I Express Therefore I Am
I checked my files and I have twice written stories that used the expression Cogito Ergo Sum, I think Therefore I am, penned in 1637 by French philosopher Rene Descartes. Some expressions, and I guess especially the existential ones, always pop up when you get introspective. Well, I’m at it again on this foggy Mothers Day morning and it has little or nothing to do with my mother. Now there’s a shock since I reference her often in both my writing and my thoughts. I just told Kim the other night that I think I am more influenced in my life by her than by any other factor. What brought it to mind was a movie we were watching where the main character dedicated her life to the quest of her father’s final resting place and then was so moved by the experience that she has now dedicated the remainder of her life to helping those who are on similar missions in the same remote locale.
I remember when I was in middle school and my mother had just finished her Ph.D. in education. We were living in Middleton, Wisconsin and my room was downstairs in what would have been the basement except that the house was on a slope and my room was fully fenestrated and even had a door out to the backyard. I’m not sure what I was writing for homework, but whatever it was, my mother and I had one of those moments like preacher Tom Skerritt and the young Norman McLean in A River Runs Through It, when the preacher sends the young Norman back to rewrite and rewrite his essay with more and more economy of verbiage. It is literally the one and only time I recall my mother working on an academic issue with me, and strangely enough, it was about writing. It was strange because as meaningful as writing is to me and my life, it was not really the same for my mother. She did her share of writing as a student, but I don’t recall her ever writing for pleasure.
When I get asked by someone who doesn’t otherwise know me, and they ask me what makes me tick, as they say, I generally start by saying that I am a storyteller. We all understand that a storyteller is quite different from a writer even though they share some similarities. I think what has now become more and more clear every day is that the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is all about the implementation of robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) will make those two things even more different. It is said that AI will soon take over all the writing, or so the striking Hollywood writers union is suggesting. How far behind can music composition be? Only time and technology will tell. Writing is a more mechanical function than storytelling, and yet storytelling seems to have come naturally to me where writing has taken me a long time to hone. I believe I am now, after many years and many hours of practice, a pretty decent writer. As for storytelling, that is a matter of inspiration and while I think one can practice the art, it is just that, an art, and it requires some form of external stimulation or at lest some brainstorm of originality to bring it into being. By writing these daily blog stories, I like to think that I practice both my writing skills and my storytelling art. I recognize that some stories are more one than the other, but I certainly aspire for both to be present daily and improving constantly. With 0ver 1,800 stories published, I have written over 25 books worth of stories.
My writing is what I do to release whatever pressure of expression builds up inside of me. Without this release I am not exactly sure what would happen. I doubt I would explode or anything, but I do imagine that I would be more anxious and less at ease. I need to write and I enjoy it as much as anything I do.
In our household for every word I write, Kim sings or plays a note of music. What writing is to me, music is to her. She has been singing and dancing for over 60 years and shows no signs of stopping. In the same way that I was encouraged to write and write as well as I could by my mother, Kim was encouraged to sing and dance by her mother, who signed her up for all manner of lessons in each. And just as my mother was not a writer, Kim’s mother was not a singer or dancer. They were each the facilitator, but not the role model. I’m not sure I ever had a writing role model per se, and Kim says she didn’t either for singing and dancing. I can’t tell if that’s unusual or not, but it doesn’t seem to slacken either of our enthusiasm for our respective art form.
On a typical day on our hilltop, part of my day is spent tapping away on my iPad, in the kitchen, in the living room, on the deck, on the patio, in the office or even at my makeshift desk in the spa. If you tracked Kim’s whereabouts on any given day, you would find her working on her music in the bedroom, in the office, in the kitchen, in the dining room or in the living room at the piano. She takes piano lessons by Zoom every week. She Chairs a non-profit organization that provides singing classes to the cabaret community in New York and elsewhere. She sings as a part of a choral group called Encore here in San Diego and is currently doing two nights of practice each week with an occasional added practice for learning dance routines. One of her best friends is a top cabaret arranger and director with whom she occasionally launches a show of her own. She has sung once in Carnegie Hall and once at Lincoln Center. I have published a few books and even written a 14-minute movie story that was on HBO twenty-five years ago. Neither Kim nor I live off of our art, but neither of us could live comfortably without our art.
Kim and I are watching the movie A Beautiful Mind with Russell Crowe playing the Nobel Laureate John Nash, who was both brilliant and schizophrenic. At one point his friend tells him there are other things than work and he simply asks, “what are they?” When he asks his wife what he should do, she says, “it’s called life, activities available…just add meaning.” That feels a little like where I suspect Kim and I would find ourselves with music and writing respectively. I’m not sure there’s a Nobel Prize for us at the end of our respective rainbows as there was for John Nash, but that doesn’t make it any less compelling for us.
For me, writing is existential. For Kim, music is existential. Perhaps that is why we are so right for each other. In life, we must all follow our own paths and both Kim and I have paths that require the ability to express ourselves. For Kim, she uses music and love to express herself. For me, I guess its writing and gardening. Expression is our lives. We express therefore we are.