We went out to see the formidable Arundhati Roy speak at the opening night of @seattleartsandlectures yesterday. This was thanks to a generous gift of two tickets and two books from a dear friend and colleague whom we only realized once we walked in is an SAL patron. So, the seats were pretty good. She’d offered me the tickets after hearing me wax passionately about how Roy’s famous speech on “the other 9/11” had become a pillar I built my worldview on since I first read it in college. I think I’ve paraphrased her comments about Palestine in that piece hundreds of times since then.
And that’s the thing about the interweaving of the stories we tell and the stories we read: they get so tangled up that figuring out where one ends and where the other begins takes some effort. It takes an opportunity to humanize a figure like “Arundhati Roy,” whom I’ve evoked so many times like a talisman or a saint, to realize how there’s always more to read behind the surface of the text.
I’m embarrassed to say that I learned many things about her for the first time yesterday, like her Syrian Christian background and her engagement in nuclear politics, both subjects that matter a lot to me too. I didn’t know she was a trained architect either. I don’t bring this up out of a bruised ego (I’ve long let go of the need to appear more learned than I am), but out of the kind of unexpected self-reflection that a good book might spark too, like through a particularly sharp vignette or compelling character. I shouldn’t need a lecture by one of the most famous writers of our generation to remind me to be more curious about the people that impact me, near or far. But isn’t that how the arts have always functioned? The shock of Guernica, the flash of Yves Klein’s blue — what are they, if not notes to self?
I say this all the time, but I’ll say it again: inside me, there are two wolves. One wants the facts and nothing but the facts. He wants you to get to the point. He doesn’t want to hang out unless it’s to “do” something. What are we “doing”? What is this “for”?
The other wolf feels everything and everyone intensely and she’ll sink into your stories for hours if set free. And they both conspire to throttle my bandwidth for others.
It’s why I’ve only read two novels in the last decade and why choosing what movies and tv shows to watch is so painful for me and people around me; the wolves want to protect me from the muck and the noise.
I’m not saying they should be in charge. I’m just saying that they’re in cahoots.
It’s that contradiction that both motivates and demotivates almost everything I do. The push/pull of community, the siren call of friendship, the attack and retreat of taking part. I don’t think it’s a phase. I think it’s foundational to my being. I’m going to have to finally figure that part out.