Manifesto and Magic

 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.