I might be outing myself as a sentimentalist or as someone with bad taste or as, worst case scenario, a lost human being in a dangerous world of griefs and beauty, but every time a song from Damien Rice pops up in my shuffle, I feel accused, by myself, by my present circumstances, by the Spirit that died to make a little room for me to experiment with being alive, of never having been vulnerable enough to be even a minimally good artist. So much of what I love in art (and by “art” I mean “everything”) can be called “vulnerable,” has to do with a heart, mind, voice or painting hand saying, “Look, listen, I love or loved and I’m sad and, absurdly, scared it might not happen again.” But when I look at my own work across multiple media, I don’t see much of that. I mean, I myself know, of course, what melancholies over which faces and irretrievable moments and fleeting fleetingnesses drove me to write this play or that spec screenplay. I know I’ve FELT. But I haven’t devoted enough time to saying, in my work, “I LOVED AND I’M SCARED IT MIGHT NOT EVER HAPPEN AGAIN.”
And maybe Damien Rice was or is just a pick-up artist (and did you know that Rick Rubin, the wise author of THE CREATIVE ACT: A WAY OF BEING, had a co-author on that revered text and that that person was none other than Neil Strauss, the invulnerable author of THE GAME, the book that popularized “negging” women and spawned a generation of date rapists?) — I really don’t know anything about Damien Rice. But I do know that when he sings, “I never meant to let you down” and in so doing announces himself as helpless when it comes to Time and “you,” whoever “you” was, I'm moved. My soul finds itself standing at a window that looks out on a Corridor of Sorrows that stretches back to the first “Goodbye,” the first “Again,” the first “Why,” all the ACHES, and I feel grateful for it, I feel like Damien Rice did a really good job, I feel RESPECTFUL — and then that respect boomerangs back at me and hits me under my nose and it hurts! “Why aren’t YOU passionate like that?” I’m not quite sure what the answer is, but I believe it’s a nutritious question.
It’s not like I haven’t lived a passionate life. But let’s pretend for a moment that I haven’t. Let’s pretend for a moment that it’s possible to actually cry as much as I’ve cried, said “I love you” as much as I’ve said it, and yet somehow not FELT anywhere near as much as the Spirit wanted to feel when it paid the infinite price to ride me. Let’s pretend that where it counts I’m a shirker. It’s not hard for me to see all things I’ve done and made as maneuvers designed to barricade myself from feeling vulnerable, from feeling helpless. I get a lot of praise in my life for my ability to summarize, to integrate data and present it in manageably charming or charmingly manageable ways. It’s a good talent to have if you work in a vertically-integrated business where you have to be continually reminding everyone “below” and “above” you what the “thing” in process seems to be most like today. But that’s a pretty bureaucratic gift.
And I might just be dwelling mistakenly on the side effects of working in a narrative art form, one that requires the "creator” to be able to stand back and see “the big picture,” the vast landscape in which ALL the characters are moving, and yet…and yet, I know that when I get to the end of ULYSSES, that supremely intellectual and supremely well-organized novel, and find the last 22,000 words allotted to “Molly” and find those words so full of feeling —
the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
— I’m humbled and know that James Joyce, that badly-folded little napkin of a fellow, not only built something towering and almost infinitely ornate but also did the bravest, smallest thing better than I’ve done anything — said, “LOOK, LISTEN, I LOVED AND I’M SCARED IT MIGHT NOT EVER HAPPEN AGAIN.”
It’s not a great time to be vulnerable. The kind of connectivity the Internet breeds may seem, at times, to favor vulnerability, but even our encounters with the most apparently lost and longing souls on Instagram are tinged by our knowing that person looked at a phone or a laptop screen and elected to “reach out” that way, that this “raw revelation” is also a branded product. It also — the Internet — favors trumpet blasts of bravado, favors battle cries and short, mean jokes — and when it elevates moments like the one where Lorde and Charli XCX publicly settled their beef by keeping it so real on “the girl, so confusing version with Lorde,” their hand-in-hand chosen sisterly gesture is praised for being so artfully a hybrid of vulnerability and good business, for the way they’re not pretending you don’t have to pay for VIP access to their musical peep show. This is where we’re at. Even frail-adjacent, grieving Joe Biden — one son dead, one headed for jail, the body he sees when he looks down while he pees a soft ruin and the nation he grew up loving circling the drain on his watch, I mean, Jesus, how could he not be wrecked? — even he puts on aviators to look less vulnerable. It’s what we do now. We front.
But I’m going to go down swinging, even if the best I can do is admit I’m haunted by the feeling that I haven’t done my best, that I still haven’t been brave or proud or hurt or talented enough to offer my fear and shame and strength on the page or the stage or in all the doorways at dawn while the driver waited as much as I could have — that I haven’t delivered what was promised. And, just to be clear — because being clear is what I’m good at — I’ll close by reminding everyone “below” me and “above” what was promised — that it would hurt, that it wouldn’t last, that it would seem, when all was said and done, like it was still somehow better than the Nothing that preceded it, and maybe better than the Nothing yet to come. That’s what was promised. What have you done with that promise? What have I? Not enough! In the end, it’s all a matter of choosing to feel, of failing at feeling and feeling that failing feeling, of loving anything and being scared it might not happen again.
We learn to wag and tuck our tails We learn to win and then to fail, didn't we? We learn that lovers love to sing, and that losers love to cling, didn't we? Am I the greatest bastard that you know? When will we learn to let this go? We fought so much, we've broken all the charm But letting go is not the same as pushing someone else away So please don't let on, you don't know me Please don't let on, I'm not here Please don't let on, you don't love me 'cause I know you do, I know Some make it, mistake it Some force and some will fake it I never meant to let you down Some fret it, forget it Some ruin and some regret it I never meant to let you down I never meant to let you I never meant to let you down