Incredulous D: I, too, dislike it.

I come home with plans. Not in any particular order or priority, but plans nonetheless: finish books, write out reviews that have been stewing for weeks, copy out the pages of Jillian Weise’s poetry by hand to commit them to body-memory. Clean up my itunes library, process my laundry, write the emails that need writing, fuck, that I want to write because I owe them to people and miss my friends and mentors and don’t want to let people slip out of my life because of my own reckless, selfish negligence anymore.

None of it happens. I barely made it out of the office, spent ten minutes with my head on my desk contemplating sleeping there, the second time I’ve had this debate with myself this week. Then I coddle myself, swaddle myself, listen to indulgent music on the train and have someone deliver dinner because I should have one full meal today. I sit in bed and kill hours reading what other people are thinking about art and politics and psychology. I read six months of archives of a stranger’s blog, pick up my guitar for ten minutes and put it back down.

Yesterday I read this essay T.S. Eliot wrote about Hamlet, which basically says that Hamlet, and by extension any critical mind interested in Hamlet, is a pathetic half-breed artist who, despite his innate creative drive and sensibilities, is unable to create, and therefore becomes a critic of art. The worst kind of critic, the kind whose analysis always carries a biting resentment of the artist’s ability to produce. The critic who attempts to stifle confidence and the creative urge in others because he himself feels so helplessly stymied.

I don’t want to be that critic.

What I’m really trying to say, I think, is that my skin is far too thin for all this.

I come back again and again to the Maryanne Moore poem that is the title of my blog, the first line of which I have been contemplating as a tattoo since I discovered it as the guiding principle of my interaction with the world and its art and its people. “Poetry: I, too, dislike it.” Moore tackles the thing she loves most, the thing to which she has devoted her life, by systematically dissecting it, pointing out its every flaw and misuse and potential for harm, by “reading it with perfect contempt for it.” And by the end of the poem, she has justified for herself how that thing, poetry, can still be important, can still be her focus, can still be loved (“above insolence and triviality and can present for inspection, ‘imaginary gardens with real toads in them,’ shall we have it.”).

I don’t know how else to approach the world except from this same position: the things that delight me are flawed and likely unimportant in the grand scheme, and I am obligated to acknowledge that, and grapple with it, and ultimately to justify my delight and devotion by discovering in them some measure of significance.

And I don’t know how to do that without starting every conversation, internal or external, from a strong point of view. It’s like the difference between trying to write by staring at a black screen, and sitting down to revise a draft or beginning with a prompt or idea. How can you create anything without a structure to push against? This is, of course, why I have always been drawn to poetry and theater. In poetry you have rhyme or meter or tradition as structure, and creativity comes in finding the way to say what must be said within or in spite of the set form. In theater you have a script that is a static structure that must be made to breathe, again, in spite of itself. I need that same structure in everything, in opinion and argument and conversation and relationships. I need to start from someplace solid so I can push against something, so the conversation or relationship or thought can test the boundaries of the initial structure and accept them or revise them or live in them more fully and responsibly and actively.

I know that this way of being gets me into trouble. I know that I come off as aloof and argumentative and contrary. I know that this is because I always begin working from an assertion or conviction, even when I don’t have the facts to back it up. Because defending and refining the conviction, and understanding its opposition, allows the facts in question to come to light in their most genuine form. I know that this method only works when all parties begin in good faith, with trust and respect; that contrarianism without love is just nastiness; that you can't have tough love without demonstrated love.

I don’t believe truths throw themselves at you: I believe one must earn them, must fight for the right to know them. I don’t know how else to learn or how else to relate, and frankly I don’t want to. Happiness and comfort are false idols. I am interested in struggle and epiphany. I crave hard-earned, righteous, fleeting moments of ecstasy before returning to the trenches. I want to be pushed and to be comforted, but not in equal measure.

That's why I want those words inked in my flesh:

I, too, dislike it.

Because I am tired of being told that analysis and criticism are antithetical to creation: they are the precursor to creation. Because I am tired of being called negative: I am struggling to justify my joy and understand that which is beautiful. Because I am tired of the assertion that a real artist is unequivocal about hir craft: I am wrestling with the significance of my art in a world of immense suffering which art will not alleviate. Because I am tired of hearing that my sadness is unproductive: it is the thing that spurs me to action against injustice and creation against the void. Because I am tired of separating art from politics: every moment we devote to a task and every word we speak is a political choice, and I want to stand behind mine.

I have been struggling to find myself and define myself since leaving school, and especially since losing the relationship that was standing in for the structure of my life. These fragments I have shored against my ruins, out of which I must attempt to construct a self and a philosophy on art and love and righteousness and action. “I, too, dislike it.” That's what I've got. Nothing is sacred and everything we love must be justified and loved despite its flaws. I don't want that understanding pulled out from under me ever again. I want the words etched in my skin to make it thick and make me strong.

I, too, dislike it.

“The same thing may be said for all of us, that we do not admire what we cannot understand.”
We are obligated to try and understand.

“If you demand on the one hand, the raw material of poetry in all its rawness and that which is on the other hand genuine, you are interested in poetry.”
Words matter, insofar as they are offered in the spirit of genuine communication. I want access to every thought and feeling and argument in the world, and thus I must read poetry with a perfect contempt for it. I must split the baby, destroy everything I love and believe, in order to reconstruct a fuller truth.

I, too, dislike it.

Here are some things I believe. This is the structure from which I can begin to create. I would love to trouble this structure with you.

I believe in the value of contradiction and paradox but not ambiguity.
I believe in advocacy but never philanthropy, even when both mean fundraising.
I believe in kindness but inherently distrust anyone who is “nice.”
I believe in the concept of responsibility over the concept of rights.
I believe in radical solitude, but also in our nearly infinite capacity for empathy.
I do not believe in causation. I believe that faith in causation is callous disregard for human suffering, and a denial of one's own privilege.
I believe in absolute beauty but not absolute truth.
I believe in forgiveness but not absolution.
I believe in unconditional love, but will not practice unconditional support.
I believe we are responsible not only for our intentions, but also for the unintended outcomes of our actions.
I believe that individual accountability and group responsibility are not mutually exclusive.
I do not believe in conditional apologies.
I believe that accepting love and help can be a radical act.
I believe in the power of collaboration and mutual respect, but understand hierarchy to be a temporarily necessary evil.
I believe in epiphany and the power of the subconscious, so long as it has been fed proper research and compassion. This includes an immense faith in the nap and the long walk.