Inspiration
This is Western Coffee—notes on building the creative body. Last time: Water. The whole series is here. Please share this email; you can sign up free below.
I’m going to curse myself here—but writer’s block is puzzling to me. I get that some/most days what you write might be garbage, unsalvageable, an embarrassment to you and to all the preceding and following generations of your family. That seems like par for the course; I’m an editor and we view things starkly. What’s harder for me to understand is feeling unable to write something. (This would be a good moment to read about morning pages, if you weren’t yet with us.)
In church when I was growing up, we used to stand at the pulpit on the first Sunday of each month and testify spontaneously about our religious beliefs in front of the entire ward—hundreds of people. This occasion was called Fast Sunday—as in, we were fasting, often starting with the omission of dinner the night before. So not only were untrained public speakers standing up in front of hundreds of their peers/peers’ crying babies to offer extemporaneous theologies of their own devising; they were doing so hangry.
There is, of course, a history of spiritual fasting in many traditions, and I have found it at times to have revelatory effects. What I mainly took from these experiences, though, is that in the right environment, regular people like you and me can be funny and charming and moving and insightful with very little preparation—or maybe the preparation is continuous and permanent, which of course is how preparation works best. I was, I am, very lucky in the specifics of where I grew up: a part of Salt Lake City, dominated by a big university, where the best side of Mormon culture was in evidence—distortively so, in a way. My neighbors tended to be compassionate, open-minded, curious, quick. This nature was thrown into dramatic relief when my high school Spanish teacher, “Señor” Thompson, challenged me over my belief in biological evolution. Señor Thompson was a reactionary Mormon bishop who believed that Seinfeld was Satan’s vehicle for corrupting high school students (I mean fair enough, I suppose; I loved Seinfeld), and he and Brother Hawkins, the principal of the seminary—a miniature high school next to actual high school where we would go for uncredited religious instruction—would conspire in low tones over what to do about it. I saw them.
But back in my neighborhood church, that improvised sermonizing in fast-and-testimony meeting was animated and kind and, everything considered, pretty generous. One challenge of processing the harm I received from an institution that perpetrates systematic psychological violence against queer youth has been reconciling that acknowledgment with the sweetness of the men I grew up with, the local representatives of the patriarchy, Rick and Wayne and Oscar and Jesse and Rich, guys who seem to have been born not just full of love but empty of animus, guys who sat me down when my family was really going through it and reminded me that I was loved not just by an unseeable God but by them. And by that family. Whom they knew and themselves loved, unreservedly.
That was the context in which I learned about standing up in front of a group of people without knowing what you’re going to say and saying it. The context of people smiling back at you almost without regard for what you do. Maybe they think your joke is funny and maybe they don’t, but they laugh. Can you imagine? To just walk out onto a stage where it doesn’t matter how well you try because you’re going to be met with acceptance? It’s secure attachment times a billion.
A harmful institution populated and enacted by people who are genuine agents of kindness: That’s a lot to get your head around. But you have to do it, because that’s the only way to keep the strength they gave you.
As I said, I’m an editor. It’s not a permissive archetype. We hold our applause. But we don’t hold it forever; we get pretty psyched when something is magnificent. And it doesn’t matter how nice the people around you are being. You can see when the room comes alive. This is the gift of exposure: To recognize the real presence of inspiration. If it’s missing, sit down. You’ll be just as hangry next Fast Sunday. The time comes.
Coming Tuesday: Gay.
Kindly send me your thoughts, questions, and provocations: dmichaelowen@gmail.com. And say hi on Instagram, or let’s Peloton together: @leggy_blond.