Through the Light Loupe, Part II

One of my creative nonfiction peers writes a lot about her family. I really admire that–I can't imagine writing about people who will almost certainly read what you've said about them. Can you even imagine David Sedaris' family, wondering and worrying that that one embarrassing thing they said at Thanksgiving dinner will find its way to the best seller list? My writing has so far been exclusively about my own experiences, so if any other characters figure in, it's only for narrative purposes. Only as needed to tell the story.

I shared an essay from my thesis (part of which is excerpted in Part I of this post) with two former co-workers today. One of them had condition-reported with me: she was one of the people I switched places with over and over, sharing the duties of measuring paint loss and recording the locations. She reminded me of the stories we found on the backs of the paintings. Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz's signatures. Bits and pieces of paper with records of who had purchased the painting. Nearly a century of history scrawled in black crayon on the reverse side of red poppies and white jimson weed.

The other co-worker couldn't believe I had lived through this experience and not shared it. It's a good question: Why didn't I drag everybody I knew into the gallery and say, "Look! That's where the hair from Georgia O'Keeffe's siamese cat is! That's where black paint is splattered over bright yellow petals!"? How could I have kept these secrets until now?

I think part of the answer lies in the process of writing. Capturing something on paper changes it: now it has to be deliberate and meaningful. It has to tell a story. When I started writing this essay for my thesis, I had to recall those details of condition-reporting, mull them over, run my fingers over them, pick them up and roll them around in my palms, smell them, re-live them in every way. And then I had to make a story out of them.

Part of the magic of condition-reporting hit me seven months after the fact, when I came across one of those closely-examined paintings in the form of a wall calendar. That's when I realized just how powerful the condition-reporting had been. That's when the details came rushing back, when my palms sweated and my fingers quivered with the memories of those paintings.

Something we've been talking about in my Time & Narrative class is the difference between lived time and recorded time, and I think that distinction is pertinent here. It's almost too obvious: when we record an event, it is no longer the lived moment. It's why we write. It's why we make films. It's why we make art. Narrating the event lets us roll those ideas and memories around in our brains. It lets us find beauty in the mundane, and a story in the everyday.

But I'm fascinated with how both co-workers inserted themselves into my story. I wonder if I somehow wrote them in by omission, that by focusing on how the events affected me, I also indirectly asked how the events affected them, since we all worked together while the condition-reporting was taking place. I wonder if David Sedaris' family does something similar. I wonder if his essays make his family find stories in the everyday. I wonder if they think, "Why didn't he tell me that then?" But maybe it's just this writing thing that gives the mundane a story to tell.

* * *

current book: May 2006 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. Finally! A (brief) break from Ricoeur!
current music: Dengue Fever, Escape from Dragon House
current socks: purple and polka-dotted

south of the loop

Through the Light Loupe, Part II