New York in the rain

I'm in an Italian cafe on Second Avenue, listening to a French chanteuse on the soundtrack and watching the cars zoom endlessly by in the rain. New York takes an enormous amount of energy, and I just don't have it today.

I did yesterday, which was a glorious sunny day. Here's what I wrote this morning, Monday, about Sunday:

"The little Porter airplane coming into Newark allowed us a fantastic view of the distant island – still, after all these years, like something out of a dream. Like a child playing with blocks, trying to squeeze as many upright rectangles as possible into a small space. The famous spires – the Empire State, the Chrysler - pierced the morning mist. Impossible not to notice the absence of the two biggest rectangles of all. And at the bottom, barely visible and all alone, the lady and her torch.

Each time I come in, there’s a frisson – like all my great-grandparents on my father’s side, I am an immigrant to this island. And yet I’m not, because I was born here. This metropolis is my birthplace. We moved from New York to Halifax when I was two months old. I carry the passport both of this country and of the country that is mine, that is my true home.

I am proud to say that I’d packed so little, I was able to skip immediately from the plane to the shuttle to the train and thence into Manhattan. 6.30 a.m., wake up in Toronto; noon, eat soup at Cousin Ted’s at 77^th and 3^rd. Cousin Ted has a place in the “country” – Northport – to which he goes every weekend, leaving his two-bedroom apartment for a steam of visiting friends and family. Without Ted, I would not have been able to write my book; I would not feel as at home as I do in this city.

Here is how to do Manhattan on the cheap: First, have a Cousin Ted in a perfect location. Second, a week-long subway pass costs a mere $27 and is good for both subways and busses. Even though I’m only going to be here for 4 days, by Day 2 the pass will have paid for itself; I haven’t taken a cab for years. I browse at the Housing Works Thrift Shop right across the street – this is not Goodwill, this is a New York thrift store with high end goods and extraordinary prices. My meals are takeout from the nearby Chinese restaurants or Citarella’s, the fish store and gourmet supermarket, and eaten at home. And, unless there’s something I absolutely must see, I get my theatre tickets half-price from the TKTS booth on Times Square.

Since during this amazing year I have visited both Paris and London, I must of course compare. This city is on a grid! You always know where you are! It’s not a rabbit warren, an ant’s nest of meandering streets, ancient medieval pathways, alleys and dead ends worn for a thousand years – well, it’s a bit like that downtown, in Chelsea and Soho, but the rest of the city is snappily efficient and organised. People are bigger here in every way – not just fatter, which of course they are, amazingly so, but taller and far, far louder. They take up a lot of space; there’s a confidence and swagger, a sense of entitlement. And yet they’re friendly, chatting openly with strangers in a way unheard of in European capitals.

At Ted’s I unpacked, called Ted and Henry in Northport and tried with Henry’s help and to no avail to get my computer hooked up to their internet, and called second cousin Lola who’s 87 and knows everything that’s worth seeing in the city. "Don't miss the Tim Burton exhibit at MOMA," she said. "Go early. It'll be crazy." It's still Thankgiving here. I changed into my walking shoes and set off for the Met, where Vermeer’s “Milkmaid” was spending its last day. Thanks again to family, I know where the side entrance is to the Met, avoiding the crowds, and headed straight for my favourite painter. Though crowded, it was a fabulous exhibit – the “Milkmaid” had been sent from Amsterdam in memory of the discovery of Manhattan by Henry Hudson, an Englishman working for the Dutch, and was shown with the other Met Vermeers and other paintings of the genre and era. Sublime. This has been a banner year for me - eight Vermeers! "The Lacemaker" was not in the Louvre but in Japan or it would have been nine. If I go to Frick Museum while here, I can see their three. But maybe I should stop; how many Vermeers can a person absorb in one year? There was a wall showing all 34; I decided that my favourite is "The Astronomer" which is at the Louvre. Which is yours?

Rather than more Met, it was such a heavenly day I took the bus straight down 5th Avenue to get tickets for the night's viewing. Time's Square is completely changed - they've turned some of it into a pedestrian mall and parkette, with little tables and chairs and a big staircase to nowhere to sit on - amazing, in the middle of the craziest intersection on earth, to have this little oasis. I lined up at TKTS and was happy that the show I wanted to see, Fela!, about a Nigerian activist, was on offer. I asked for the best single seat and the guy said, "Center orchestra." Great. It turned out to be center, all right - dead center of the very first row. I was so close that when the star bent over to bow, his sweat droplets landed on me. I'd like to see the show again from a bit further back, but no matter, it was fabulous - Fela was the founder of Afrobeat, there was an incredible band onstage and tons of beautiful black men and women dancing, singing, and acting. Full of energy. I could not have felt further from Paris or London.

But I carry those cities with me - walking around in my silk Paris scarf, my TopShop shirt. It is fun to be in New York wearing Paris and London. Though of course I could not compete with the stylistas here, nor ever want to, in their Prada and whatever. I meandered through Sak's on my way to the theatre. More expensive than is decent. But lovely to look at."

This morning, in the rain, I went to MOMA at Lola's command and did see Tim Burton. It's an exhaustive exhibit of his life's work - sketches, notebooks, sculpture, amateur films, stories, an amazingly creative guy exploring the grotesque and horrific since childhood. Much is made of his suburban childhood in Burbank, California - he was obviously an outcast, outsider, a geeky kid with vicious fantasies who has found a way to make a fortune playing those out for the world. If he'd had a best friend, or grown up in Manhattan, the world might not have those nightmare images - Edward Scissorhands, the Nightmare before Christmas, Beetlejuice. He needs some good buddies, I thought. This is what he wrote as a character study for Edward Scissorhands: "His hobbies are making ice sculptures and playing the steeldrums. Someday he hopes to vacation on the Caribbean Islands." He wrote about Little Dead Riding Hood and is fixated by dead dogs, eyeballs, skeletons, Martians, death, blood, gore. Here's an early poem:

My girlfriend is a statue/I don't know when I noticed it/but I think it was last year/I think it's when I noticed/That crack above her ear.

I had an ambitious plan for the afternoon but the rain and my own fatigue defeated me. I came back to Ted's and to this cafe. Tonight I have more plans, and tomorrow I do my talk at the Stella Adler Studio. At the moment, I am just grateful that I do not live here in this madhouse. A marvellous, thrilling madhouse, but mad nonetheless.

arguing about memoir

Another correspondence to share with you. A friend sent me a link to the Washington Post's grumpy review of a new book called Memoir: a History, by Ben Yagoda (who also wrote a terrific book called The Sound on the Page: great writers talk about style and voice in writing.) The book goes back as far as St. Augustine's Confessions to show that the memoir genre has always been with us. The review, entitled "Shelve it under navel-gazing," disapproves of the popularity of memoir. Its author quotes Mark Twain on the notorious unreliability of memory, and writes:

"Never mind that few of these confessions can be of interest to anyone except the people writing them, never mind that few of these people know how to tell a story or write literate prose, never mind that the market is now so thoroughly saturated that it is just about impossible to separate what little wheat there may be from the vast ocean of chaff. What matters is that, as Yagoda says, we live in an age of "more narcissism overall, less concern for privacy, a strong interest in victimhood, and a therapeutic culture."

I sent the review to my friend Mr. Ch*y, and this is what he replied:

The article makes its point - whenever there is a trend to publish certain genres (vampires, anyone?), much will be shallow entertainment/sensational, and poorly written. That shouldn't stop the best that still needs to be written, to be published and read.

Mark Twain makes an interesting point. But if one deeply remembers something that never happened - this still holds some clue to the truth of the personality whose memory suggests a need for perceiving the universe with his/her peculiar lens. That kind of memory is very different from a deliberate fabrication or a twisted lie, and is psychologically revealing. Deeply ingrained misconceptions are also truths about our imperfect humanity. All memory risking any truth is creative non fiction. Onwards!

I'll have what he's having.

Bright Star

Well, if you want affirmation of the difficulties of the artist's life, see Bright Star, which shows us a divinely beautiful and inspired John Keats slowly freezing to death, unacknowledged as one of the greatest poets in the English language except for the love and admiration of a few friends. The film is beautifully acted, gorgeous to look at and way too long - but a treat nonetheless. It's about the sexiness of poetry. How many films can make that claim?

Beforehand, a Japanese lunch with my fierce mentor. He spoke again about how artists waste their time looking for approval instead of listening to their souls. He advised me to get rid of all my old drafts, not to let them weigh me down, just to start fresh. I thought, the support of this man is one of the greatest gifts of my life.

He told an amazing story - that friends visited him with their son when the boy was just eleven. The youth never forgot that encounter, and now, a university student, is writing a great deal as W'son does. He showed me the boy's piece in a university literary magazine; it was stunning. Another writer inspired and launched, thanks to this generous man.

At home, I found an email from a dear friend, who wrote to ask if perhaps I should just write the way I want to write, rather than to please Mr. Ch*y. Maybe, he suggested, he wants you to sound like him instead of yourself; maybe he wants something from you that you are not able to give, and why should you? What I read, though it's not what he meant, was: you can't do what he is asking. Give up. I wrote back:

W'yson's nagging insistence that I can produce something of depth and lasting value is keeping me alive. He's not an idiot; if he has faith, it's because he knows I can do it. I know with absolute surety that I can do it too. I have blocked myself in every conceivable way for as long as possible, but that will end and good writing will pour it. I am sure of that, and so, lucky for me, is he. He is expecting nothing less than the very best I can produce. A terrifyingly daunting thought.

I can do a certain kind of writing easily. This is a hard kind of writing, which is why I have avoided it for so long. I cannot write like my friend and wouldn't want to. But, once I kick my demons out the door, I can write from the depths of my soul. It's tough right now, with hundreds of wasted pages. But they're not useless, they were what I had to write then. Now I need to get on with now.

There is no guarantee that anyone will want to read what I write or publish it or buy it. But if I have written honestly and with passion and from my heart, if I have shaped what I produce with all the craft I can muster, then I have done my job.

pulling down the wall

As marathon runners can hit the wall - reach a point where they're so discouraged they want to give up - so can writers, and yesterday I did. The power of my mentor's words had not truly sunk in until I took the time, yesterday, to reread, not only what I have been writing over the past year, but over the past many years.

I opened some of the files I've created over time, the attempts to deal with the Sixties material. What I saw is that I have been telling the same story over and over and over, in slightly different ways, over hundreds of pages. It made me feel sick. I had no idea I'd devoted so much time to the same material while making only minor changes in voice, content, style. Isn't the definition of "stupid" doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting different results? By that definition, I have been excessively, pathetically stupid in the use of my time and talents.

Depression set in, briefly - a dark night of etc.etc. What the hell are you doing, wasting your time with this writing stuff that pays nothing and eats up your life? Go out and get a real job. Imagine if you'd actually been WORKING instead of sitting around inspecting your navel, tapping away telling yourself the same stories again and again. You wouldn't be fussed about selling your Balenciaga ballgown, you'd be happy and busy. So just forget it. Will the world care that it doesn't have your stories to kick around? Nah. The world will not notice one tiny bit.

That is what the negative voice sounds like, the voice of criticism, cowardice and self-pity (mixed with just a dash of truth and good sense) that kills creativity.

Luckily, I've been dealing with that voice for so long that I know how to tell it to shut up and go away. Which I did, pretty fast - I dismantled my wall. As my mentor also says, none of that past work is wasted. It's compost. You can only do what you can do when you can do it. I was not ready to tackle the stories in a different way, so I tackled them in the same way. Now it's time, somehow, to look at them differently. I have no doubts that I can do it, once I wrestle down the negative forces that have blocked me over and over again. There's a reason I'm nearly sixty and have published only one book, a book that took me 25 years to research, write and get published. I have had to battle such forces in myself to get the work out that there has not been much work to show.

That changes now, she said with energy and confidence and optimism, kicking the strewn remnants of the wall to the curb. But first, right now, I'm going to see the movie Bright Star with W'son. It's about Keats. Maybe he hit a wall too.

I write all this, yes, in a spirit of confession, but also to show those students of mine who follow this blog that though I can cheerfully steer them, encourage and prod and support them, it's a different matter for myself. Just as Mr. Ch*y can critique me brilliantly, but for his own work, he needs his own editors who do the same for him.

"More"

I've just received an advance copy of the December/January issue of More magazine; the Memoir section is a story of mine about love with a younger man. It's odd to read it now, because the affair described was some time ago. Still, it's a good feeling to open the mag, which always has lots of interesting stuff, and see the piece there.

To celebrate, I went to Doubletake, my local second-hand store, and saw a long line-up outside the cheque cashing place next door; the welfare cheques must be in today. Perhaps this is the only middle-class neighbourhood in Toronto acutely aware of when the government cheques come in; the No Frills on Parliament Street where I buy groceries will be packed for a day or two. At Doubletake I was happy to find a 50's aluminum cake preserver, something my daughter the baker really needs, and left it behind the counter while I looked at other things. As I browsed, I heard a local man, a cheerful character with long white hair who zooms about in a power wheelchair, bantering with the staff. "I'll leave it here and pick it up later," he said. "Put it on my tab. Only joking."

"Name?" said the staff member.

"Mick Jagger," he replied. "Only joking."

When I went to pay, I found out that Mick Jagger had bought my cake tin. Ah well. Another good story. It's raining again.