Stories, Integrity and Horizontalities

Slow Muse has been a personal repository for my thoughts and feelings about art, art making and creativity for almost 20 years. As the landscape of creativity has constantly changed, I have frequently been surprised by what persists and what does not.

At this particular moment in time artistic expression has become increasingly politicized, then often made into a subject of divisive disagreement. Responding to these circumstances, Rosanna Mclaughlin aptly captures the cultural snapshot: “We have become extremely adept at describing what must be dismantled, unlearned and problematised, yet almost completely useless when it comes to creating compelling visions of a better society.”

We all have ideas about what would make for a better world, even if those ideas are incidental, personal or small. What matters most right now—or so it seems to me—is not giving up. There is great value in continuing to converse, explore, examine, reevaluate, and in being willing to state openly what matters most to you.

Some consider this approach as “too little too late,” an insignificant response to a time of overwhelmingly bleakness. But I am by nature an optimist. My favorite answer to the question, “Is life getting worse or is it getting better?” was given to Laurie Anderson many years ago by John Cage:

“Of course it is getting better! It’s just that it is happening sooooo slowly.”

The following short essays consider three issues that have been on my mind lately, concerns that are focused on contemporary creative efforts. This is my way of continuing to talk, about what is happening in our world and what we want to change. Of course I am hopeful there is some resonance in this for you as well.

PART 1: IS THIS MY STORY TO TELL?

In 1992, Alice Walker published Possessing the Secret of Joy. The novel tells the story of Tashi, an African woman who comes to the US from a fictional African country where female genital mutilation is practiced. Finding herself torn between her new identity as a Westerner and her cultural heritage, she chooses to return to her homeland for this procedure.

When Walker came through Boston to promote this book, she was already a celebrated author. A standing room only crowd gathered in a large auditorium at Boston University where she sat in the middle of the stage in an oversized armchair. Her sense of presence was staggeringly tangible.

After reading a few passages from the novel, Walker welcomed questions from the audience. The first to raise his hand was a well-dressed young man. Articulate and dignified, his accent suggesting he might be African.

His question for Walker was phrased carefully, but the intensity of his query was undeniable: “You may be of African heritage, but you are a Westerner. What gives you license to write a book about cultural practices and traditions that are not yours and that you cannot understand?”

Given today’s heightened concern about who has permission to tell a story–the controversies that occurred around the novel American Dirt and the painting of Emmett Till by Dana Schutz epitomize just how loaded this issue is—this may sound like a commonplace question to our 21^st century ears. But in 1992, it was not.

Walker, full of gravitas and presence, addressed the young man with a deep, mellifluous voice.

“Let me tell you a story.”

Before she engaged in writing this book, Walker said, she had taken a trip to New Zealand. While she was visiting, she was invited to meet with a revered Māori chief.

“When I walked into his abode, the first thing he said to me was, ‘Do you know who you are traveling with?’”

Walker was perplexed by this question. But then the chief described to her what he could see: the spirits of hundreds of African women, hovering all around her.

“They lived difficult lives, and they are asking you to tell their stories,” he said.

Walker ended her account, and silence fell over the audience. The young man sat down quietly. After a moment the Q&A continued, with questions that did not veer far from the book’s text and narrative.

It was an astounding moment, one I have thought about many times. There’s nothing quite like Alice Walker sitting on a throne and sharing a very personal supernatural origin story.

Much has changed over the last 30 years. At this moment we are traversing particularly treacherous terrain regarding appropriation, how to voice the point of view of others, how to address a topic that is not part of our personal experience and/or heritage. Distinct driving lanes have been drawn across the tarmac. Pick yours, and then stay the hell out of mine.

But writers are imaginists. Where is the point when imagination spills over and becomes hurtful, inappropriate appropriation?

A good friend of mine, a white American woman, spent a great deal of time over the last 25 years working in Africa with disadvantaged women. She recently wrote a novel that takes place in the Africa she has come to know so well, a story of women surviving in the face of extraordinary challenges. When she shared her manuscript with her African colleagues, they praised her book with profound enthusiasm. Like the ghostly attendants the Māori chief saw hovering around Walker, these individuals were deeply grateful someone would be telling their story of suffering and survival.

When my friend circulated her manuscript to major publishers, the response was a consistent one: “This novel is good, and five years ago we would have been interested. But a well-educated white woman writing about Africa? We can’t touch that now.”

Whether Walker would be willing to openly share the origin story of Possessing the Secret of Joy today is hard to determine. She is a celebrity, and fame comes with privileges not available to the rest of us. But whether Walker would acknowledge it or not, that doesn’t change her story’s true source.

A number of famous writers have shared their “multidimensional” view of where a story comes from. Elizabeth Gilbert believes ideas have a life of their own. When she wasn’t able to write the book idea that originally came to her, it just moved on to her friend Ann Patchett, an occurrence she did not discover until much later. Isabel Allende has openly shared how stories come to her which she assumed were fiction, only to discover later that they were exact accounts of events that took place far from her purview.

It may be that we are in a pendulum swing that will return to a more evenhanded place regarding this question. Given the number of vectors moving us away from each other rather than closer together, it is hard to know how long that will take.

PART 2: ARTISTIC INTEGRITY

Now playing at Boston’s Lyric Stage, a terrific production of Trouble in Mind, a play written by Alice Childress in 1955. This “play within a play” addresses the complex difficulties facing African American performers working in a theater world defined by white money, power and taste. With a mixed cast of white and African American performers, the play draws heavily on the difficulties Childress encountered being an African American actor when there were few parts available for her. Childress also directed the off-Broadway production at the Greenwich Mews Theater that same year.

White producers pressured her to give the play a more upbeat ending. New to playwriting, Childress felt intimidated and reluctantly complied. She was particularly concerned about jeopardizing her fellow actors and crew.

So she capitulated. She provided an ending that suggested reconciliation and racial harmony, something she did not believe was at all realistic.

In reviewing the production, the New York Times praised her play as “a fresh, lively and cutting satire.” But the reviewer disliked the ending that had been forced on her. Childress deeply regretted having made that change, and she vowed she would never again compromise on issues of her artistic integrity.

That test came soon. When producers approached her about taking the play to Broadway, they requested additional changes to make it more appealing to mostly white theater goers. Childress would not agree to change to the happy ending they were looking for. As a result, the project was stalled and the move to Broadway never materialized. Had Childress agreed to their requests, she would have been the first African American woman playwright to have her work performed on a Broadway stage. That honor went to Lorraine Hansberry four years later with A Raisin in the Sun.

In 2021, Trouble in Mind finally made its long delayed debut on Broadway. When it did arrive, it did so with the ending Childress originally wrote.

The Roundabout Theatre Company’s production garnered four Tony Award nominations. In reviewing this production in the New York Times, Maya Phillips wrote, “Childress wouldn’t say she was writing for white audiences or Black audiences; she only wrote for herself, and she concerned herself first and foremost with the truth, whatever form that would take.”

Childress continued to write, but her career was greatly impacted by this pivotal decision. Her friend and anthologizer Kathy Perkins described her as a “woman of amazing integrity…She hated the saying ‘ahead of your time.’ Her thing was that people aren’t ahead of their time; they’re just choked during their time, they’re not allowed to do what they should be doing.”

Well said.

PART 3: GOING HORIZONTAL

The visual arts have a long history of gatekeeping. From the tradition of patronage to the hegemony of major galleries and museums, the choice of who will be seen, discussed and admired is made by powerbrokers. Rarely is that decision based solely on artistic merit. The market after all has its own concept of who will be an art star.

Dismantling long standing hierarchal structures doesn’t happen easily or quickly. Even so, there are many signs of artists moving away from the monolithic, single file line model. The pandemic ended up being an opportunity to open up new options where artists could take more control of how their work is seen and purchased. The hashtag campaign on Instagram, Artist Support Pledge (more about that here) pop up galleries, artist collectives and online exhibits operate outside the existing structure. Even as art galleries, fairs and promotions have returned to operational, there is decidedly more legroom for the individual artist.

A similar both/and has happened in music as well, an industry where the star making machinery is highly tuned to serve a very small number of musicians.  Performers are claiming more artistic autonomy (most famously, Taylor Swift) while new venues and channels continue to emerge. How cool is it that my favorite band has two musicians who also happen to teach English literature at Exeter Academy as well as a wicked slide guitarist who is a Brahms scholar at UNH? (Check out Todd Hearon and his music making here.)

That’s what I refer to as horizontality. Its finding new adjacencies, branching out in 360. That is a different approach than scrambling to climb the precariously vertical star-making scaffolding that can only support a few.

The theater community in Boston is also going through its own version of horizontality. In its 50^th year of operation, the Lyric Stage is offering a season with more variation and excellence than I can remember. The Huntington Theater, another longstanding Boston institution, has exploded out of its prior identity with the high powered leadership of its new artistic director, Loretta Greco.  The programming is vibrant, unexpected and diverse, with several stages running concomitantly. Terrific major productions like The Lehman Trilogy (more here) and Prayer for the French Republic (more here) have run alongside more intimate one person (mostly) performances like Richard Marsh’s Yippe Ki Yay, (a Die Hard parody no less!), and Stand Up if You’re Here Tonight, written by John Kolvenbach and performed by Jim Ortlieb.

 Stand Up is currently being staged in a performance space three flights up that is accessed through a back alley doorway. Kolvenbach, a passionate lover of the power of theatrical experience, describes his particular passion: “I’m looking for a kind of obliteration of myself, and union with the play and communion with my audience mates and a loss of ego.” This work cries out with its desire to be participatory, personal and provisional, creating an experience that feels fresh and accessible to just about anyone. In keeping with that spirit of conjoining, the audience is invited to stay afterwards to share a drink and conversation with the cast and crew. While live jazz wafted, almost everyone chose to stay. (I found this quite amazing given how awkward programmed socializing can be!) Adjacency and horizontality can create those kinds of surprises, refreshingly so.

I have no predictions going forward. I’m mostly baffled by the ongoing drifts and currents in our cultural landscape. Mclaughlin, author of Double-Tracking: Studies in Duplicity, offers a good example of the intricate relationships we see being formed. She refers to double-tracking as “a state of mind born of an ambivalent relationship to privilege, that, when perfected allows those with financial resources the economic benefits of leaning right, and the cultural benefits of leaning left…To double-track is to be both: counter-cultural and establishment, rich and poor, Maldon Sea Salt of the earth. Pablo Picasso’s immortal words fill the scroll: ‘I want to live as a poor man, with lots of money.’”

Yes, there are many reasons to be baffled, but I’m also very grateful for those moments when lift off happens. Which it does, again and again.