The battle between commercial success and artistic expression has been one I have fought ad infinitum throughout my eight year career as a filmmaker. It’s been a topic that appears, fades, and reappears throughout the peaks and troughs of a freelance pursuit in creative elevation.
This week’s Bluezone manifests itself through auto-fiction; a combination of autobiography and fiction storytelling. In this case, I have stolen a chapter from Saul Bellow’s ‘The Adventures Of Augie March’ and reappropriated it into a form that speaks to my own personal challenges and conscience.
My objective in this post is not to be original. I admit to being a thief of much of the glittering dialogue which Bellow concocts in this chapter. I have, however, mixed in a lot of my own prose as well, changing names, descriptions, and places. Instead, my objective is to step into the author’s shoes for a moment and live inside of its literature whilst similarly adapting the core element into a personal account.
Many authors, from Joan Didion to Henry Miller have spoken at length about copying passages from the works of admired authors, from Ernest Hemingway to Arthur Rimbaud, in order for some of their dazzle to rub off into their own sharpened pencils. In my case, Bellow has consistently blown me away, and so this is my attempt to learn from a master whilst similarly exploring this continuous battle which bounces around my mind, creative integrity vs commercial pursuit.
I hope you enjoy,
IL
I fancy myself a consistent citizen, never rude, always aloof. I try, as much as one can without being indignant, to keep to myself. So it is with great surprise and some slight annoyance that I find myself sharing a rather large white-tiled afternoon in the Turkish baths with none other than my neighbour, Mihran, before the eve of a very important artistic decision.
Despite our difference in age and income, we have become amiable over the course of several drawn out weeks of pleasantries and spouse relations. He’s a good friend of my wife you see, and he’s meant to be loaded. Despite my consistent attempts to ignore also, the artistic decision that plagues me, not helped by the way, by the opulent atmosphere of the mosaic tiled Turkish baths, I find myself unable to sink into the full luxuries that the spa has to offer.
The artistic decision which plagues me in the form of a looming deadline is, in and of itself, not that exciting. It involves a large sum of money in return for an unfortunate quenching of artistic integrity. Reclining back against the bubbled waters, I feel the festive promise that a treasure box of funds can provide to my otherwise cracking finances and yet, before I can truly ready myself for its pleasures, I pick up the faint pangs of my heart which urge me to know that the best work doesn’t require a limiting of my own artistic daring.
“Death!” Says Mihran, describing how he was subject to strokes. This Mihran is a monument of a person, flat-nosed and lion-like in the face, with great big pillars for legs and a curling mop on his head that matches the thin black swirl pools of chest hairs. He reminds me with some embarrassment of the Greek bust of Antinoo.
“I don’t want to make you gloomy so close to your deadline.” He says.
“Oh no, you couldn’t make me gloomy. I love my vocation too much to consider it.”
Mihran has a habit of looking at you dead in the eye for a good few seconds before answering. The result is a kind of piercing response that takes account not only of the words spoken but of the underlying tones which propel them forward.
“You fight your malice too much.” He says.
“Everybody says so, it’s as if you were supposed to have low opinions. I’d never say I was an angel but I respect as much as I can.”
We went back to the subject of strokes, “here I was several years ago, sitting on the toilet figuring a big deal mentally when suddenly the angel of death plucked me by the nose. My mind turned black. I fell on my face. If my belly hadn’t been in the way to break the force I might’ve been killed. The blood from my nose sprayed the door like a geyser. Which, in my vanity, I had shut. Then by and by the spark of life came back to me. My mind filled again with the typical thought and light of Mihran. Now I reflected, you’re Mihran again. As if I had a choice. Do I have to come back as Mihran again, including the distressing parts? Yes, because to live is to be Mihran, my dear man. I went all over my secrets and found they were still in place. I crept into my bed and shivered from the touch of death. But as I was saying” — he gives me a genius smile, a heartfelt squint so bright it grows into a large and indulgent yawn.
A golden pool of light shimmers into the room, dazzling the surface of the water, providing a glittering undertone to his allegory. An older gentleman coughs on the other side of the spa, sinking himself, water spluttering, into an adjacent pool.
“As I was saying, how a guy struggles with malice. How life goes beyond the conscience of a good life. A good upbringing stops them from knowing what they think even. Because we all think the same, more or less. You love your work, don’t you?”
“Like I’ve never loved anything before,” I say.
“That’s swell. Well then, this deadline, this client of yours, what bothers you about it?”
“What bothers me is the stickiness of the situation. I feel a kind of desire on his side to dim the style I’ve developed as an artist, to commercialise me or, box me in, in some way. He wants me to work the way he works which, I suppose is understandable, yet costs me the merit of my own practice.”
Mihran lets out a deep sigh, with his weight and build it sounds like the exhale of a bus, lowering its left side to allow passengers to get on.
“This client of yours is no different than any client you’ve had before, except more willing to spend money on your work and more demanding. You have to contend with the fact that it is absolutely certain that he has thought about the future both with and without you.”
Mihran, digesting the soured look on my face, splutters out of the bath and wraps himself in a thick towel, “Well, I’m a sonofabitch! I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Let me ask you this, at your funeral one day, what will people remember?”
Dumbfounded, I grasp for answers in the rising steam coming off the bath.
“Notice, the next time you go to a funeral,” says Mihran, “that the people who were close to the deceased glance over their achievements, their failures. Rather it is their idiosyncrasies which stand out, a person’s quirks that get remembered. This is why I tell you to embrace your malice. To be all of yourself.”
By now the sweat is running very fast down our faces, Mihran looks like he’s grinning, with great, bland, pouring-faced kindness, like a sage or prophet, a prince of experience with jewel toes.
“Why do you think that the thing that kills you is the thing that you stand for? Because you are the author of your own death. What is the weapon? The nails and hammer of your own character. What is the cross? Your own bones which gradually weaken. Your work gets to do the deed.”
Me, pruning in the bubbling bath whilst Mihran stands above me on the tiled floors, speaks up, “You have to understand Mihran that I’ve always attempted to become what I am, but it’s a frightening thing. What if I’m not good enough?” A pause extends itself between Mihran, standing above me, and me spluttering below, “I suppose I better, anyway, give in and be it.”
“That’s exactly right. You must take your chance on what you are. It’s better to die what you are, than to live a stranger forever.”
This took place on the fifty-eighth-story of a building in midtown Manhattan, behind sliding glass doors. No use being so blasé not to mention it. Mihran, bowing to me kindly, walked over to the showers and left me alone in a bubbling silence.
I sit down in the changing rooms a while later, a robe over my shoulders, feeling very much at peace. Settled and easy, not in any rush. My chest free, and my fingers comfortable and open. I would call off the deal, I would let it go. Financially, I’d figure something out. I always have. And now here’s the thing. It takes a time like this for you to find out how sore your heart has been, and all the while you thought you were going around idle, terribly hard work was taking place. Hard work, heaving, pushing, moving rock, working, working, working, working, working, panting, haunting, hoisting. And none of this work is seen from the outside. It’s internally done. It happens because you are powerless and unable to get anywhere to obtain justice or have requital and therefore in yourself you labour, you wage and combat, settle scores, remember insults, fight, reply, deny, blab, denounce, triumph, outwit, overcome, vindicate, cry, persist, absolve, die and rise again.
All by yourself! Where is everybody? Inside your breast and skin, the entire cast.
If you enjoyed this piece, you may also like this Bluezone, ‘The Creative Urge To Drop Everything And Run’ inspired by an essay from Joan Didion’s ‘The White Album.’
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Till next time,
IL
You have a fantastic literary voice and this was a pleasure to read and digest. I love this style and your approach.
I think all these post together will make an amazing book