The Big Lie: How the truth changes us
by Peter Clothier
I had just lost my job, the third in a multi-year succession of academic positions with increasing status and responsibility from the 1960s to the mid-1980s. To be utterly honest, I had been kicked out, as I had been from my two previous jobs. I had refused to conform to academic standards and expectations.
My chief sin was that I had published poetry rather than scholarly articles.
Further, as a dean, I had continually provoked the wrath of vice presidents with my demands to receive adequate funding for my faculty and programs. I also had alienated boards with my stubborn refusal to go along with what I considered to be their ill-advised policies.
Eased out of these jobs, in order to rescue my self-respect, I managed to put a conveniently plausible construction on the facts each time. In retrospect, I recognize that I was simply closing my ears to what the experiences were trying to tell me.
I did not want to hear the message: You do not belong in academia. You were never meant to be here in the first place. It’s time to take the risk you always lacked the fortitude to take–to be a writer.
The prolific novelist Larry Block had recently published Write For Your Life, an inspirational guide for aspiring writers as well as those who had lost their voice or their direction. He was touring the country with his “Write For Your Life” workshop intended to spread the word.
I no longer remember how I heard about the workshop. It sounded like something I would have done anything to avoid, given my scathing intellectual skepticism and contempt for anything that sounded like “self-help.” No matter. Something called to me, and I signed up.
Eager as ever to be one step ahead of everyone, in the days before the scheduled weekend, I read Larry’s book. His ideas did nothing to reassure my inner skeptic, who is always quick to identify the bullcrap in others but equally reluctant to acknowledge my own.
I had always recoiled from probing too deeply into the life of the mind. I was pretty sure that in the workshop I was going to be asked to explore some secret places that I would quite honestly prefer to leave undisturbed.
I knew from the book, for example, that we would be asked to identify the Big Lie – that mental formulation we invent to stand between our creative impulse and its fulfillment (how absurd!). Now that I was committed, I began asking myself what my Big Lie could be.
My intellect judged that this was a pretty childish game, but I settled on one that sounded about right. I decided that my Big Lie was the statement, “I have no time to write.”
I showed up at Larry’s workshop confident that I could ace it. I was, after all, a writer of vast experience. Did I not have a doctorate of literature in my back pocket? Had I not spent four years at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, one of the biggest, best, and oldest in the country? Had I not already published two books of poems, numerous articles, and critical reviews in national magazines?
I showed up at the Hollywood Holiday Inn still not knowing quite why I had signed up for the workshop or what I expected to learn. I knew it all, didn’t I?
Sure enough, the moment came when we were invited to identify and announce our Big Lie to the group. When called upon, I had mine ready. “I have no time to write,” I said with satisfaction at my own clarity. I was distressed, however, to see that Larry’s response was a doubtful frown.
“That sounds more like a symptom than a cause,” he said. After a thoughtful pause, he added, “Is there anything you can remember about your birth?”
My birth?
I endured a moment of sheer shock and panic. Even my worst apprehensions had not prepared me for this bizarre diversion. I had no idea what intuition guided him to the question, and the occasion of my birth could not have been further from my mind.
But yes, there was something I knew about my birth: I was a blue baby, born with the umbilical cord wrapped like a noose around my neck. If not for the speedy response of the midwife with a handy pair of scissors, I would certainly not have survived. I passed on this information to Larry.
“Well,” he said, “I have a suggestion.” And he offered me an alternative Big Lie: “I have no right to be here.”
The next step was for us to walk around the room and introduce ourselves to other workshop participants by our Big Lie. “Hi, I’m Peter. I have no right to be here.”
At first, I was unable to bring the words out of my mouth. I choked on them. They struck me as completely silly. I broke down in hysterics. I couldn’t decide if I was laughing or crying. Then I realized that I was doing both at the same time. It was clear that the words had reached deep into some previously hidden part of my psyche, touching a truth so profound and so imponderable that my rational brain simply couldn’t deal with it.
I had found a truth, I began to understand, that had affected my life in many subtle and not so subtle ways. I had sabotaged all those jobs because I had no right to be there. Even at a more trivial level, I was always the first to want to leave a party.
There was no instant cure at the workshop. The Big Lie has persisted in raising its head in numerous circumstances since. Still, it has been vital to know about it. That moment of insight was a kind of liberation.
For me, the story clarifies a critical point about how creative people can sabotage their voice and their vision for reasons unknown, even to themselves, so long as those reasons remain unexplored. I’m reminded that I am never disconnected from my past experiences, that my past trauma, without me bringing them to consciousness, can control me in unwanted ways.
I’m reminded that if I want to work in the world, I need to work within myself. There is no need to be held hostage by old thought patterns and habits. The work I do must be a continuing process of self-discovery. The more I can learn about myself, the greater the freedom I enjoy as a writer.
Another thing I learned is never to be satisfied with the first answer – or the easy one. The moment I think I have “the answer” is often the moment I most need to keep digging. Answers, I now see, are always provisional. The questions keep moving me forward into the unknown – which is where the good stuff can be found.
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Peter Clothier has published include two novels, two books of poetry, a monograph on the British artist David Hockney, and scores of art and book reviews in national journals. This essay is adapted from his new book, Persist: In Praise of the Creative Spirit in a World Gone Mad With Commerce, due out in January 2010. For info, visit TheBuddhaDiaries.com. |
– is a deeply personal issue that everyone decides for himself. Sometimes the price is high, sometimes low. But this is not very important for life. Life is an interesting thing. And the price on Viagra – too.
