Tonight was educational, I learned I've been pronouncing Pakistan wrong. My American tongue wants to say "Pack-ih-stan" but Ayad (hard A, A-yadd) pronounced it Pah-ki-stahn. The importance of pronunciation, or rather--the act of pronouncing in and of itself, comes up in Homeland Elegies. When Donald Trump is trying to ingratiate himself with Ayad's father (a cardiologist) by asking him how to say "Akhtar" correctly.
The most important lessons I learned from the lecture were:
1. The importance of the "economic under-girding" when discerning motivation. Ayad's words were, "understanding where & how their bread is buttered." I used to think of motivation as something more ethereal, something akin to "being a good person" as an example of an underlying motivation--but living in America means paying for everything & how do you pay for the things you need/want?
2. "The muse needs to know where to find you." Meaning: writing at the same time each day, and if possible, the same place. The writing won't always flow, but the regularity of writing is the crucial element.
3. Transmission of knowledge is a sacred thing. I think I felt this when I was publishing Psalms--it felt important that what I was experiencing be shared, to help others avoid my fate. It drove me to rush the book, half-formed into the world--because I thought I wouldn't live long enough to worry about the end result anyway. I'll have more time to bring the actual physical, printed book into the world with more polish--but if it was the last thing I did--I wanted to transmit something of my life, something of myself into the world. I think that was a desire I had because I feel drawn to the sacred.
4. Acting -- inhabiting another person's emotional state but more importantly, stepping into "new or different" ideas is connected with Shakespeare, the "greatest author of all time." Ayad made the point that the connection between Shakespeare and his craftsmanship of acting & writing was not a coincidence. Developing empathy as well as being able to "countenance contradiction" will be important for me if I want to be considered a "good" writer.
5. "What is ahead of us is so gargantuan" Ayad mentioned almost casually how the future holds this absolutely enormous conundrum that no single human can solve. He mentioned both climate change & artificial intelligence as two problems that would impact either the generation being born in the last 5-10 years, or perhaps a generation not yet born. His point being that right now, we are glorifying individualism over collectivism. Not collectivism like communism, but rather, the drawing together as one people--to face a problem by pooling all of our talents & resources. The last time America even came close to this was during WWII when the whole country turned itself into a machine. Even the children going through the trash for scrap metal were part of it, the women who had never before needed to do men's work stepped up & admirably performed their "duty." To handle what is coming--we will need to move towards this again. A phrase he used tonight--about having the "pessimism of intellect, but optimism of will" stuck with me. It will require planning for the worst of human behavior but hoping for the best from the soul of every human being?
6. The most stunning moment for me was when Ayad said it was "pathetic" that America couldn't hold a real conversation about 9/11, even though that was over 20 years ago. He said we were unwilling to address the "genealogy" of what led to the attack. It wasn't an "act of cosmic evil" perpetuated against a "nation of innocents" (I'm not sure I'm quoting him accurately, but no one reads this blog so I think I can get away with it) & I'm wondering if that's part of my purpose here. To incite a conversation that allows us to move past the racial hatred we have for Muslims. On page 138 of Elegies, Ayad & Riaz are talking about a study which explored what the 5 most common words Americans thought of when thinking about Muslims: Anger. Separate. Suicide. Bad. Death. This led to the sociologist Norbert Elias and his quote:
"The established majority takes its we-image from a minority of its best, and shapes a they-image of the despised outsiders from the minority of their worst." (pg. 139)
Am I not guilty of participating in this? I have branded all Muslims as "gay killers," murderers who toss "men like me" off of buildings to splatter on the concrete below. I was 13 when 9/11 happened, but the images of Muslim men were wild-eyed, bearded, fanatical, monstrous. It wasn't until I was in college that I made my first friends who were from Muslim families & this began to change, but by then--the deepest part of me still conflates all of the Middle East as the land where they actively hunt down & kill people like me. Imagine my shock when Riaz, arguably one of the most powerful Muslim characters from Elegies, turns out to be gay. There was a passage that resonated deeply with me, from the footnote on page 156--
"I would come to wonder if perhaps I'd been an object of sexual interest to him all along, if perhaps he thought I was gay, too, locked even deeper in that closet than he was. Whatever the reason for the brief window of his appealing availability, by Labor Day weekend, it was gone, and that dazzling, ceramic impenetrability was back..."
Have I too, not done this to men? Attracted to them, dazzling them with my personality and ability to if not find then make a good time happen, then when it becomes clear that they are certainly straight and nothing will happen, I drop them & move on. I've been intentionally celibate since 2016, but the point is I can't run from my past even if I'm not doing that anymore. At 33, I think "ah how foolish, insincere and manipulative I was at 25" but as I am learning from Sheila Moon's treatise on Navajo emergence mythology--we carry the darkness with us, even as we step into new realms of light. I will "fight" my demons again & again--but I'll lose if I think they are gone forever. No, they will be with me, and I must be vigilant for them. Instead of fighting them though, I must embrace them as familiar--it's only with self-love that I can win against these shadows--what I fight, I strengthen.
7. The last and possibly the most important lesson I learned from tonight's lecture is that grappling with the question is the critical thing--not arriving at the answer. There's a lot I have not engaged with because I don't trust that I will arrive at a solution. By not at least engaging with the really tough problems/conundrums/questions, I am playing into my pattern of self-defeating behavior/self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. Struggling to answer the question is more important than arriving at the answer--because even though I am imperfect and won't have the solution, by struggling against the problem I will at least be trying & that act alone may inspire the smarter, wiser person to grapple as well.
On a last note, Ayad was very magnanimous tonight. The awkward way he wasn't allowed to finish whatever that last thought was, made me cringe. I don't think the host who was leading the post-lecture questions meant to stifle his thinking--perhaps she was simply delivering on ending the program at the prescribed time--but she talked over him rather than pause to hear what he was trying to say (thus I have no idea what he was trying to say), so if I'm ever up on stage one day & that happens--I must remember that being graceful is more important than being heard. Or, if I'm ever leading a conversation and hosting an author, I must allow them to speak when inspiration strikes them--perhaps they are realizing in that moment something that they believe is important to share, and as long as we're not past time by an egregious amount--there's no harm in letting them speak that thought.
I'm glad I went to the Carnegie Music Hall tonight, it was a humbling experience, in the good way.
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