Monthly Archives: November 2009
Our Happy Place: Is It Thanksgiving?
'Wisdom' and Other Words To Live By From a Wet-Behind-The Ears Oracle
Has anyone asked you lately if you were happy? Really happy? How did you respond?
When you talk—or think—about being happy, is it in present or future tense? Maybe when your dream lover shows up? Or when you get that big career break? Or when your house sells . . . or you leave for vacation or your complexion clears up . . .
Does happiness always feel like something that hasn’t happened yet? A place you haven’t been yet? A person you haven’t met yet?
During the past week or so, the week that we specifically set aside each for ‘thanksgiving,’ I wondered to The Shower Team about the nature of true happiness–that ultimate reason for giving thanks–and more specifically, the timing of it . . . why does it so often feel like something somewhere up ahead rather than something right in front of me? Is it possible to reach out and touch it now—and to hang on?
The reason that happiness so often feels remote or removed from you, the reason that it often feels like something‘out there rather than something in your here and now is because of the way you tend to think about it and to describe it to yourself and others.
You usually describe happiness as a noun when in fact it is a verb. You think of happiness as a person, place, or thing . . . as yet unattained, and you hold yourself back from the fullest possible joy available to you, believing that your happiness must be earned or achieved or perhaps, granted as a favor by some benevolent giver of random happy-nesses.
You think of happiness not as the constantly flowing stream of well being that it is, the ever-present joyful current of life that you are living or even as the ever-expanding, joyful vortex of your evolving desires . . . but rather as this stop or that stop along the way, as this piece of treasure or that interesting character that you might find . . .. It is as if you were deciding to take an exhilarating ride down a scenic river . . . but then concluding that the real joy is getting to the end and pulling your boat out of the water rather than savoring the wild time that you’re having . . . or purchasing a ticket to an amusement park full of stimulating experiences and deciding that happiness is being done with it all and calling it a night and heading home rather than throwing your hands up in the air and screaming at the top of your lungs as you experience each available ecstatic moment with each available attraction.
The point is that you get your ideas about happiness rather twisted up to the point where you really believe that your joy comes when what you want is in your hands rather than in the journey toward it. You make happiness—not unlike love—conditional and contingent. You essentially say, “Happy means having this” . . . or “Happy means having that” . . . . and then because deep down you know that’s not it . . . you are constantly coming up with something else to have that you think happiness will result from–and feeling unhappy while you wait for it.
It is not the wanting of more that is screwy here. Rather, it is your mistaking the having of wherever ‘it’ is for happiness when heppiness is so not the ‘thing’ you want . . . but rather the joy that is always calling to you and always taking you in the direction of whatever you want, when you let it. Happiness is the choice to see what is perfect right where you are. Happiness is the choice to appreciate what’s in front of you . . . AND what is ahead of you . . . AND what’s behind you . . . Happiness is the decision to ‘be’ happy no matter where you are or what you want that you don’t have yet . . . simply because it feels so much better to feel good than it does to feel sad or lost of afraid or angry.
Happiness is you choosing to see that well being is the natural state of things. Happiness is you recognizing that nothing you want that hasn’t come yet is an excuse for you to feel bad. Happiness is you coming to the conclusion that you get to decide how you feel in any and every moment of your experience . . . and that no as yet unfulfilled desire . . . no as yet unobtained goal . . . no as yet unmet lover . . . no as yet unexperienced level of satisfaction or wellness or abundance . . . is a good enough reason for you to stand there in you’re here and now, choosing to feel unhappy.
Happy is the act of choosing to see who You really are. Happy is the act of deciding that you will not use any of the excuses available to you to hold yourself back from the stream of well being that is always flowing all around you.
Happy is the act of choosing to see that there is no destination still in front of you that is sufficient cause for you to be miserable where you are . . . it is the process of allowing yourself to feel good along the way . . . to truly, genuinely, savor the ride you’re having . . . to understand that where you’re going or what you’re hoping for or who you’re waiting for is never really the point . . . but rather it is the exhilaration, the stimulation, the satisfaction, the sheer pleasure of being on your way that is your happiness.
And that, dear ones, is never more than a choice away. Never remote or unavailable. Never off limits to you. You can decide that happiness is in the hands of some prince who hasn’t come yet or some ship that hasn’t come in yet or that it is some trophy you haven’t worked hard enough to earn yet. But why? Why decide to postpone what is so there for you now? Why wait to enjoy the ride? Why keep putting off the truly limitless joys that are right in front of you?
Your happy place is not a place. It’s a simple choice to be made over and over . . . anytime, anywhere, with anyone, one happier or more pleasing thought at a time . . . When you really let yourself realize and believe that, what a truly happy traveler you will be.
Maybe there’s an analogy worth noting here, on the heels of a holiday we call “Thanksgiving,” as though thanks giving was in fact a noun, some point on the calendar, an occasion rather than a choice or an act.
Old habits often die hard, and I know my habit is to believe that things have to be different if I’m going to feel better. But what if happiness–and thanksgiving–really have nothing to do with anything being different? What if it really is just a choice I can make. How powerful a magician would that make me—able to turn any moment into at least a slightly happier one–able to transform any moment into thanksgiving?
Musings On Inspiration: Writer Victor J. Banis
'Wisdom' and Other Words To Live By From a Wet-Behind-The Ears Oracle
An idea is salvation by imagination.
—Frank Lloyd Wright
I am continuing my series of interviews with writers and other artists about the inspiration for their work and about the subject of inspiration in general. The purpose of these interviews is to dialogue either seriously or humorously about the mystery and magic of inspiration—and to offer any insights that would be useful to others trying to find or better employ their own muse or shift into a more productive creative space.
This week’s interview features long time gay rights activist Victor J. Banis, critically acclaimed author (“the master’s touch in storytelling” Publishers Weekly) of more than 160 published works in a career spanning nearly 50 years. Of particular pride is his contribution to THE GOLDEN AGE OF GAY 
FICTION from MLR Press, 2009. “It was the first great explosion of gay writing in history. These books were about gay characters. They were written mostly by gay writers. Above all they were for gay readers. And, as this entertaining chronicle of the emergence of gay literary pride makes clear, it was a revolutioln that occurred several years before Stonewall.”
Learn more about Victor by visiting his website.
TSC: How do you define ‘inspiration’ for yourself?
VB: I think inspiration is that divine voice that whispers in your ear, the idea that seems to pop into your head out of nowhere. It is definitely not planned by you or governed by you or controlled by you. Fitzgerald – or no, maybe it was Bud Schulburg in The Disenchanted – talked about the blue sky hook that just descends from above and you can hang everything on it.
TSC: What do you think first inspired you to become a writer/artist? Can you identify a moment or experience or influence that turned you in that direction?
VB: I started reading very young and telling stories to younger kids. Just gravitated to writing them down. I had a crush on a school mate (girl) and she started reading the Nancy Drew books when we were about 12 or 13, so I did too, and then I started writing these Nancy Drew-ish mysteries with her as the hero, but I was already into writing by that time.
TSC: Describe the ‘inspired’ you. What does he/she look or feel like?
VB: He’s a mess. Sometimes the ideas ( or, more likely, the characters) take me over and I am like a zombie, possessed. I talk to other people in monosyllables, if at all, I stumble around in a fog, but this is the extreme. Most of the time, I get the idea, and then the rest of it is just craftwork, putting it together. Or sometimes it alternates, I just start putting a story together and then the ideas flow. But for the most part, I wait for the characters to decide they’re ready to start telling me their story.
TSC: What is your most ‘inspired’ work? Why?
VB: That’s kind of like, “What’s your best work?” Not sure I know. Lola Dances started with pure inspiration, the transformation scene that is really the heart of the book. Longhorns, I wrote the whole book in two weeks in that fog state, so I hardly had to think about it at all until I went back to do rewrite. I pretty much wait with every book until things start to take some kind of shape in my head.
TSC: Who or what or where is your muse? How do you invoke your muse? Rituals?
VB: My muse is called Snotto, the Muse of Sleaze. She’s often left out of the tonier books,and she is a bitch. I don’t invoke her, she won’t let me alone, except when I want her help, and then she doesn’t know I exist (I had a boyfriend just like this, too.) This is one of the great, painful burdens I have borne throughout my life and one for which a think I deserve a great deal of sympathy.
TSC: What is your take on the notion that writing—or any creative work—is more about perspiration than inspiration?
VB: Inspiration is like enlightenment, you can’t work and achieve enlightenment, but you prepare yourself for it so you are ready when it comes. Same with inspiration, but inspiration is just the vision in your head. The perspiration comes into putting that vision down in words. Something always gets lost in the translation, what you end up with is never as good as what started out in your mind. That was divine, what you produce is man made. If one could only cross that gulf. That’s why I say only the mediocre artist is always at his best, he has no real concept of anything better than what he does (which can be quite wonderful) but the true artist knows there is more, he is always trying to reach a little farther, jump a little higher, spin a little faster, that’s why we fall on our faces from time to time, but failure in trying to reach beyond oneself is noble failure. There is no shame in it, and sometimes, just every rare once in a while, we make it just an inch or so past what we’ve done before.
TSC: What do you think is the most common—or problematic—myth or misconception about inspiration?
VB: That you have to have it for every day’s writing work. No, that is where the craft comes into it. Some days you are inspired and the words just flow, and they’re just as smooth and silky as a foie gras. Some days you have to get hold of them and drag them out like links of sausage in an old Warner Brothers cartoon. The funny thing is, once you’ve got some experience under your belt, you find that the products of the two different days aren’t very much different. The foie gras and the sausage are indistinguishable. This is why you write every day at more or less the same time. It’s like saying to your muse, “Snotto, this is when I am at home and ready for you, just in case you’d like to stop by for a visit.” You can take your chances and write any old time and hope she catches you at home when she comes to call, or you can make it easy for her by setting up a schedule, so she’ll know when she can find you.
TSC: What is the most ‘inspired’ work you’ve come across so far?
VB: I am in awe of other writers. I am like a gushing school girl. I always think, “How did they do that?” Some of them… well, like Shirley Jackson, what a demonic mind she must have had, she saw evil in the most astonishing places. If you read her stuff, you’ll find these funny stories about life with her children, and then you’ll run across practically the same story except it’s told in this chillingly horrific way, and you start looking at the day to day events of your own life differently. And, really, that is what the artist does, we see what other people just look at. A good writer becomes something scary, you have to conceal it from other people or they’ll wig out. I read minds. I know what people are thinking better sometimes than they do. That’s why my writing is so character oriented, because I read people. I think a lot of people who got burned at the stake as witches would probably have been first rate writers. I am sure there are many people in my life who would like to have started a good bonfire.
TSC: List a few tools or practices or methods that work reliably for you to get you in the mood to create. How do you shift into your ‘zone’?
VB: I don’t know that I can ever control it quite like that. I try to maintain a routine. I write early in the morning, after I have coffee, do the crossword, etc. And sometimes I lie awake at night and see scenes or hear dialogue. But I think making a routine for yourself is the most important thing. Also, sometimes I meditate. And if I get stuck on something, I go for a walk. Plus, for me, it’s important to be alone. I’m listening for that tiny, interior voice and I will miss if it someone else is chattering next to me. The best companion for a writer is one who doesn’t talk. A dog is ideal. Every writer should marry a dog.
TSC: What are you currently feeling inspired to do?
VB: I am trying to get a new novel started, but Snotto is having a mood. I’ve thought about one of the ears, but I am such a puss when it comes to blood. Especially mine.
