Break Every Rule Page 13

  I write every day—to be well. Have done it now for some time. Revel in it—the solace that comes from making shapes, the joy that comes from high seriousness, the humility I acquire at every turn.

  It was the reach in that room Dr. E., that was so beautiful.

  Is there any way I can ever let you know all that it meant to me?

  How extraordinary to try and write oneself free. To live inside the language. The lifelong motion toward original expression. What an extraordinary way to spend one’s little time here.

  I know I have never been ordinary—not even back then—though I did not realize it of course. As I called to my mother whom I loved so much—Mommy, Mommy, it was as if from a great distance. I was always a little outside. It might have been a clue.

  Human voices—they come, they die away.

  Have I ever thanked him I wonder? I think I have not. My father with his unconditional love, and his unspoken, silent but complete support. My melancholy father, with his ghost trumpet, the only figure of genuine consolation—because he understood what the others could not—in this whole universe.

  A few connections now—more than enough—Helen, my parents, a handful of friends…

  And this. This luminous alphabet.

  And oh how now the syllables move to round and soft, to coo and smooth. To safe. To dream. Look, how it is possible to invent one’s life—on one’s own terms—entirely—almost entirely. And I am happier than I have ever been—seven months pregnant today. How can I describe this state of grace? Having finally moved through another construction, another constraint, as if through water and on to the other side.

  Blue and green and sparkling. This miraculous life.

  It was the reach in that room that was so beautiful.

  Break Every Rule

  REMARKS MADE AT BROWN UNIVERSITY GAY AND LESBIAN CONFERENCE 1994 AND AT OUTWRITE, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, 1998.

  IF WRITING IS LANGUAGE and language is desire and longing and suffering, and it is capable of great passion and also great nuances of passion—the passion of the mind, the passion of the body—and if syntax reflects states of desire, is hope, is love, is sadness, is fury, and if the motions of sentences and paragraphs and chapters are this as well, if the motion of line is about desire and longing and want; then why when we write, when we make shapes on paper, why then does it so often look like the traditional, straight models, why does our longing look for example like John Updike’s longing? Oh not in the specifics—but in the formal assumptions: what a story is, a paragraph, a character, etc. Does form imply a value system? Is it a statement about perception?

  If the creation of literary texts affords a kind of license, is a kind of freedom, dizzying, giddy—then why do we more often than not fall back on the old orthodoxy, the old ways of seeing and perceiving and recording that perception?

  Why do we adopt the conventions of, for lack of a better word, the oppressor?

  Is it because we’ve lost faith in our belief that language is capable of a kind of Utopia, speaking to myriad versions of inner and outer reality?

  Or is it that we on the margins long secretly for nothing more than to be embraced by the mainstream? To become the center?

  Is it that we want the security, the emotional, the financial security that comes with those who tailor their visions or in some way comply with the Agreement.

  If language is desire, if syntax and rhythm and tone and color create worlds of desire, if we see, if we live out on the margin, then how come we so often write between the lines? We who are ostracized, estranged, despised, denied rights of every kind? Why do we write as if we were inside?

  I do not feel in the position to judge or understand the motives of my fellow gay and lesbian writers. I am only here to pose some questions.

  Why does realism equal verity? And whose verity is this? Why does realism equal accessibility? Might there be ways outside the standard models that could afford both reader and writer a few more options? Accessible in whole new ways.

  Would disrupting or upsetting the lexical surfaces, and the deeper structures disrupt other contracts (social, political) we have entered with those who have continually tried to dismiss us?

  If we joyfully violate the language contract, might that not make us braver, stronger, more capable of breaking other oppressive contracts?

  Might our pleasure, our delight, our audacity become irresistible finally?

  Would celebrating through the invention of new kinds of texts—ones that insisted on our own takes of the world, our own visions, our own realities—would this finally convince both us and others that we are autonomous, we are not them, not exactly, but we are nonetheless joyful and free? In short we too are complex human beings and cannot be so simply reduced or read.

  And what if that were reflected in our prose? All the things that matter most.

  If through language, through literature, through what we make we refuse to accept our limitations, if we are wild and unruly and unswerving in our conviction and irreverence, will those who try to contain us get it finally?

  Might the old novel, one day, like the old ways of thinking about gender and race and sexuality, simply appear silly, outdated, quaint?

  Might writing by women, by people of color, by gay men and lesbians be an active refusal of the dominant code, a subversion of meaning as it has been traditionally constructed, for something perhaps more strange, elusive, other?

  Carla Lonzi and Rivolta Femminile from “I Say I”:

  You would like to keep me under your guardianship.

  I distance myself and you do not forgive me.

  You do not know who I am and you make yourself my mediator.

  What I have to say I will say on my own.

  Rupture, Verge, and Precipice Precipice, Verge, and Hurt Not

  Be not afraid. The isle is full of noises,

  Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  YOU ARE AFRAID. You are afraid, as usual, that the novel is dying. You think you know what a novel is: it’s the kind you write. You fear you are dying.

  You wonder where the hero went.

  You wonder how things could have gotten so out of hand.

  You ask where is one sympathetic, believable character?

  You ask where is the plot?

  You wonder where on earth is the conflict? The resolution?

  The dénouement?

  You imagine yourself to be the holder of some last truth. You imagine yourself to be in some sinking, noble, gilt-covered cradle of civilization.

  You romanticize your fin de siècle, imbuing it with meaning, overtones, implications.

  You are still worried about TV.

  You are still worried about the anxiety of influence.

  You say there will be no readers in the future, that there are hardly any readers now. You count your measly 15,000—but you have always underestimated everything.

  You say language will lose its charms, its ability to charm, its power to mesmerize.

  You say the world turns, spins away, or that we turn from it. You’re pretty desolate.

  You mutter a number of the usual things: You say, “…are rust,” “…are void” “…are torn.”

  You think you know what a book is, what reading is, what constitutes a literary experience. In fact you’ve been happy all these years to legislate the literary experience. All too happy to write the rules.

  You think you know what the writer does, what the reader does. You’re pretty smug about it.

  You think you know what the reader wants: a good old-fashioned story.

  You think you know what a woman wants: a good old-fashioned—

  You find me obnoxious, uppity. You try to dismiss me as hysterical or reactionary or out of touch because I won’t enter that cozy little pact with you anymore. Happy little subservient typing “my” novel, the one you’ve been dictating all these years.

  You rely on me to be dependen
t on you for favors, publication, $$$$$$$$, canonization.

  You are afraid. Too smug in your middle ground with your middlebrow. Everything threatens you.

  You say music was better then: the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac. You’re boring me.

  You say hypertext will kill print fiction. You pit one against the other in the most cynical and transparent ways in hopes we’ll tear each other to bits

  while you watch. You like to watch. Hold us all in your gaze.

  Just as you try to pit writing against theory, prose against poetry, film against video, etc., as you try to hold on to your little piece of the disappearing world.

  But I, for one, am on to you. Your taste for blood, your love of competition, your need to feel endangered, beleaguered, superior. Your need to reiterate, to reassert your power, your privilege, because it erodes.

  Let’s face it, you’re panicked.

  You think an essay should have a hypothesis, a conclusion, should argue points. You really do bore me.

  You’d like to put miraculous, glowing glyphs on a screen on one side and modest ink on pretty white paper on the other.

  You set up, over and over, false dichotomies. Easy targets. You reduce almost everything, as I reduce you now. Tell me, how does it feel?

  You’re really worried. You say sex will be virtual. The casting couch, virtual. But you know as well as I do that all the other will continue, you betcha, so why are you so worried?

  You fear your favorite positions are endangered. Will become obsolete.

  You believe you have more to lose than other people in other times.

  You romanticize the good old days—the record skipping those nights long ago while you were making love, while you were having real sex with—

  Hey, was that me? The Rolling Stones crooning: “I see a red door and I want it painted black, painted black, painted black…”

  Want it painted black.

  Or: “Brown Sugar, how come you dance so good, dance so good, dance so good…???”

  You want to conserve everything. You worship false prophets.

  You’re sick over your (dwindling) reputation.

  You’re so cavalier, offering your hand….

  Jenny Holzer: “The future is stupid.”

  I remember the poet-dinosaurs that evening at the dinner table munching on their leafy greens, going extinct even as they spoke, whispering “language poetry” (that was the evil that night), shuddering.

  You fear the electronic ladyland. Want it painted black.

  You’re afraid of junk food. The real junk food and the metaphoric junk food the media feeds you. Want it painted black…

  painted black.

  You fear the stylist (as you have defined style) will perish.

  You consider certain art forms to be debased and believe that in the future all true artists will disappear. Why do you believe other forms to be inferior to your own?

  You consider certain ways of thinking about literature to be debased. You can’t decide whether they’re too rigorous or too reckless, or both.

  Edmund Wilson, Alfred Kazin, Harold Bloom et fils—make my day.

  You think me unladylike. Hysterical. Maybe crazy. Unreadable. You put me in your unreadable box where I am safe. Where I am quiet. More ladylike.

  In your disdainful box labeled “experimental.” Labeled “do not open.” Labeled “do not review.”

  You see a red door and you want it painted black.

  No more monoliths.

  You who said “hegemony” and “domino theory” and “peace with honor.”

  All the deaths for nothing. All the dark roads you’ve led us down. No more.

  The future: where we’re braced always for the next unspeakably monstrous way to die—or to kill.

  All the dark deserted roads you’ve led me down, grabbing at my breasts, tearing at my shirt, my waistband: first date.

  Second date: this is how to write a book.

  Third date: good girl! Let’s publish it!!!

  Brown Sugar, how come you dance so good?

  Fourth date: will you marry me?

  You fear the future, OK. You fear anything new. Anything that disrupts your sense of security and self. Everything threatens you.

  Where is the change over the course of the thing in the hero?

  Where is the hero?

  Where’s the conflict? Where the hell is the dénouement?

  I see your point. But haven’t you asked us to write your fiction for just a little too long now? Couldn’t we—

  Couldn’t we, maybe just possibly, coexist?

  Why does my existence threaten yours?

  It’s been too long now that you’ve asked me to be you. Insisted I be you.

  Lighten up. Don’t be so afraid. Put up your hand. Say: Bunny, Alfred, Harold, bye-bye.

  You fear. You fear the television. You loathe and adore the television.

  You feel numbed and buzzed by so much electronics. Numbed and buzzed by so much future.

  I’m getting a little tired of this “you” and “I.” Still I am learning a few new things about you—and about me.

  The future of literature. The death of the novel. You love for some reason, the large, glitzy questions and statements. But the question bores me—and all the usual ways of thinking and speaking and writing anymore.

  I’m sorry you are so afraid. You want it to be something like the movie 2001, the future. You want it to be ludicrous, the future, easily dismissable. Like me. If only I didn’t dance so good. You demand to know, How come

  you dance so good, dance so good, dance so good…???

  You can’t see a place for yourself in it and it frightens you. You dig in your heels as a result. Spend all your considerable intelligence and energy conserving, preserving, holding court, posturing, tenaciously holding on, now as you munch your last green leaves, yum.

  Where is the resolution of the conflict? Where the fuck is the conflict?

  What if a book might also include, might also be, the tentative, the hesitant, the doubt you most fear and despise?

  Lyn Hejinian: “Closure is misanthropic.”

  Fear of growth, fear of change, fear of breaking one’s own mold, fear of disturbing the product, fear of ridicule, fear of indifference, fear of failure, fear of invisibility, fear of, fear of, fear of….

  You say that language will cease to be respected, will no longer move us. But we’re already becoming numb thanks to what you are afraid to give up. What you flood the market with.

  Soyinka: “I am concerned about preserving a special level of communication, a level very different from Oprah Winfrey.”

  Wish: that all talk-show fiction be put to bed now. Its fake psychologies, its “realisms.” Its pathetic 2 plus 2.

  Language of course has an enormous capacity to lie, to make false shapes, to be glib, to make common widgets, three parts this and two parts that.

  Wish: that all the fiction of lies be put to bed.

  That the dishonesty running rampant through much contemporary fiction be recognized as such.

  What deal must I strike in order to be published by you? What pose, bargain, stance, is it I must strike with you now?

  What mold do you make of me to pour your elixir, your fluid into, and then reward?

  The bunny mold? The kitten mold? The flower mold? The damaged flower mold? Pregnant at twelve, illiterate, but with a twist? The gay mold? The white trash mold? The battered child mold? The bad girl mold?

  Paint me black. Paint me Latina. Paint me Native American. Paint me Asian and then pour me into your mold. Use me. Co-opt me. Market me.

  Debase me and in the future I shall rise anew out of your cynicism and scorn—smiling, lovely, free.

  I know a place that burns brighter than a million suns.

  Wish list: that the business people who have taken over the publishing houses will focus themselves elsewhere and leave the arts alone again.

  Not to own or colonize o
r dominate….

  Despite all efforts to tame it, manage it, control it, outsmart it, language resists your best efforts; language is still a bunch of sturdy, glittering charms in the astonished hand.

  A Utopia of possibility. A Utopia of choice.

  And I am huddled around the fire of the alphabet, still.

  Even though you say one word next to the other will cease to be cherished.

  You say rap music is poison. Hypertext is poison.

  Even though you call me sentimental—on the one hand girly-girl, on the other hand loud-mouthed bitch, on the one hand interesting and talented writer, on the other hand utterly out-of-touch idealist, romantic—it is you who wants the nineteenth century back again. When things were dandy for you, swell. You want to believe in the old coordinates, the old shapes. To believe in whatever it was you believed in then. You were one of the guys who dictated the story, sure, I remember. Who made up the story and now go teaching it all over the place. But even then, when you sat around making it up, even then, my friend, it had nothing to do with me. With my world. With what I saw and how I felt.

  Wish: that all graduate writing programs with their terminal degrees stop promoting such tiresome recipes for success or go (financially) bankrupt.

  Your false Crescendos. Climaxes. False for me, at any rate.

  The future is all the people who’ve ever been kept out, singing.

  In the future everything will be allowed.

  So the future is for you, too. Not to worry. But not only for you.

  For you, but not only for you.

  Not to discard the canon, but to enlarge it.

  No more monoliths. No more Mick Jaggers. No more O. J. Simpsons. No more James Joyces. No more heroes.

  Everything threatens you. Hacks, hackers, slacks, slackers, cybergirls with their cybercurls and wiles, poets of every sort. Rock bands with girls.

  You believe your (disappearing) time represents some last golden age of enlightenment, to be guarded, protected, reproduced against the approaching mindlessness, depravity, electronic states of America.

  But maybe as you become more and more threatened, you’ll take a few more risks yourself. Who knows? Anything is possible in the future.