Stop, look and listen

A friend sent this email: “A while back you mentioned you might be willing to read my friend Randolph’s book. I like it a lot but I’m close to the author and the subject matter. I also may be one of the characters!

“He’s sent it to a few people and has gotten virtually no feedback. He’s in that vulnerable artist space where he put his heart and soul into this thing that is now just sitting on his hard drive. If you have the time and inclination, I’ve attached a PDF to this email.

“No pressure. You’re a busy vulnerable artist yourself ...”

“Busy,” “vulnerable” “artist?” Tell me more. I was looking for a lift and I’d found one and it wasn’t important the lift be grounded in reality, because it sounded good enough to suspend reason, regardless of evidence to the contrary. “Absolutely. I’d be happy to.” I was lying. I was sort of lying. I was sort of not telling the truth because although I believe occasionally “the truth will set you free,” sometimes the truth will break your creative heart and spirit and make you want to curl up in a ball and roll down a long hill whose bottom you can’t see.

I believe this. There’s something brave, wonderful and life-embracing (agonizing too) about putting yourself out there with no clear plan on how you might reach an audience.

You have this great idea for a novel so you sit down and spend the next two years (nights, if you have a day job) of your life writing 151 pages. It takes everything you have, your heart, your soul, your free time and finally you finish.

Finish and think, “I’ve done something, have something, want to give people something that they will find compelling and be unable to put down once they start reading.”

You start with your friends, people who you thought were your friends, people who ignore you and who are no longer your friends because they’re too busy doing whatever the heck they’re doing and even if it’s making living or raising kids, it doesn’t count because this is you and your crowning moment of creative achievement.

The truth dawns on you: Nobody cares, nobody wants to read it and nobody will mourn if you get swallowed by the black slime that comes in nightly from the swamp of heartache and broken dreams.

I felt bad for the guy so I started reading. I’m on Page 85 and it’s pretty good. I can see the characters, I can feel the misery of being an associate in a big law firm and he paints a clear picture of what it’s like to live in a bad apartment in San Diego when your parents have a place in Del Mar with what seemed like little sweat.

The lead character is trying to figure it out, something we’re all trying to do. The book could use a sense of humor, some lightness and hope (sadness is OK too as long it leads to a good, cleansing cry), because people are generally not looking to go down the rabbit hole and keep going.

I give him credit. He’s giving it a whirl and here is often the thing about people who are giving it a whirl. There are some really good moments in it including this description of a woman who has had plastic surgery:

“Her hair was an even Marilyn Monroe bleach. Is there only one plastic surgeon in all of California? Henry thought. Did that surgeon create the same nose, same lips, same eyes on every woman regardless of what they wanted?”

Some of the best music you’ll ever hear will neither make the top 10 nor make the artist a dime but when you hear it, you think, this is great and my life is better for having heard it.

Art is worth doing, sacrificing for and spending inordinate amounts of time on.

It’s probably underpaid but not underappreciated by those who believe that art can come from anywhere and anybody.