When you stop believing

Tonight I went to an event at The Strand Bookstore where author Brandon Taylor was in conversation with Ethan Hawke. The focus was Flannery O’Connor and Ethan’s new movie about her life and work.

I don’t really know where to begin except maybe that I’ve been in a bit of a stupor since walking out of there, down the back ways of the closed bookstore, in the short walk in the rain Union Square station, the transfer at Herald Square and up the four flights of stairs to my apartment where I immediately opened my laptop and started writing here.

First, Ethan Hawke—it was exciting to see him in person to be a few feet away from someone who has served as a regular and very powerful source of inspiration to me since I was a child. When I first saw Dead Poets Society, it affected me in a way nothing else has, even Contact which everyone knows is my favorite movie. Only, they both have something very much in common—courage. Both are about non-conformists, people who take a different path and do so without pause because there is such passion and love and determination in their hearts that there could not possibly be any other path for them, than this one.

A lot was discussed tonight, but it was one of those conversations that makes me think the universe is trying to tell me something. And since we are all the universe and I am the universe it’s clearly me trying to tell myself something which I’ve been trying not to hear.

They both talked a lot about Flannery O’Connors determination. I believe Ethan used the phrase, “extreme self belief.”

Flannery was torn apart by critics in her short life, was stricken with lupus and serious illness and didn’t let any of it stop her. Sure there are a lot of stories like this, the protagonist who’s told they are incapable, etc etc and they push against the odds to win the day. But that’s not what this was, this was a woman living in the American South, a Catholic who was always exploring her relationship to her maker and her relationship to other human beings living in the same world who behaved cruelly to each other. It was simply the words, “extreme self belief". And none of you are in my head (thank god for both of us) and aren’t bearing witness to my life every day, also yay, so there’s no way you could know that the topic of self belief was talked about on a walk in Brooklyn with my friend Adam this past Sunday. Or that it’s shown up in themed quotes on Instagram or how my friends regularly say to me, “you just need to believe in yourself.” And yes, sure, they are right. So is Ethan Hawke. But what happens when you stop believing?

I don’t know that I have, maybe a little bit, but it’s not the reason you might think. You know that feeling of when you know you can’t have something maybe right now, maybe ever, and so instead of wanting it more, which is a very human reaction, you want it less. Or rather, you slowly convince yourself every single day, like a prayer, that you don’t want it, that you don’t need it, don’t yearn for it in every single cell, in every waking moment and that you don’t want it so much that you dream about it almost every night. What happens then?

Well what happened for me is I went to see this talk and started crying on the subway, which for anyone living in New York this is not a sight, everyone cries on the train and everyone ignores the crying because somehow or another, we all get it.

Extreme self belief. I was listening to him talk, making regular eye contact too, to this person who since I was little taught me about being brave and tonight this same man looked at me and said “she had extreme self belief, you need that, don’t you, if you’re going to be an artist.”

I felt called out. I crumbled. I dissolved in the rare book room.

No, I don’t have this “extreme self belief” but I know I need it. I know I need it more than I need anything else in this world but I don’t have it. I stopped believing because, well, I think because I told myself to. I think we all lose this at some point, if we ever have it. Something happens, change of life plans, the path takes a massive swerve and then nothing looks like we thought it would and suddenly I don’t know how to have this self belief in this realm. To be honest I’m not sure what I’m feeling as I write this. Only that I’m happy to be feeling it, to be feeling something so much that it’s moved me to tears and to write. I know this life is short, it’s getting shorter and I know as cheesy and trite as it is, the reason we all loved Dead Poets Society so much is because we all so desperately want to be those kids standing on those desks, taking a risk, using our voice, loving something big and wild and not being afraid to admit it.

I became that kid for awhile. I had lunch with my English teachers, we’d listen to pink floyd and read Poe and Thoreau and Dickinson and my heart was alive and bright. And I was that person again when I started writing and I got to be her for ten years. I am still technically her, but the path has swerved and I don’t know how to be this version of me in this new realm. And this is where the bravery comes in, the extreme self belief. Other writers and artists will know this particularly, but there is a deep well of near delusion we have to tread water in, in order to push past the noise and keep going, keep pitching, keep painting, keep composing. We say in my friend group, you have to be delusional to be a writer because no sane person would keep trying and trying and sitting down and staring down a blank page and cracking ourselves open to be edited and criticized and stalked and the list goes on and on. Yes delusional. But is that not also in some vein of extreme self belief? No one besides me is ever going to know how profoundly I need to write. How it is fundamentally entwined with who I am and my heart and how I see myself and the world. So in order to keep doing it, to keep feeling ridiculously self indulgent writing these newsletters, do I not have to believe in myself SO much that I don’t care if it’s self indulgent? It has to be in service of something bigger than myself, it has to be in service to the art. To the thing I offer the world. Even typing that feels delusional, but it’s also the truth.

When I was coming home tonight on the train I saw an artist, a painter with paintings resting against the subway wall. There are artists all over New York City, but her work caught my eye. I stopped and talked to her and asked if I could buy one, she then told me that she’s been hotel and couch hopping because of a bad living situation which oddly enough lined up to the same predicament I found myself in this exact time last year. She said buying the painting meant she could buy another night in the hotel and not stay at a women’s shelter. So, I bought another one.

She’s a beautiful artist, her colors are moving and special and were such a welcome contrast to the filthy chaos of Union Square. This is a young woman from Tennessee hustling to make it in New York, selling her work in vulnerable places. This is the very embodiment of why everyone loves NYC and admires it, even those who don’t live here. New York is synonymous with delusion. People come here to “make it” to try, to fail and try again. To be here, to live here, you have to have grit, patience and real gumption. I looked at her and felt overwhelmed, just walking away from this talk, this Ethan Hawke blatantly calling me out (it’s ok Ethan I love you) and there is this bright spot in the subway, something on my way home that I couldn’t miss.

Is she not a perfect example of extreme self belief? Some might think she’s delusional, but I think she’s brave.

I will hang both of these flowers on my wall and think of her and of this night and of the desire to stand on desks and shout “O Captain My Captain” and to find in some depths of the subway or my heart, the shiny something at the bottom of the well reminding me that just because the life I wanted isn’t going to happen, it doesn’t mean something else can’t take its place.

“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.”—Flannery O’Connor

Look at it in another way