Barry Lopez Is a Humble Man

Sometimes I just want to go home. Actually, quite often I just want to go home.

Then I remember that part of my job is to go to lectures and things, though days can be long with meetings, spreadsheets and lengthy explanations. Sometimes I skip because time is finite and hot tea waits. But, there'll be time enough to rest when I'm dead. Maybe I should be supportive of colleagues;  maybe I'll learn something. Maybe I'll miss something VERY IMPORTANT if I don't go.  Then I drag myself forth.

Last night before going home to my cozy house and beautiful husband, I dragged myself a very short way to hear writer Barry Lopez speak.  Noting the distinct lack of crowd, I panicked a little. Was that faculty member coming to ask me why there weren't more people?  Perhaps he was, but he was interrupted mid-greeting by someone more compelling. I got a grip. The true organizers of the event conferred across the room. A bit player, I had even less role to play this time and relaxed in my seat. People shuffled in even as the speaker approached the podium.

But, I couldn't see him. My seat, chosen to aid a quick exit, held a perfect view of a column blocking the podium.  I did a quick cost-benefit analysis of moving during the introduction and embraced inertia. Our man Barry Lopez is a great man with many awards. I looked at the time and thought about lamb and eggplant casserole.

Finally, Lopez spoke.  "I am only a writer. I am a single voice," Lopez said.  A single, sonorous voice.  Lopez spoke with great humility about writing.  And, I perked.

To Lopez, writing is about creating patterns and building beauty -- even when writing about darkness, the writing can be beautiful.  Lopez said a writer is a kind of servant, though the service can be any number of things: to memory, to words, to society.  Writing should make deep connections. The writer's job is to create something beautiful that touches people and writing that does not is otherwise is forgetable. The average magazine article, for example, is so forgetable that it can be recycled months later and readers don't even know the difference.  

A man once told Lopez that there is no difference between fiction and non-fiction. There is only the authentic and the inauthentic. An authentic story is about us. The inauthentic is about you. And, while Lopez disagrees with the point about fiction and non-fiction, the point resonates with him because it speaks to Lopez's view on writing as service. I think it is a beautiful idea and I hope that my writing touches others -- I thrill when it does -- but let me admit something: my writing is very much about me.

I am only a playwright, a very minor one and without a current work in progress. I am taking a break from playwriting, conserving my strength during a year of many changes-- a new relationship, a marriage, a new job.  All is well,  but something is wrong. I think if I don't write I am not myself.  I understand the world through writing. It is my filter, my oasis, my means of making meaning.  It is the means by which I learn to be a person -- to discover myself and struggle to do more than go through the motions.

It is writing that drives me to go beyond the motions, to do things I wouldn't otherwise do because all experience teaches.  Anything, everything can help me grow as a writer. And maybe as a person.  Every experience is an adventure not to be missed.

 "The world is too much with us, late and soon." This line sticks in my head and I wonder if I'm too materialistic. I don't mean materialism in the sense of consumption, though that might be true, but in the sense that life can be devoid of visions and ideas. This world is too much with me and it lays waste my powers. As a child I created complicated worlds. Where are these worlds now?

So we've established that writing is a service to myself. But, in writing this journal -- blog is such an ugly word -- I also hope to point out the adventure in the everyday, the sublime in the mundane, to discover mystery and romance with a capital R while turning over rocks, peering in the ditches, chasing after my hat.

Barry Lopez and I don't have a lot in common.  He's kind of old. I'm still kind of young. He doesn't have a blog. I do! He is in touch with nature and wants to walk paths in places hardly touched by civilization.  I think my new Iphone is super cool and might visit my sister-in-law in Indianapolis soonish.

While no household name, Lopez is a well-respected, award-winning writer who has touched hundreds of thousands of people.  Bill Moyers, the nearest thing the U.S. has to a bodhisattva, thought Lopez was the perfect guest for his last show. I was not in the running because the list of candidates was too narrow. 

Barry Lopez is a humble man who does great things. I'm ... not.

We have one thing in common.  We each seek to learn about the world.  I'm not very good at humility, but my arms are open to discovery even as my feet kick it away.

Is my writing beautiful? Probably not, but my hat in the wind is. The rocks are. And, what's underneath them might be sublime.