Behind the Scenes

The days are askew. They are unbalanced, muddled. The ordinary life is difficult to talk about right now because it seems like nothing beside the number of deaths. The striations of class and privilege with regards to “ordinary life” are perhaps both more apparent and more hidden. If you’re reading or writing a blog post, immediately one can see one’s privilege there — access to computer, time etc. And then, I’ve heard mention of the new distinction between those who have mask-on vs mask off (typically WFH) jobs. I suppose I’m in both of these groups, working half-time in a public library, but then writing in my home study the rest of the time. The ordinary life though is part of our story and every story connects to every other story through time.

When I’m looking for a topic to blog about, it’s usually just the subject that keeps coming to the foreground for me, or, the thing that persists in the background, or something that I keep stumbling upon in variations. And the thing that keeps arising for me is story. Stories about what we’re going through now in all their permutations. There’s a CBC Radio show, “Tapestry,” that did a piece on Richard Van Camp, titled, “Heaven's like West Edmonton Mall” Collecting stories from elders.” (I mean, he had me at the title, and not just because I live close to the Mall). Stories, says Van Camp, are “soul fire.”

In a Facebook post, Dan Rather says,

“As an old TV newsman, I can't help but wonder whether a big part of the problem is that this is not a visual form of mass death. The images of terrorism, or war, or the aftermath of ferocious winds, or a plane tumbling out of the sky are the kinds of stories that win photojournalists awards. How do you take yet another picture of a patient on ventilators? There are always people on ventilators. There are always people in hospitals dying. Not on this scale, of course, not by a long shot. But human beings have a hard time comprehending scale. Our emotions are more resonant with the personal, the small tragedy.

I find the emerging number of nurses' heartbreaking testimonials particularly affecting. I am moved by the pictures of smiling family members who had no idea when the photo was taken that they would soon die in pain and alone. I yearn for every one of my fellow citizens to engage. I understand the fear of a crumbling economy. I understand the frustration of schools closed and life and families disrupted. I desperately wish this wasn't real.

But, but, but... it is all too real. My line of work has brought me face to face with death in many forms. It is a finality that defines the ultimate bookend of our lives. And it is here, everywhere. I pray that people wake up. Every small act can literally save a life. Vaccines are coming. Science will ride to our rescue. But in the interim it is our common humanity and empathy that will save the most lives. We need to do a better job of describing the horror. We need to all pull together to make sure the reality of our present doesn't become a final destiny that draws far more into its deadly undertow.”

In my last post, I quoted Richard Rorty who said: “A talent for speaking differently, rather than for arguing well, is the chief instrument of cultural change.”

So much of what we see on the internet is someone reacting to someone else. It’s adversarial, lecture-y, tsk-tsk-y. If we’re looking to speak differently, story is perhaps an obvious starting point. What if we shared more stories, and fewer admonishments? (I’ve yet to see anyone change their mind because of an admonishment).

This story by Croatian writer Slavenka Draculic moved me. In it she says,

“From the moment I came out of the anesthesia, I felt that it is the body that recovers first, before the brain. That the body determines everything, as if it is a mechanism that needs to be fixed and doctors are mechanics. Where does it draw its strength from? Strength cannot come only from soup, medication, protein, constant exercise, and words of encouragement. There must be something else in that mixture, some invisible ingredient, an elusive energy. Where does the insatiable desire to survive come from?”

In one of my favourite poems by the Italian writer Patrizia Cavalli, she says:

Someone told me
of course my poems
won’t change the world.

I say yes of course
my poems
won’t change the world.

And of course, just saying this, the words, the reverberations are felt. We are changed.

I know I’m resisting telling stories right now, because mine is a story of relative ease and good health. I hear stories on the regular in my library job which are in turns devastating, hopeful, sad, confused, angry, fearful, anxious, perplexed, oblivious etc. But they’re not my stories, so obviously not repeatable. But the hearing of them changes me. I think I can say that.

Of course our stories and poems won’t change the world, but I’m interested in them nevertheless. I’m interested in how you are, how you’re holding up. What edges are frayed? Where are you feeling strong? What and who have you lost? What have you gained? What’s good, what’s terrible, what makes your heart hurt, and what joys are you also experiencing? When we first start talking about how we are, I’ve found that it starts off in ways that aren’t surprising. But the longer we stay with the subject the more is revealed. I know there are a lot of stories we’re not going to be able to talk about right now and that’s okay too.

Whatever stories we tell, it’s also true that only so much will fit in the frame. In distilling our story into a narrative or into the lines of a poem, a lot will be left out. One thing that I think it’s safe to assume, is that everyone has a lot of stuff just outside the frame.

What would happen if we told our everyday stories, the happy ones along with the sad ones, and everything in between? This doesn’t feel wrong to me. How important will all these stories be when we emerge from this time? How will they help us reconsider? I’m drawn to re-read Susan Griffin’s book, The Eros of Everyday. She says, “To change how we see involves some loss, certainly the death of habitual metaphors for order. And the changes needed are great as well as small. It is not only philosophy as it is written in books, but philosophies written into our lives, in institutions, social systems, economies, and governments which need to be reconsidered. For it is by and through these living structures that communities think and perceive. If we could change a habit of mind that has become destructive we must revise the social architecture of our thought.”

The other things that keeps popping into my head are lines by Emily Dickinson, “I dwell in possibility” and “Hope is the thing with feathers.” I keep wondering what is it that we can do with what we have, rather than bemoaning what once was. I say to myself, though perhaps it’s too macabre for some, that if I’m going down, I’m going down with as much joy as I can muster and with as much beauty as I can glean every day.

Back to Griffin:

“Yet this is the only hope for the familiar world we cherish. Not only Bach’s Magificat, Sappho’s lyric, the stories of Coyote, the smooth surface of marble columns, the shape of piazzas, the sound of John Coltrane, or a golden sculpture of the buddha reclining, the fate of everyone, everything we love, but the fate of that subtle weave that holds it all, giving each of us eyes, ears, heart, mind, and breath, rests on the question. Can we rise to ourselves and see what is in the nature of the soul to see — that we exist on this common ground together?”

In another book by Griffin she talks about how every sight, “any sentence, any event to which one is exposed leaves a permanent impression. The brain is changed forever.”

Which might lead us to a reconsideration of Twitter, if nothing else.

I guess what I’m trying to say, mostly to myself as always, is that if you have a story to tell, tell it. Fill up our spaces with real things, and things you love, and what’s happening to you personally right now. It won’t change the world. Of course it won’t.

But what would happen if we made a concerted effort to take up space with truth, with real stories, with our lives. I wrote this and then dipped into Twitter and found this story on LitHub by Rebecca Solnit titled: “On Not Meeting Nazis Halfway: Why Is It So Hard for Democrats to Act Like They Actually Won?” In it she says, “I think our side, if you’ll forgive my ongoing shorthand and binary logic, has something to offer everyone and we can and must win in the long run by offering it, and offering it via better stories and better means to make those stories reach everyone.”