Are You There God? Miley 4-ever. Unreliable Narration. And The Vast And Limitless Edges Of Us All
This Is What I Know To Be For Me True Right Now (a journal of my real life—and all that I love). 01.20.23
Prelude:
I’m compiling anonymous questions to use as my own writing prompts for poems, essays, and UnCommon Sense advice. I’m an open book - feel free to ask me anything (about writing, love, relationships, sex and desire, nonmonogamy, creativity and my creative process, life as a single mama/working artist, or the complex act of humaning). The doors are entirely open.
i.
This song. On repeat.
Miley 4-ever.
If you’re going to do wrong by an artist, you’d best be prepared to show up in the art.
ii.
A story cannot be true if you skip all the hard parts. Gloss over the plot holes. Write through the inconsistencies with blinders on. All this builds is a pretty, but poorly-written, fairy tale. A collection of make-believe words forming an epic, but ultimately untrustworthy myth.
But that, of course, begs the real question, can a story built from lived experience ever really be true at all?
iii.
“Looking back to retrieve memory is always an act of creation…
The more a person recalls a memory, the more they change it. Each time they put it into language, it shifts. The more you describe a memory, the more likely it is that you are making a story that fits your life, resolves the past, creates a fiction you can live with. It’s what writers do. Once you open your mouth, you are moving away from the truth of things.”
iv.
We are all unreliable narrators.
“I'm going to argue that every narrator by its very definition is unreliable because when you tell a story there's always an essential distance between the story itself and the telling of said story, right? So therefore every story that has ever been told has an Unreliable Narrator. The only truly reliable narrator would be someone hypothetically telling a story that unfolds before our very eyes which is obviously very impossible SO what does that tell us? That the only truly reliable narrator is life itself. But life itself is also completely unreliable because it is constantly misdirecting and misleading us and taking us on this journey where it is literally impossible to predict where it is going to go next... Life as the ultimate Unreliable Narrator.”
Olivia Wilde as Abby (Life Itself)
(click here to view the scene, it won’t let me embed it)
Side Note: This movie utterly undid me. As in I was grasping onto
in the movie theater and sobbing buckets all the way through. It got horrible reviews, but as a writer and a deeply feeling human, I count it among my favorite all-time movies.Have you seen it? Did you love it?
v.
There is so much beautifully grounded clarity in the ability to be with what is real, even if it is not what was wanted.
If we cannot hope to ever write an entirely factual account of a thing (and neuroscience is pretty clear that we can’t), what we can do (and indeed, what we must do) is write the most real, most whole, most true version that is accessible to us.
And by this, I mean the version that tells the story we most need to tell in order to survive and heal. The one that helps us set things right inside us. That makes sense of the chaos. That knits the fragments together into something meaningful and cohesive. A narrative we can offer with open hands and a peaceful heart, saying “I did my best here, to tell this as I lived it. or as it lived me. I hope that it is enough”.
vi.
vii.
“The evidence against you is not damning.”
’Immunity’ by Mikko Harvey
This line of poetry hit me deeply. And then it hit me again. And again. And again. Pummeled me with a truth I needed to hear.
The evidence against you is not damning. This is another way of saying redemption is everywhere. Which is another way to say forgiveness is possible. And by this, I mean that we are all better than our worst moments, or at the very least we are not wholly defined by them. And if this is all true (and I believe that it is), well then, a hell of a lot is possible.
”Make love to me
like you know I am better
than the worst thing I ever did.
Go slow.
I’m new to this.”
We Were Emergencies, Buddy Wakefield
viii.
There are some humans in this world, and every time I encounter them or their work I just stop and say a small prayer of gratitude at the wonder and blessing that I get to explore this earth at the same time they do. How incredible is that?
ix.
Currently Reading (and filling my little notebook with page after page of achingly rendered prose).
“I need you to help me remember what it is to be vast again “
Regan to Aldo
Alone With You In The Ether by Olivie Blake
x.
How often we do this, look to another to remind us of our vastness. We hope to discover, inside the container of relationship, the full expansiveness of ourselves.
I have done it, and I am sure that you have too.
Right now I am learning (no, I am remembering) what it is to know and trust in my vastness when that container has broken. Sometimes endings dissolve illusions, and in that disillusionment, we are once again revealed, whole, boundless, entirely without limits.
Remembering ourselves is the most beautiful thing. Even more beautiful, I believe, than falling in love.
xi.
“Structure, when doled out restrictively, militantly, constricts the spirit, smothers the breath, steals the joy.
Structure, when drawing a border around the vastness to make us feel held, creates a safe container in which we can unravel ourselves.”
ofAs an artist, and all-around tending-to-creative-chaos type human, I can sometimes resist structure and routine. Chafe against it. Hide from it. Avoid it with all my will. But when I embrace it. When I lean all the way in and create a container and parameters that work for me (and the fuckery of this neurodivergent brain), I paradoxically find a hell of a lot more freedom. Within the RIGHT kind of system, I am—without a doubt— both a better and a more prolific writer.
xii.
This past week I led a workshop where I pulled back the curtain and gave a behind-the-scenes look at my entire writing system—including the setup of my 2023 Scrivener Master Project (Scrivener is the program that entirely revolutionized my writing practice and drastically increased my output as a writer). You can still purchase the workshop replay—on a pay-what-you-can basis—here.
xiii.
As I was telling someone this week, I am pretty sure that growing up during the heyday of this ad campaign fundamentally created my beliefs around beauty and aging.
And yes, I am still refusing to surrender to the grey, using all the skin creams, and contemplating botox. But I’ve also made peace with that. I’m doing this aging thing my way, on my own timeline.
And yes, I am vain. And no, I do not like some of the things that come with growing older. And so of course, I am still fighting it every step of the way, but not in a way that makes me feel contorted or a slave to standards I did not choose.
I’m 47 years old, and I’ve never felt sexier, more attractive, or more confident in who I am. I’ll continue doing whatever the fuck I want.
xiv.
Speaking of coming of age in the ’80s and ’90s. Stumbling upon the trailer for Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret (starring Kathy Bates, who I once followed out of a bar and spent a fabulous night with while she was filming Delores Clairborn in my hometown, no less - but that’s another story for another time) made my day. Entirely.
Any other ‘70s and ‘80s babies remember ‘we must, we must, we must increase our bust’ like it was yesterday?
I read this book (and the rest of Judy Blume) until it was dog-eared. My mother, who never throws away anything, likely still has my copy. It was the first time I had read a book that talked about bras and periods and kissing and masturbation, at a time when we didn’t just have access to open and easy conversations about such things. This book helped me survive that horrible, god-awkward period of early adolesence, and I cannot wait to see the movie.
In other (entirely different, but still actively present nostalgia) I will also be lining up for Scream 6 (with Courtney Cox back at it, and my beloved Jenna Ortega (Wednesday Addams forever).
Fun fact: The original Scream was my first date with my ex-husband, and so in a way was the beginning of everything that came after, including my children, so although i’m not much of a horror movie buff these days, this franchise has a special place in my heart.
xv.
I tried a new burlesque class last week at the same dance studio I had been attending before Christmas.
The choreography was harder. The combo was longer. I kept forgetting the moves. Anything involving a neck roll does not seem to work for my post-car-accident body. I spent way more of my brain trying to remember what came next than I did attempting to add any sort of sex appeal to my body.
But I came home and shared the video of my shaky attempt to my Instagram Story anyway. It’s easy to share things we already know we are good at. Things we are confident about. I can share my words all day long. This is different.
asked a question on her Substack chat about the edges we are exploring. After decades of not stepping foot in a dance studio, showing up to these classes is one edge, for sure. But sharing the videos from class each week, when I feel awkward and unsure and I am not nailing a damn thing—that’s the real edge for me. And it's an edge I am bound and determined to keep exploring.That edge? It’s a portal to the muse. To creativity and sex and the vastness that I hold in this body of mine. And I am entirely here for it.
xvi.
In today’s Substack Office Hours
“If you want to be a [art form], [art form as verb].”
If you want to be a writer, write. If you want to be a dancer, dance. If you want to be a lover, love. If you want to be alive, you’d god damn better live.
xvii.
When I’m doing it right the writing comes before all the rest.
When I’m doing it really right, there is very little distinction between the writing and all the rest.
xviii.
Here are some things I’ve been writing lately:
Prompt: How have you limited your own growth by choosing a pot too small for your aliveness?
Click through to Instagram to see the full posts.
I feel this in my bones. In my veins. It is sitting here in my chest. This just cracked something in me open and I think I will be rereading this all day.
I just substituted the word “life” for “story.” A life cannot be lived (authentically, truly, with integrity) but avoiding the potholes and inconsistencies. By dealing with things “later” when the “later” never comes. By pretending. By saying “I’ll be fine.” It’s difficult to summon the bravery to to speak one’s truth. It’s risky, because once spoken, what will it be met with? The end of our lives is like the end of a story. Will we be left hollow by the lack of depth and humanity in the novel we just finished? Will be be forgettable? Similarly, will our last thought be that we were left largely unknown, because the truest parts of our selves dwell in the potholes and inconsistencies we steered around for our own short term benefit or for the benefit of who did not have the capacity or interest to know us fully. A life can be lived this way. My casual observation is that it’s more common than not. And perhaps for some, living in solitude in the potholes is truly sufficient. They don’t wish to be fully known, and my own measure of intimacy is simply that - my own. But for those of us who don’t want to read a forgettable book or live a forgettable life, we must be emotional risk takers. It’s a tall order, but it’s a risk worth at least cautious consideration, if the core of you feels lonely and unknown and that is not an acceptable last chapter of your story.