HELLO WORLD I'M A VERY PRIVATE PERSON

Some thoughts on being a private public person. (Or a public private person.)

For my birthday a few years ago a friend got me a reading from the astrologer Laurence Hillman. It was revelatory. In addition to gently suggesting I get a dog, Hillman explained to me that one can locate in almost all charts what he called a ‘central drama,’ a recurring theme that presents itself as a kind of chronic struggle that a person has to work through. But according to Hillman, even though these dramas come with some real frustration we shouldn’t bemoan their presence. They’re what ultimately give our lives shape, meaning, and purpose. (He said he’s seen a few charts over the years where this central drama was missing and that these people tend to be quite boring.)

So he had my attention. What was this perennially frustrating central drama or tension that gave my life shape, meaning, and purpose? Before he told me he asked if I had a public aspect to my life. I told him I did without revealing anything more. He then asked if I felt in any way conflicted about this public aspect of my life. And I said “Yes. Very.” And he said “Well that makes sense.”

Here’s how he described it to me: “It’s like you’re an actor who steps out onto the stage and says ‘Hello world! I’m a very private person!’ (He didn’t know I was an actor when he told me this. We were on the phone so he wasn’t seeing my face. He only had my first name so I knew he hadn’t done any research on me.) I thought this was a really useful image. And it rang completely true.

Wanting to be looked at while also absolutely not wanting to be looked at has indeed been the central tension in my life. Twin impulses in opposition: To be seen and to disappear. Look at me don’t look at me. It’s like the actor in me and the writer in me are perpetually at war, one wanting to step out onto stage and share and the other wanting to stay in the shadows and observe.

The writer doesn’t want to be seen and judged and interviewed and go through hair and makeup and put on a costume and be called a name other than his own. The writer wants to stay in sweatpants in the quiet room in the comfy chair by the fire writing and revising and procrastinating. And at some point have some lunch. The writer dreams up worlds but he is not the protagonist. He is all the characters and none of them. Creative, inventive, and playful without putting his actual body on the line.

Then there’s the actor, this front-facing aspect of my personality that has served me well and paid the bills all these many years. When I’m in a project I love and believe in, acting is a reliable deliverer of joy. But there are days – more than I care to admit – when I wake up and think “I do not want to be looked at today.” I don’t mean by my wife or friends or neighbors. I mean by an audience. I simply can’t locate the energy to be witnessed. I’m envious of people who seem less tortured when they’re about to step onto the stage or hit the “post” and “publish” buttons. Who even seem to love it. For me it’s a process, and often a fraught one at that.

What am I afraid of? I think at the base of it is simply a fear of humiliation. Of being thought not well of. The old junior high school demons that rear their heads at inopportune moments and try to convince me the safer option is to hide. But the more salient fear might involve being misunderstood. I remember some tough moments in my childhood where I felt misheard or misunderstood and I think as a consequence I became obsessed with language—if I could just get the right words in the right order, I reasoned, then some of the madness and confusion of the world could be mitigated.

I’m noticing the central drama at work as I wrote these words. I long to be seen and understood, to send some deep truths about myself into the world (but only if I can communicate those truths in the right way) and when that’s done I want to flip a switch and make it all go away.

by Jon Marro (www.jonmarro.com)

When I’m proud of something I’ve written or made or participated in, I want people to find it, hear it, watch it, and appreciate it. It wouldn’t make sense for me to create in isolation and then refuse to share what I’ve made with anyone. I create, at the most fundamental level, to connect. To counteract the loneliness that seems baked into the experience of being a human being. Art, for me, has been the greatest hedge against loneliness.

James Baldwin famously said it best:

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive.”

I feel that way about all art, not just books. Art is meant to be shared. And there’s a kind of mystical alchemical process that gets initiated when art meets its intended audience. In some ways it feels like a work is not complete until it meets those it was meant for. And then the artist must go through a process of surrender and release, knowing that the art belongs to the audience now. This process, while necessary, is often laced with grief. It’s not unlike what I imagine parents feel when dropping their kids off at school for the first time, knowing they did their best but the world has to take it from here. They might get bullied or embraced. It’s out of your hands.

I wish I wrote these Museletters far more frequently than I end up doing them. I fuss and fret over the content for a long time. Too long. I refuse to hit ‘publish’ until I feel like I’ve chiseled it into some shape that feels close to the more beautiful piece that still lurks in my mind. I know I’m not alone in this. Every writer is haunted by the better version of their work they couldn’t coax out of themselves. Shame and perfectionism have been two demons that have been perched atop my shoulders for as long as I can remember. Each time I find the courage to post a video or publish a piece of writing or sing my songs publicly those demons are drained of some of their power.

When I did my mini tour for Eulogy I wrote a welcome song to start the show. It contains the lyrics:

The first tune is the hardest my pulse it races quick

So I put my nerves into a song well that’s a nifty trick

I might make mistakes hit a few notes askew

I didn’t pick up this guitar til I was forty two (it’s true!)

I wrote this because it’s important to me that people know I haven’t been playing guitar and writing songs since I was a kid. I’m a relative newcomer to the world of playing original songs in front of a crowd of people. Once I get that out of the way I can relax. I feel more comfortable once I’ve created context for the audience, so they know they’re not coming to hear Django Reinhart. Please don’t expect perfection. That’s not what I’m after up here.

I’m more alert to my flaws the older I get, and less interested in presenting some kind of airbrushed avatar of perfection. My voice might crack, my strum might be off, my nerves might get the best of me. I have to travel through the valley of humiliation and up the mountains of misunderstanding to hopefully reach a place where I feel connected: to myself, to the audience, and to whatever mystical force instilled in me the desire to make things in the first place.

Sitting at home and being silent the rest of my life actually feels a lot scarier than anything I might encounter from putting more work and more of myself out there. So my intention is to continue making stuff and sharing it. But that doesn’t mean I won’t be dragging my feet, wanting to hide, kicking myself for not having proofread or rewritten one more time.

Still I must admit: That drama, that tension, is what has given me my life. I love words and music and stories and this is what I get to spend my life making. Underneath the struggle is a very particular kind of joy. The resistance is commensurate with how deeply I care about the thing I’m engaged in.

There are times I wish I’d been given some other less stressful drama to guide and shape my life. But on the days when the words flow or the melody soars and I find the courage to share, I thank my lucky stars that’s the one I got.

“Don’t Get Sick This Is America,” the first single from my album Eulogy: Volume 2 is out in the world. On all streaming platforms. It’s my swing at an old fashioned Woody Guthrie-esque protest song. Topics covered: Health care, poverty, racism, sexism (get psyched!) More Volume 2 music coming very very soon.

Ben Gaffney’s piece, “The End of All Wanting,” on David Berman and alcoholism in The Small Bow really moved me.

Speaking of The Small Bow I had a lovely chat with my pal A.J. Daulerio on The Small Bow podcast. And another great talk with Mayim Bialik on her Breakdown podcast.

“People Are Trying Magic Mushrooms for Depression – and Accidentally Meeting God: The medicalization movement is faltering. Maybe that’s because psychedelics have been spiritual tools all along” by Cassady Rosenblum

Read and loved both these books: My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer by Christian Wiman and God Human Animal Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning by Meghan O'Gieblyn.

This Craig Thomas piece in McSweeney’s really made me laugh: “Last Minute Changes to My Forthcoming Political Memoir.”

“My Play Went to Broadway. Then a Death Changed Everything.” By Alex Edelman

Nothing on TV Felt Like My So-Called Life: Winnie Holzman reflects on the 30-year-old pilot: “Every character was trying to figure out who they were.”

“Digital pastor Benjamin Cremer knows how to talk about faith and politics because he has lived on both sides of the aisle” by Mark Wingfield.

“The Oliver Sacks I Knew and Loved Once Saw Himself as a Failure” by Bill Hayes.

Frank Hinchey, the most loyal of Museletter readers, has passed away. I was always delighted when I received an email from Frank - a retired journalist from Ohio - with his thoughts on my latest. He was a lovely guy and a great father to my friend Molly. Sending love to Molly and her whole family. Thanks for reading all those years, Frank.