WRITING
AND THE LONG CON 2
“It
is not down in any map; true places never are.” Herman Melville
Toward the end of the interview quoted
in the previous article, David Mamet invokes magic as resembling a Con. The
distinction is important. No one past the age of eight believes magic is real,
that the beautiful Vanda has really been sawed in half; we enter the realm of
the magic aware of this. The realm of the magic is a space created by both the
magician and the audience, a space in which they choose to believe together.
Rather than the simple exchange of the Short Con and the more complex
manipulations of the Long Con, magic is a Consensual Con.
Magic is based in accepted untruth. The
magician supplies the tricks, the moments in which the audience can believe in
the lie, the audience supplies their attention and acceptance, though this
attention may be split between the excitement of the show and the wonder at how
it's done. The Consensual Con requires a tacit agreement between all parties
and places the audience on more or less equal footing, not as passive observers
but as participants, each bringing their own qualities to the performance. The
audience ‘performs’ by projecting a part of
themselves into the show, by imagining what they cannot see.
Our mission, as writers, is to draw our
reader into the work while leaving enough room that they might imagine
themselves into it. We want to draw the reader into our lie then convince them
it's not a lie, at least until the moment just after the piece has ended. As I
said in the earlier piece, a reader may be engaged by the author's
vulnerability, the 'confidence' the author gives to the reader by way of
initiating the relationship.
Commitment is another quality that
engages the reader. How committed am I to exploring the world and the
characters I've created, how much of myself, in some form or another, informs
the text. A total commitment in the face of risk engages us: think of the
magician bound and suspended as the tank rapidly fills with water. The
commitment and risk are obvious; they draw us in even as we may be horrified.
Yet I, as the writer, can't commit to
what I haven't considered; I can't really commit until I understand what's at
risk. And something must be at risk. My vulnerabilities are essential to
connecting to the reader.
Writing is a way of identifying and
exploring what my fears and vulnerabilities are, as well as my joys. I might
feel these are self-evident even to myself but, if I go deeper I'm always
surprised. Writing helps sort my false vulnerabilities from the true. And these
vulnerabilities aren't only what I see as my weaknesses, but my questions too,
the things that haunt and confuse me.
Writing is an exploration of personal
vulnerability, whether experiential (that is, whether I’m writing about something that
happened to me or someone near me) or technical (that is, my insecurities about
the writing itself, whether I feel I’m good enough, or can
accomplish the task I’ve set), or both.
A recurring step in the process of
writing can be a manifesto. A manifesto is a proud declaration of
vulnerability; it is a tool of self-exploration and self discovery. It embraces
our weaknesses, beginning as it does with questions: what do I want to explore
and how. What are the parts of me I'm putting into play, how much am I at risk?
A manifesto is the ticket and not the map. And, it's not an artist statement.
Artist Statements were imported from
the business world, from the Mission Statement which came into vogue years ago
and remains the consultants’ favorite prod. Artist Statements
are about selling, usually coming across as answers to a number of Frequently
Asked Questions, except with longer words, obscurantist language, and a touch
of personal trauma.
A manifesto, on the other hand, arises
from a different, older era in which art, in and of itself, was seen as being
as vital and necessary as air or water. A manifesto is about staking out my own
ground, declaring at the top of my lungs what I want to believe, what I want to
achieve: what it is I want to manifest. Every manifesto is personal and
inherently dramatic. It’s Martin
Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the church door or Jimi Hendrix setting
fire to his guitar. In its best iteration, a manifesto pushes me toward the
boundaries of what I think I know.
There's a Mullah Nasrudin story related
by Idries Shah:
A neighbor of the
Mullah notices him in the street on his hands and knees beneath the
streetlight. He leaves his house to check on the Mullah, who's combing the dust
and bushes in the glow of the light.
"Mullah, what are you
doing?" he asks.
"I'm searching for my
key."
The neighbor, being
a decent sort, gets down on his hands and knees to help the Mullah. They search
for over an hour, until both are covered in dust, their arms scratched by the
shrubs.
Finally, the neighbor asks the
Mullah, "Are you sure this is where you lost it?"
"Oh, I lost it down the road a
way," the Mullah replies, "but the light is better here.”
I would naturally prefer to search
where there is more light but that is not usually where my work leads me..
Usually it takes me to the very edge of what I think I know.
I find what I can commit to in the
doing. One of the things I'm interested in exploring in my writing is our ideas
and experiences of intimacy: how we find it, how we recognize it, how we back
away. This wasn't a place I started but a place I came to in the writing. One
of my overarching themes.
I don't feel I have any special insight
in this area. I don’t know any more about it than anyone else. It wasn’t
something I chose, rather it was something I found myself drawn to. Given a
choice, I could have found a place with more light to look for my key.
But I can only truly commit to
something I honestly and deeply believe. With the Short Con and the Long Cone,
I operate from a level of more or less complex falsehoods which require my
skill at ‘selling’ the lie; the level to which I
can sell is the level to which I am successful.
In The Consensual Con, I ask readers to
enter a space with me, a realm defined by curiousity, commitment, and a sense
of discovery. Generally, that reader can only be engaged and vulnerable to the
degree I am.
One of my longest-standing manifestos
is this: I want to make something beautiful that works. There are days when I
have absolutely no idea what that means and others when it is simple, clear and
deep, and it’s all I need.
