I’m happy to see a buzz-resurgence in Wallace’s “This is Water” speech with the new, nine-minute short film adaptation. It’s not to my taste personally, but I’m in favor of anything that gets people interested in him. Combine that with Commencement Address season, and people are speaking Wallace-ese. Cool. I love it while it lasts.
As much as I admire “This is Water,” there’s one point that I disagree with, and it’s a big one. We need to consider the danger of authenticity. Here’s a story that explains why.
When I was a little boy, I often played in my father’s back yard. One sunny summer day, between digging up pieces of quartz, bejeweling my leg with another rubied, over-scratched mosquito bite, and stomping the brains out of a slug with the foot of my batman action figure, a man on a motorcycle drove by.
The man didn’t wear a helmet. Matted, shoulder-length hair whipped behind him. His sleeve-less shirt, ripped jeans, and mud-caked boots left a cloud of dust in their wake. The motorcycle looked like it had been rusting in someone’s barn for a decade. This or some other God-forsaken song blasted from his radio.
In other words, to a little boy, this guy looked like just about the coolest thing ever.
I ran up to the edge of the property, right against the road.
“Nice Ride!” I yelled through buck teeth. I raised a very scrawny thumbs-up.
You could trace the path through my adolescent skull and into the ground behind me through which his glare passed like a sniper bullet. This was accompanied by the most vigorous extension of the middle finger of which I have ever been on the receiving end, the kind of flick of the wrist and forearm one uses when unfurling a clean tablecloth.
I was stunned. I felt hollow, and then the hollowness filled with hurt and fear. I ran into the house, certain that the man was going to circle around and pull into the driveway; he would play the role of my batman action figure. I would be the slug.
To this day, tablecloths freak me out a little bit.
You see, Wallace is right that authenticity (defined here as the ability to the see the world without you as the center of it) is very difficult to achieve. To decoct and purify your intention and outlook requires rigorous reflection, meditation, and effort. But, the point he doesn’t make is that perhaps it’s best to keep it to ourselves. Acting on real authenticity — i.e., construing the man on the motorcycle as good and the subsequent compulsion to compliment him — can have disastrous consequences. You never know what’s on the receiving end.
Whereas Flannery O’Connor might peg this phenomenon on sin (which I’m not entirely opposed to), it seems more like a problem with the way language works. The motorcyclist misconstrued my gesture as twerpy, little-kid sarcasm. Pure intention is linguistically extremely volatile; it’s the anti-matter of language — reacting to everything because it’s so difficult to conceive. More often than not, I find that the response to a completely unexpected, selfless act of kindness is violence.
Authenticity is a double-bind: announcing it drains it of it’s power and introduces the possibility of impure, narcissistic intention. Unannounced, the effect is grotesque and explosive. What are we to do?
To continue the chemistry metaphor: a gesture of authenticity strikes me like throwing sodium into water:Na + H2O
The collision of pure intention and reality is one theme I find myself writing about again and again. It’s my response to Wallace. If you’d be interested in reading another story about it, I have a new story out in very cool anthology entitled Spiritual Awakenings. It’s the only religious-themed anthology I’ve encountered that isn’t an inspirational emetic. There are several passages of Christian horror and humor.
Apart from my work with the Atlanta Opera, it marks the first time that I am receiving payment for my writing. So, in celebration, if you buy a copy, it would truly make me feel like this passion I’ve spent the majority of mornings on for the past seven years is actually worth something.
If you buy a copy I will inscribe it personally with a limerick that expresses my gratitude. Send it to me. I’ll reimburse you for the shipping.
The book is available on Amazon and Amazon UK.