A friend recently pointed out that it’s been a while since she’s heard from me on here. I laughed and joked that it’s because I only write when I’m sad. I guess the bright side is that I’m doing alright. Yesterday, I took the 5 hour flight to California to see my folks and sat reflecting on the fact that perhaps writing for me is less about pulling myself out of darkness, and more about the perpetual balancing act of coming into myself. Today’s letter is a bit of a call-to-action to make us all better interrogators of ourselves - and hopefully better dinner party guests.
Enjoy my not-just-sad thoughts, and consider subscribing and sharing with some others for when the next wave hits me.
Several months ago, I had a friend over to chat. We sat airing out some grievances, and she laughed as my analogies progressively hacked up my body - I’m shooting myself in the foot; I’m cutting my legs off at the knees. We commiserated about the unfortunate things that have befallen us this year, but how really the most painstaking growth was learning to extract ourselves from self-inflicted wounds.
When I saw this friend, I had just gotten off the tails of a date that deeply troubled me. Every moment with this person was charming – we got along, and I found them attractive and engaging. It wasn’t until afterwards that I discovered something which surpassed unpalatable into abhorrent. The disgust that overcame me was about the news I’d uncovered, but more so, the feeling of having the rug pulled out from under me. All I can really own are my choices, and the idea that someone would ensnare me by withholding information was perhaps the most upsetting feeling of all. It unleashed the venomous voice inside me that whispers, “I should have known.”
I hate when people take that agency from me. I hate when they feed that doubt monster. But honestly, I mostly hate how I am inclined to give that voice enough power to hack away at my hands. Something happened to me, and many somethings will continue to happen. And while I know in my mind that they are random – perhaps unpreventable – I must actively pry forth a different story. I have the power to do something else, say something else, and I refuse to be imbittered.
Another friend recently sent me a New York Times article about Stanley Tucci’s new memoir centered around food, one quote dwelled on the obvious absence of his acting career. Tucci’s response was something delightfully blasé, about how he didn’t find that very interesting at all. What really engages him is the mysterious pulls of life: how new interests can shine light on the resonances that keep us moving.
This struck me so deeply (although I still have to read this book) because I am constantly attempting to grasp my life in birds-eye view. I am stuck in the cycle of wanting an all-compassing narrative, while simultaneously frustrated by those restrictions. This is so much the case that at parties when the inevitable “so, what do you do?” emerges, it feels like an affront. In one mindless query, I am reduced to a point, my throat clogged with a traffic jam of all the roads colliding within me. When I attempt to tell a fuller story, the shadow of judgment peaks through. I say I work as an administrator but preface with the fact that I really am a musician, and when I talk about my passion for food, I wave it off as an Instagram hobby. While perhaps not as sinister as the misfortunes of my romantic life, these inclinations amount to a larger discounting of myself. Even as I speak them, they do not feel true.
This month, I have been fortunate enough to reconnect with my college thesis advisor, now a dear friend and mentor. She pointed out that the way I have been presenting myself – musician who gets COVID, loses her smell, and suddenly finds greater meaning – was severely undercutting myself. My desire to bottle up my essence in one elevator pitch led to a reductive narrative. She reminded me that my philosophy has never been singular. Rather, it’s been circular and expansive, a journey guided by a constant belief in the marriage of theory and practice, and a general ethos of curiosity. The most essential part of me, in fact, has been about finder a greater aperture, a widening gyre fueled by my experiences.
Early in my college career, I was a frequenter of one work hanging in the Harvard Art Museum: Gerhard Richter’s first painting in his catalogue. It featured a table with a turpentine smudge in the center, and the description listed the medium as oil paint and turpentine remover. I remember tilting my head, unable to understand how something erased could look so additive. If Richter was removing color, why did I see an imposed mark? I brought Richter’s photo book to class, sat down with my art professor, and posed the question.
I will never forget his answer. He said, extremely matter-of-factly, “That’s a failure of language.” By fixating on this concept of erasure, I wasn’t allowing myself to see the rich relationship in front of me. A towel with turpentine dragged across the still-wet table smears and spreads the paint. The closed specificity of that single word and what I thought it meant was literally limiting my perception. In my insistence to capture the world based on a set of rules, I missed an opportunity to appreciate the blurring of categorical lines.
We tell stories about ourselves based on how we want to be seen, and even more so, how we hope to see ourselves. I’m working on making sure that the words I give to my own story don’t prevent me from accepting the magic that happens beneath the surface. I don’t have to be a musician who cooks, or a moonlighting teacher with another day job, and I certainly don’t have to be a finished product now. For Richter, a shape might be foreground or background depending on the angle, the way our minds push and pull. What’s important is not to limit that entity to one space or another, but actually leaving space for it to affect us too. Really, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t come back to that painting day after day, wondering why there was something about it that still echoed within me.
This pandemic has forced me to realize that while I might come to expect waking up to a certain world, within a certain body, one new track laid will cause collisions I cannot yet prepare for - that perhaps the only given in this world is that everything is built on relationships. The more I let myself learn about these strings, the less I will feel the need to nail them down. Each change outside will resonate within, and each change inside has the potential to ripple without. To make sense of it all, I must trust in flexibility, inevitable change, and ultimately, myself as the powerful arbiter of these relationships.
My magnetic pull towards food may seem random, but I know that random does not mean untrue, and sudden does not mean misaligned. I like thinking about Richter and these seemingly antithetical categories because they remind me that I am the one seeing. I am the one who lost her sense of smell, but then found expansion through food and flavors. I am the balancing agent determining the exact recipe of background and foreground, erasure and additive. I am the one who gets to sharpen my abilities by absorbing new avenues of knowledge, creating pathways, and living a life of curiosity. And when I am comfortable with this life of balancing, I have to be ready to ask for things that I want without the fear of judgment or the unbased shame that comes from feeling the need to explain myself.
This world is volatile. I will never be able to grasp it and all the grossness that it may throw at me. But I can certainly begin to be kinder to my unfinished self. It took some time to be able to reflect on that rather extended period of self-meanness, of saying no before I even asked. But I’m happy to report that after putting myself out there, there is positive change afoot. In the new year, I will be starting a job adjacent to food, while teaching more music and still performing, and I have no desire to define what that means quiet yet.
As I close off this year, I am anxious and unsure, but it’s a good type of buzzing. I am sitting in the feeling of knowing that I am not a list of the things I do. I am a curator, interpreter, and creator of relationships and threads, and as ridiculous as that sounds, it feels right.
And really, is that so much more ridiculous than that dreaded dinner party question? What’s a new one we can ask?
What keeps you searching?
What sends a chill up your spine?
What have you encountered recently that resonates?
What philosophies allow you to reach outwards and onwards?
What questions might you ask? Leave me comment!
I was so happy to see your words appear in my inbox again, Annie! As a part time copywriter, full time student and all-the-time many other things that don’t fall within a neat title, I completely resonate with the anxiety induced fear of the question “what do you do?”. Not forgetting the subsequent feeling of inadequacy when it can’t be met with a straightforward answer. Instead of spending my energy trying to carve those neat edges around myself, I am walking into 2022 with the feeling that what is most important for me IS the doing and not the naming of it; that plurality is a way of living to be proud of, even if not easily put into words, and that curiosity is one of the most important muscles to be flexing during these times. I’m pleased to read that you have had a similar (if not the same) revelation and wish you luck with it. Happy new year! Molly x
P.S. apologies for hijacking the comments section with my own mini dispatch - I can’t help but attempt to answer a question as relevant as the ones you have offered here!