Let me be honest – art and honesty
There is a book by Jerold Kreisman entitled I hate you, please don’t leave me – Understanding the Borderline Personality. The title perfectly describes the conflicting emotion of the person who has been so traumatized that they work very hard to push people away while getting upset if they are left alone or ignored.
All of us, to some extent, seem to struggle with both wanting to be close and being fearful of allowing others to get so close that we know who we are beneath all the masks.
The other day I was listening to a 1989 interview by Terry Gross with the now deceased author John Updike. The focus on of the interview was his memoir, Self Consciousness. During the interview he talks about why he wrote his memoir rather than allowing someone else to write it. He says, “And I just didn’t want to be and don’t want to be intruded upon in that way. So as a defense against intrusion, I decided to invade my own privacy with these essays. …I fastened upon those things which either made me self-conscious, like the psoriasis, or which showed self-consciousness, like the stuttering. And the religious aspect of it, again, has to do the question of a self at all…A writer is somebody who tries to tell the truth, right? And your value to our society is a certain willingness to risk being honest.” (To read or listen to the interview, google Fresh Air Celebrating 30 years of “Fresh Air”: Pulitzer Prize-Novelist John Updike”, April 30, 2017)
I have had the privilege of working for/with a lot of artists – writers, painter, sculptors, dancers, singers, musicians and others – who experience an inability to continue with a creative project – a block. In my experience the block is always related to the conflict the artist is having about whether to reveal a part of themselves. Yet, the only choice they have to is shut down the artist to reveal that part of themselves. It has always seemed to me that the distinction between an artist and a talented technician in any field is the willingness to be openly and honestly present. One cannot both hide and be an artist. Whether one is a John Updike writing one’s memoir, a Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel, an opera singer such as Luciano Pavarotti, or a dancer such as George Balanchine one has to reveal one’s soul and thus all the “secrets” which might cover the soul and prevent its emergence.
Of course, we are all called to be artists – to call forth and live our particular talents. Most of us are fearful of doing that. We do not want to run the risk of someone being critical or worse, judgmental of us. Yet, we want the praise for being creative, innovative, courageous, or a person who truly walks the talk. If, in fact, we live out our art will find that some praise us and some vilify us. Many of us will hear the criticism and not the praise. We may regret “letting it all hang out.” Yet, the truth is that if we want to live we do not have the option of being dishonest or hiding our talents under a bushel.
Any of us who do not practice our art is dead – a walking and perhaps talking dead person. There are many ways of attempting to kill off the artist within us. Certainly one of the most common ways is to numb ourselves with work, alcohol, sex and some other substance or activity. We may use other techniques to shut down emotionally. Yet, invariably there is a part of most of us which refuses to be shut down. Yesterday I said to someone who is in recovery for drug addiction that he has not been a very successful addict. No matter how strong the drugs he uses there is a part of him who cares about others and whose loving spirit is in agony when his addictive behavior causes harm to others.
When we allow the artist within us to live we open the door to both the hurts and the joys – the beautiful and the ugly – of this life journey. We cannot have pure joy without also experiencing acute pain. Both reside in the core of our soul.
Just like John Updike who is painfully honest in his memoir, our choice is to live and be honest or die and attempt to hide who we are. We are often like the person with the borderline personality disorder. We say to the core of our being – our soul – I hate you, please don’t leave me.
I often say to myself as well as to clients with/for whom I work that the primary existential issue is the relationship we are going to have with our fear. We can either allow our fear to kill us off long before our physical death or we can choose to live – to soar. We can either choose to allow our fear of what others – those others – might think or say or even do to control us or we can live out the essential artist within us.
The irony is, of course, that as what was true for John Updike, is true for all of us. It is not the stuttering or the psoriasis which people care about but that amazing artist within us. For John Updike this was his ability to make words draw out the deepest parts of us. For others it is a different talent. Whatever the talent it needs air to breathe – to have and give life.
Written September 1, 2017
There is a book by Jerold Kreisman entitled I hate you, please don’t leave me – Understanding the Borderline Personality. The title perfectly describes the conflicting emotion of the person who has been so traumatized that they work very hard to push people away while getting upset if they are left alone or ignored.
All of us, to some extent, seem to struggle with both wanting to be close and being fearful of allowing others to get so close that we know who we are beneath all the masks.
The other day I was listening to a 1989 interview by Terry Gross with the now deceased author John Updike. The focus on of the interview was his memoir, Self Consciousness. During the interview he talks about why he wrote his memoir rather than allowing someone else to write it. He says, “And I just didn’t want to be and don’t want to be intruded upon in that way. So as a defense against intrusion, I decided to invade my own privacy with these essays. …I fastened upon those things which either made me self-conscious, like the psoriasis, or which showed self-consciousness, like the stuttering. And the religious aspect of it, again, has to do the question of a self at all…A writer is somebody who tries to tell the truth, right? And your value to our society is a certain willingness to risk being honest.” (To read or listen to the interview, google Fresh Air Celebrating 30 years of “Fresh Air”: Pulitzer Prize-Novelist John Updike”, April 30, 2017)
I have had the privilege of working for/with a lot of artists – writers, painter, sculptors, dancers, singers, musicians and others – who experience an inability to continue with a creative project – a block. In my experience the block is always related to the conflict the artist is having about whether to reveal a part of themselves. Yet, the only choice they have to is shut down the artist to reveal that part of themselves. It has always seemed to me that the distinction between an artist and a talented technician in any field is the willingness to be openly and honestly present. One cannot both hide and be an artist. Whether one is a John Updike writing one’s memoir, a Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel, an opera singer such as Luciano Pavarotti, or a dancer such as George Balanchine one has to reveal one’s soul and thus all the “secrets” which might cover the soul and prevent its emergence.
Of course, we are all called to be artists – to call forth and live our particular talents. Most of us are fearful of doing that. We do not want to run the risk of someone being critical or worse, judgmental of us. Yet, we want the praise for being creative, innovative, courageous, or a person who truly walks the talk. If, in fact, we live out our art will find that some praise us and some vilify us. Many of us will hear the criticism and not the praise. We may regret “letting it all hang out.” Yet, the truth is that if we want to live we do not have the option of being dishonest or hiding our talents under a bushel.
Any of us who do not practice our art is dead – a walking and perhaps talking dead person. There are many ways of attempting to kill off the artist within us. Certainly one of the most common ways is to numb ourselves with work, alcohol, sex and some other substance or activity. We may use other techniques to shut down emotionally. Yet, invariably there is a part of most of us which refuses to be shut down. Yesterday I said to someone who is in recovery for drug addiction that he has not been a very successful addict. No matter how strong the drugs he uses there is a part of him who cares about others and whose loving spirit is in agony when his addictive behavior causes harm to others.
When we allow the artist within us to live we open the door to both the hurts and the joys – the beautiful and the ugly – of this life journey. We cannot have pure joy without also experiencing acute pain. Both reside in the core of our soul.
Just like John Updike who is painfully honest in his memoir, our choice is to live and be honest or die and attempt to hide who we are. We are often like the person with the borderline personality disorder. We say to the core of our being – our soul – I hate you, please don’t leave me.
I often say to myself as well as to clients with/for whom I work that the primary existential issue is the relationship we are going to have with our fear. We can either allow our fear to kill us off long before our physical death or we can choose to live – to soar. We can either choose to allow our fear of what others – those others – might think or say or even do to control us or we can live out the essential artist within us.
The irony is, of course, that as what was true for John Updike, is true for all of us. It is not the stuttering or the psoriasis which people care about but that amazing artist within us. For John Updike this was his ability to make words draw out the deepest parts of us. For others it is a different talent. Whatever the talent it needs air to breathe – to have and give life.
Written September 1, 2017
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