of opening our eyes. We see the world and our brain bounces light, distance and color back to us and we fill in the blanks from that which we are, which is the subject of our own lives. We are incapable of achieving anything else. Even the most spiritual leaders of the world don’t suggest reaching outside of ourselves for truth or understanding—rather becoming more deeply rooted within our own consciousness.

So, what is the point of all of this?

Marguerite Duras did live in Saigon. She did have an affair with a twenty-seven-year-old man when she was fifteen. She wrote about the experience of the affair and how those months ricocheted throughout her life—coloring every preceding moment with its fire. I believe that much to be true. And I don’t care to pin her to anything else.

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

So yes, I want to write “a novel of a life.” I want to live in that liminal space between memory and experience. But that sort of raw vulnerability comes with high stakes and hight consequences.

In her journal excerpts, Annie Ernaux describes having sex in her son’s studio with a younger, married, man. How do you think her son feels about that? How do you think the married man, unnamed but loosely identified enough that I’m sure her friends and acquaintances know who he is, feels about having his sexual encounters described with specific and tangible details? This affair obviously had a profound effect on Ernaux. She wrote a novel about the experience. The writing she produced after the affair is described as her best work. I’ve never had an affair. I’ve yet to become a middle-aged woman with two children. But Ernaux’s journal entries awoke in me the same sense of furious hunger, of unrequited need that leaves you starving and bereft. Her honesty, perhaps not to historical fact, but her honesty to her emotions, allowed me to melt into the piece until author, reader and page lost all distinction. Ernaux’s detailed description of her sexual exploits while her sons lingered just beyond the door made me believe her story even more. It’s not pleasant. She’s not behaving “well,” but that’s the point. Ernaux is laying her humanness bare. The writing is phenomenal. But there’s a cost.

If we’re to be artists working in this space of “a novel of life,” we’re obviously going to affect the lives of those around us. If we’re translating our experiences into art then our family members, our lovers, our teachers will all feature in our work. And with great power comes great responsibility. Joyce Maynard is quoted as saying, “Write like you’re an orphan,” because the fear of betraying those you love will keep you from ever putting pen to paper. You must psychologically kill your parents in order be creatively free! Anne Lamott has said, “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

Sure, I agree with both of those statements and yet…

Nicole Krauss writes about this in her short story The Young Painters. She describes how a writer tells the story of her friend’s tragedy in a short story. In writing the story she changes little, merely embellishes and fill in the blanks. Krauss says;

Yes, I believed—perhaps even still believe—that the writer should not be cramped by the possible consequences of her work. She has no duty to earthly accuracy or verisimilitude. She is not an accountant, nor is she required to be something as ridiculous and misguided as a moral compass. In her work, the writer is free of laws. But in her life, Your Honor, she is not free.

How do you navigate being free in your work while also being responsible in your life? How do you write what’s true to you, how can you be as honest and free as Ernaux without harming the people closest to you? You can write like you’re an orphan but you are, in fact, not an orphan—even if both your parents are dead, there is someone out there who cares about you and will be hurt by what you say.

I recently attended a reading in which the author, Sheila Heti, was asked what trait a writer needs in order to create great work. She said, “kindness.” I think that’s how writers should navigate their art. Esther Perel says that when navigating tough conversations with your partner you should ask yourself: is it honest? Is it helpful? Is it kind? And I think that’s what writers should ask themselves every day as they create.

* Is it honest? Don’t slander people or tell wild untruths just for the sake of being mean or for revenge. Sure, you can manipulate details to create maximum emotional effect but don’t be cruel and don’t make s**t up just so you can make people look bad.

* Is it helpful? Why are you writing about this event? Does it serve the larger question of the story? Does it advance the themes of the work? Or did you just slap it in as an exposé. Look at this horrible thing this person did! Look at this horrible thing I did to someone else! Don’t put that s**t in if it doesn’t contribute to the material. Does the scene make the work stronger? Is it essential to the art?

* Is it kind? You know how you’re supposed to use I statements when fighting with a partner? Well, I think that goes for your work as well. Being an artist of any kind is narcissistic. Embrace the narcissism. You’re creating this because you have something to say—you have questions to answer—whether or not you intend to show it to others. Your work is, literally, all about you. Anyone who say’s differently is selling something. But everything that happened to you happened through your own perspective. Acknowledge your bias! Your memories aren’t real. Get over it. While your perspective should always be the focus of the story you shouldn’t ignore the very real experience of those around you. Write from your perspective but remain objective enough to acknowledge that there are as many way of looking at things as there are galaxies: infinitely unknowable.

* Also, don’t share stories that aren’t yours to share. This goes for a lot of things—like don’t be a white dude writing about what it’s like to be a black woman. Don’t be that guy. Write what you know, or what is in the realm of your understanding.

It’s difficult to take responsibility for your art and make the best work you can possibly create while also protecting the people you love. My family has been super patient, especially my mom, with me writing about our joint story. My sister let me write about her personal and intimate history in my most recent “novel.” But it’s still uncomfortable for them and I know that in a lot of ways, they’d prefer I wrote about other things.

But, I hope that by following the rules: is it honest? Is it helpful? and is it kind? I can be true to my work and also remain true to those I love.

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