On writing, criticism and desire
Hello,
I continue to be in search of truth and am always amazed when I eventually find it right in front of me, staring me in the face. I’ve seen so many people who reflect, who think hard about their lives, about the invisible structures surrounding them and yet sometimes I see them miss the obvious. I’m the same, especially when it comes to my self-image. A strange kind of blindness, this inability to see our own truth. And the distance we chart away from ourselves with the aid of our self-narratives. The more I think and write about them the more I’m learning about their power over us and how they can fool even the sharpest of minds.
Earlier in the week I read philosopher Agnes Callard’s profile in the New Yorker with both amazement and amusement. I’m in awe of her pursuit for truth and I appreciate her desire to be open about her life. I imagined that a conscious, examined life would mean being free of the usual ailments that ordinary humans like us are constantly afflicted with. To see that all that work has ultimately led to a marriage that is prone to the same bickering, ill feelings and discontentment made me feel sorry for humanity. Upon a couple of rereadings I decided that Callard was not able to look at her truth, she wasn’t able to step into it and then examine it for what it was. Instead I get the feeling that she is narrativising first and fitting in the pieces of her life after. Even philosophers are humans.
It felt strange to think that Callard might be missing the obvious. Until recently I used to be the person who read someone’s narrative and believed it. I didn’t question them, I didn’t wonder about their motives. I trusted they knew what they were doing. I think this came from feeling not clever enough to understand others or critique them. I was so quick to pull myself down, especially my ability to think critically, that I often assumed everyone else was practicing at a higher plane to me, that they were understanding something that I could not, that they were all operating from a place that I didn’t have access to. This was probably true a decade ago, but not anymore. But it’s only now that my self-narrative is updating itself. Now that I’m free of this misconception, it’s amazing to realise that we are all bound by the limits of our ego and sometimes that’s all there is to say about a situation. We can think a lot about it, philosophise it and create a grandiose self-narrative. But the truth is always there, just waiting to be confronted.
When I published my memoir I became obsessed with trying to make sense of a few people’s rejections of my narrative. I just couldn’t understand why they were not able to see what I was trying to show them. I spent a lot of time trying to understand this blindness that we all have towards certain narratives, especially when they go against our idea of ourselves. It’s been healing to write about it. I finish one draft and put it away and start the whole book all over again. I’ve done this a few times now and with each retelling I get a little bit closer to my truth. It’s leading to slow ego deaths within me and I wonder if that’s the purpose of life — to kill our egos while protecting the rest of ourselves.
My first few drafts were cobbled together with the help of other people’s words. I resurrected philosophers, psychoanalysts and feminists to support my claims, to show that I was not wrong. I couldn’t stop thinking of the words that were said against my first book. I became self-conscious and scared in my writing. I wanted to prove that my thinking wasn’t unhinged and that I wasn’t alone in my conclusions. My editor saw what was happening and gently suggested that my writing shines when I’m examining my own experiences rather than narrating other’s ideas in my words. I thought about this when reading Parul Sehgal’s review of Jenny Odell’s new book Saving Time:
After “How to Do Nothing” appeared, skeptics complained that it extolled the kind of languorous leisure time that few people were likely to possess. How easy to be present in mountain cabins, to “witness” while spending afternoons in a rose garden, to “prefer not to” during summers off from teaching at Stanford! Some readers groused that her prescriptions were innocent of structural forces or collective action, arguing only for the powers of “solitude, observation, and simple conviviality.” The criticism evidently found its mark: what Odell seems to be trying to outpace in “Saving Time” are those very accusations. The result is a book of hectic history and dutiful structural analysis, every sentence turtled against the arrows of social critique. “The world is ending—but which world?” she writes. “Consider that many worlds have ended, just as many worlds have been born and are about to be born.” Also: “I suggest an adjustment of discretion: experimenting with what looks like mediocrity in some parts of your life. Then you might have a moment to wonder why and to whom it seems mediocre.” The best defense, evidently, is to avoid any offense.
I love Parul Sehgal’s critical thinking and her reviews have played a huge role in my journey of understanding my own ability to think critically and free myself of the notion that somehow I’m not able/allowed to think deeply and independently about the books/films/art I consume. I find her to be a fair critic, but my heart still sank for Odell. I understood very clearly the desire to protect ourselves from criticism, to add caveats. My ‘bad reviews’ (from disgruntled relatives) had a limited audience. Yet it made me take to my bed and I couldn’t function properly for months. I had the solace of knowing deep down that the criticism I was receiving wasn’t fair. But how is one to function in the face of such insightful reading of one’s work?
The fear of our words being misunderstood is great but somehow the ugliness of remaining silent in the face of injustice is worse. Not everyone can withstand being criticised and often it’s this very fear that makes us fall deeper into a false self-narrative. I guess that’s the risk artists take when we put our truth out in the world. We need to be open to the fact that maybe our truth is limited and sometimes it’s an illusion created by our ego. And this is probably what differentiates us from others, this ability to withstand criticism. And probably that’s what makes a great artist — one whose motives remain unchanged by criticism and they are still pursuing their truth. It’s such a pleasure to be a writer, to think deeply about something that bothers or fascinates me. I feel lucky that my life continues to be one where I can write, think and be. I’m living out my deepest desire and it is a lovely thing to reflect on. Criticism now feels like a worthy by product of being able to live with such freedom of thought. And there’s no denying that criticism makes me better at my craft.
On the subject of desire, I spent an evening with Meena Kandasamy’s The Book of Desire and felt so many emotions from one poem to the next. I was especially drawn to the one titled Renouncing Shame. I’m sharing the photos of the poem below.
A lifetime ago I found a collection of love poems in my university library in India. The poems were bound in a red cloth cover. Poems were new to me, and maybe love too. I took it to my grandparents’ home for the weekend and read it by candle light when there was a power cut due to a thunderstorm. I was seventeen or eighteen then. I still remember the feeling of a dam breaking in my mind and flooding it with permission to not feel ashamed for having desires.
My religion guides me, I know my limits and I wish to remain within them. But it was life-changing to understand that so much of what is considered shameful is often based on a made up honour system that is focused on maintaining patriarchal power and nothing at all to do with religion. It’s painful to continue witnessing my religion being used to crush innocent desires of so many young women (and men). And to then watch these people go on to become parents and become the soul crushers of their own children. A devastating inheritance.
On the train home last night I read Dina Nayeri’s beautiful piece on the cultural gulf between herself and her mother. It made me want to cry, it made me gasp for breath, for respite. I’ve always believed that our feminism is only worth feeling proud of when it includes our mothers, when it allows for us to empathise with those who gave us life and those who have the power to hurt us the most. Maybe it’s not always possible to have a relationship, but it should always be possible to empathise. Nayeri’s unflinching truth is healing to read. I’m always grateful for writers who ask uncomfortable questions of themselves. It was also beautiful to see her make the connection between being a daughter and a mother. Which brings me to the epigraph from my current read The Return of Faraz Ali by Amina Ahmad: ‘You were my birth, daughter / And your birth, your daughter will be’. It’s attributed to Pakistani poet Sara Shagufta.
That’s all I’ve got for you today. I hope March is being kind to you.
Zeba