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On Validation

Part I: What We Want

Wake well-rested. Grains, fruit, wheat toast, no butter. Floss with confidence. Feel good about yourself and others will feel good about you.

The phone rings, the new email tone sounds, the Google Alert notification pops. The energy of the world rushes through the ether to you and you receive.

The coveted award. The lucrative grant. The blog rave. The review to die for. The top of the top ten list (alphabetical, but still). And with each, a flattering photo!

Has it happened? In this moment? Yes. Now.

You have arrived.

***

The greater the success, the closer it verges upon failure.—Robert Bresson

***

A good friend called yesterday, elated over a rave review of his play. “She has given me my life,” he said of the critic.

***

“I don’t trust people until I know what they love. If they cannot admit to what they love, or in fact love nothing, I cannot take even their smartest criticisms seriously.”—Stephen Dunn

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Part II: What We Get

It’s a quiet joy, arrival. A quiet thrill. You once were “I will be” but suddenly, now: “I am.” I am good.

The moment stretches. Becomes another moment. What is this feeling? A surge of—what? Fear? Fear of disappearing?

Every second, somewhere, an is is silently becoming a was.

How long has it been since you wrote the award-winning, blog-celebrated play? You have ideas for another. Pages of notes. You are between projects, that’s all.

Every second, somewhere, an is is silently becoming a was.

What now? Where to turn?

Facebook.

***

Awards have three things to offer: cash, confidence, and bric-a-brac...The confidence-boosters have a temporary strengthening effect but, like good reviews, are dangerous: they lead the recipient to overestimate himself, and make him vulnerable to the disappointments which inevitably follow.—Stephen Sondheim

***

9:30 a.m.: A great day to write. You will write. Why shouldn’t you?

10:15 a.m.: This stuff is ridiculous. Bland. Slack. No energy, no tension, no subtext, no pressure. Whatever gave you the idea that you could write dialogue?

11:05 a.m.: Some inspiration—yes. Reread Churchill’s Far Away. Dialogue with tension, subtext, pressure, and so forth.

12:30 p.m.: It’s hopeless. You could never write dialogue that begins to approach the energy, tension, subtext, and so forth of Caryl Churchill’s. You could never write a play that begins to approach the genius of Far Away.

2:25 p.m.: Remember how good _________ said you were at that thing you do? And that other thing you do? Do those things. Do those things a lot.

4:10 p.m.: Yes. School the people. Open their eyes. Tell them true things about being alive in diction so accurate, syntax so seductive, sentences so beguiling, rhythms so stirring that no one could doubt your mojo, your chops, your unmistakable bad-assness. They will hear your words and know…what do you want them to know? That you are really good at this. Isn’t that the best any writer could hope for? Isn’t it?

An illustration of an angel.
Original image by Skye Murie.

***

Part III: What We Do

Post the links on Facebook: the awards, the reviews, the blogs, the top ten lists.

I am honored and, above all, humbled.

What about friends who aren’t on Facebook? Send an email blast. What of the colleagues of acquaintances who have kind of heard of you a little? Ask friends to post your website link to their Google+ circles.

The “Like” buttons click. The congratulations cascade. You are so well-liked that no one even pauses to wonder: what is this behavior evidence of? An absence of self-regard, or an excess of it?

“I am” becomes I am seen. The Recording Angel has you in his embrace.

But what has he written?

***

An acquaintance, a playwright, attends every performance of her own play. As each performance ends, she waits in the shadows of a bottleneck through which each audience member must pass to exit. She has made note of everyone she knows in the house and when each approaches the exit, she sets upon him like Cato ambushing Inspector Clouseau.

What do you think?

What do I think? You wonder what you’re being asked to respond to: the performance about which you’re currently not feeling analytical, absorbed as you are in searching your pockets for your keys? Or the living, breathing spectacle of need before you, hoping for a benediction?

The playwright’s hunger for validation becomes a force field between you and the work you’ve just seen. Tomorrow you’ll try to conjure the experience of the play in your mind, but you won’t be able to find your way back to it.

***

A photograph must have room in it for entrance by outsiders, so that the photographer himself or herself hasn’t built a structure that keeps you out, but instead has left some crack that allows you the freedom to enter. He or she hasn’t held on too tightly. I heard a quote from Peter Mathiessen, who said that when you climb a mountain the first rule is ‘Don’t cling.’ You have to climb a mountain free, as if you’re just taking a walk on the beach. And I think if a photograph is made by a photographer who is trying to give you a message, you get that message but you don’t have a real experience.—Joel Meyerowitz

***

“What other people think of me is none of my business.”—Dorothy Parker

***

Years ago, an editor from Doubleday asked me to submit a story for an anthology. A close friend of mine was also a friend of this editor and offered to turn in my story for me. Days later he told me that the editor had accepted a story of his, and rejected mine.

Weeks later, the phone woke me: it was the editor hoping to persuade me to submit a story for the book. The editor said my friend had told her I didn’t want to contribute anything. Might I reconsider?

***

Characters in a play are all in the dark. And in the end, they’re all not guilty.—Alan Bennett

***

Hundreds of artists submitted work for a New York gallery show in 1955. Robert Rauschenberg’s submissions were chosen; the work of his friends was not.

Rauschenberg couldn’t decide whether to go ahead with the show. He was happy for the chance to exhibit his work but unwilling to seem to have done so by besting his friends.

His solution: he exhibited a large “Combine,” a collage of his own work and the work of his friends who’d been rejected.

***

Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you.—Bruce Mau

***

When I was an undergraduate, my favorite professor agreed to do an independent study with me on the novels of Muriel Spark, a writer we both loved. I was very nervous. I’d only just changed my major to English and I had no idea how to talk about books.

A flash of shame, and then: the revelation, thrilling. Jean Brodie matters. Muriel Spark matters. Books matter. Art matters.

The subject of our first meeting was The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. In the course of my stumbling commentary I attacked Jean Brodie’s character, calling her a Nazi. The next time I saw the professor he seemed cool, aloof. I asked if everything was all right. His reserve cracked and he snapped, with disappointment and genuine anger: “I will never forgive you for what you said about Jean Brodie.”

A flash of shame, and then: the revelation, thrilling. Jean Brodie matters. Muriel Spark matters. Books matter. Art matters.

He forgave me in time.

***

You owe it to students not to praise them. With praise you are passing up an opportunity to help them see what the goal is, to see it intellectually and to perceive it instinctively. They realize that if I give them praise it’s a way of not engaging them with analysis. They come to see praise as a shortcut. They find it unserious.—Jane Smiley

***

I once took a demanding workshop where I was the only writer among a gifted group of dancers, actors, and directors. The workshop had a physically rigorous component. I’d had no movement training to speak of and I was the oldest person in the group. I suppose I expected to be cut a little slack.

In one exercise, we were taught a series of physical poses that were to be copied precisely and held with great stillness. Once the postures were learned one of the teachers slapped a bamboo stick to the floor: with each slap we were to shift, with catlike grace, from one posture to another. After a time I began to think: I’m getting the hang of this. I think I’ve got it.

You can’t see yourself, nor can you see your work in the context of a practice to which I have devoted my life. I see you, your work, and what’s at stake. You didn’t come here to be comforted.

The leader fell silent. She rose from the floor and crossed the stage to where I stood holding my pose.

Calmly and without inflection she said: “And you, you have failed. And everyone can see it.”

You can’t see yourself, nor can you see your work in the context of a practice to which I have devoted my life. I see you, your work, and what’s at stake. You didn’t come here to be comforted.

No. I had not.

***

Part IV: What Everyone Is

No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than others.—Martha Graham

***

I was sitting in the house for a performance of a play of mine at the New York Summer Play Festival. As the performance progressed a large man next to me laughed, snored, laughed, snored, etc., in cyclic eruptions.

When the play was over the man applauded, turned to me and said, “Who would write this play?”

Gulp. “I did.”

He laughed again. “My subscribers would hate this play!”

He handed me his card: he was one of the best-known artistic directors in America. He said some nice things about the play and told me why he could never produce it. In that lovely, light moment, he released each of us from the pressure of our roles. The playwright: I should impress this man somehow. The artistic director: Better tell a charming story so I can slip away without getting into what I think of her play. He freed us of that mutually belittling ritual.

We talked about other plays in the festival. I made recommendations, he made recommendations. He hugged me goodbye.

***

i require a miracle. i require the humility and faith to allow it to happen. an army of a thousand cannot help me. it’s down to the creative spirit of the universe and me. kicking and screaming.—Stephen Adly Guirgis, Facebook post

***

The Labyrinth production of Our Lady of 121st Street, fifth row, my second time. Next to me, a talkative lady who’d been brought to the play by her daughter. The lady was visiting New York from a small town in rural Kansas. She’d never seen a play before and she was very, very excited. Her daughter worked for a publishing house and it was clear that her mother embarrassed her terribly.

Let’s see: a man with no pants, a stolen corpse, a raped and murdered child, infidelity, drugs, a dead alcoholic nun, a lot of four-letter words, and a whole lot of shouting. The lady from Kansas’s first play. How would she hold up?

God, how she laughed. Those whole-body, rocking-forward-and-back in your seat convulsing belly laughs. Foul-mouthed nasty Norca? Hilarious. Poor Sonya gets socked in the mouth? Funniest thing ever. And the climactic scene where Inez tells Rooftop that he took her secret garden and dropped a fuckin’ atomic bomb on it and now it’s just scorched earth and ashes? Tears streamed down the lady’s face. Inez’s heart was broken and so was hers. When the play was over, she could hardly stand.

This woman didn’t want to be seen, or flattered, or reassured. The playwright didn’t want to be seen or flattered or reassured, nor did the actors, nor the director, nor the designers or anyone else in the building.

The world rushed through the performance to the lady from Kansas and back to the play and the artists and back to the lady from Kansas as each was being made more alive.

***

As I begin to understand and respect it, the ritual of theater involves a transference of sensual life energy from one group of people to another.—R. G. Davis

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The toughest thing about developing as an artist, for me, lies in lining up my inner eyes and ears with my consciousness of how my work lands on others. There's no way around the place where those gazes coalesce because it's where art finds its life in the world. The insidious and treacherous part is not getting sucked too far into either gaze. We're asking for miracles. We pray. Michelle, your entire piece is about how to pray. Boundless thanks for being inimitably you and the blessing that is in my life.

Don't know if y'all will see this comment but it's quite an honor to see a bunch of my favorite playwrights responding to the piece. Truly validating, whatcha gonna do. Many thanks, all.

A delicious four course meal. Hard hitting and so funny. Re: "You didn't come here to be comforted", yes get the point, and the value . . . and would add we all have our style of personality expression - sometimes there can be a thin line between the tough love of instructing someone and shaming somone. There's also an art to communication.

What a lens - and at the end of it? A mirror. I was LOLing - and copying these amazing quotes into my favorite notebook - IN INK! PS - I can't wait to hear more about the future ukulele opera.

"You did not come here to be comforted." I am going to hang that above my laptop. Thanks for this - a reminder of the tenacity and guts that are (always, sigh) required.

What an amazing post-- so much life and spirit!
I hope we can all recognize the importance of our equal value in this life--onstage and off--
Thanks

Such a beautiful, honest piece. A good one to wake up to and with which to start the diffucult week. Thank you.