Making the Connection. Topics and Themes

While thinking of following the structure for a segmented essay I have been thinking about my need for family and love connecting with the petty and traumatic life altering experiences that proceeded to happen the moment the final cast was announced for Sweeney Todd.  I will most likely bring this story full circle by bringing up the discussion I had earlier today that inspired me to write this. 

My topics....

Reflecting on not only my journal for this class but my journals that I have kept over the years have very common themes in them.  Family, Love, Death, Independence, Loneliness.

More specifically:
Family:  not having a conventional family, coming from a 'broken family', not being able to have a family until I am old enough, and coping with essentially being alone until that day comes.

Love:  My first love, being in love, what love makes us do, what it turns us into, does love go away?  Does love die?  Should it die?  Who really loves me?

Death: Fear of Dying, Comfort with dying, accepting death, running out of time, dying suddenly, dying painfully, watching others die, not knowing exactly what happens right after.

Independence: The more and more I read my journal the more self sufficient i get and the less disappointed I am because I create my own path.

Loneliness: Not having friends, not being loved enough by someone, being isolated, being kicked out, being homeless, being 3000 miles away from anything i knew, having the only person i love estrange me, estranging myself from the world for love. 

These are all ridiculously self absorbed but hey its the only place I get to talk and think about myself first. 

So today besides my original idea of discussing my transition to complete independence, I thought of a few things.  My grandmother has recently died only she wasn't my real grandmother.  I have also been a very self assured person with a very clear self image until the day that my father mentioned that I was perhaps not his daughter.  So this strikes me as the first time I felt my identity being ripped away form me.  Also coming from parents of two different races, I have experienced some very interesting things in the world regarding how I am identified and surprisingly how I am identified with my own family is just as difficult. I was also talking to a classmate today and she had apparently been in my department at Kean.  She had auditioned for a play that I worked on, which became one of the most stressful and trying time in my life that later raked in HUGE consequences.  When I asked her what part she auditioned for, she said she was going for the lead.  It made me think of how different my life would have been if she had indeed gotten the part.  It would have been DRAMATICALLY different since the girl winning lead role had a minor affair with my "boyfriend" during the run of that show.  I was told that this was a story already by my classmates....  

What is "the point?" reflection of reading several essays

I suppose the point of these essays is to disclose something personal while trying to make it entertaining.  Bellow used humor and an experience of picture taking that is universal.  Cofer used the medium of a home movie and creating private dialog with the family members being taped.  Lowry opened a window of perspective up by being drawn to something out of her own personal tragedy and found something beautiful to write about in the midst of her coping. 

I feel like the point is gain and give the same thing: a sense of unity. No matter how obscure the situation we harness all of our energy into story telling not just for stories sake but in the attempt that someone will catch and relate to the feelings we get, no matter how inappropriate or unlikely it may be.  Not everyone will relate to Karla on death row but there was a common thread of death in all relationships regarding this story.  In fact, it could be assumed that if Lowry had not lost her son that she would have most likely not reached out to this woman. 

Over the summer I read a book about directing theater and the preface of the book questions was art is and the one of the key characteristics of art is the attempt to create unity and universality.  Creative Non Fiction is no different in my opinion.

Adding to my Ideas of Creative Non Fiction

I learned a lot reading the essays from Vowell, Lowry, and Bellow.  Personally, they were not my favorite reads.  "What He Said There", had its moments of sentimentality and clever lines but I was not at all intrigued by the abrupt breaks from glorifying this experience to popping back into modern day where the term 'Dude' is more commonly used.  It made it lose a sense of fluidity which may very well have been the writers purpose considering this history enthusiast is trying to soak up an experience that is adulterated with people that may not even know what their purpose is at this historical site.  So perhaps this is a device to rip the audience out of the past just as she was ripped out during her experience. 

I also thought it interesting to write about this sort of nonfiction: Narrative of a real human experience involving a historical milestone.  It's almost like Non Fiction squared.  The idea of documenting an event about an event is interesting and layered.

Bellow's essay seemed more self absorbed than anything.  It probably had to do with the language, amour propre meaning "self love" or "self esteem" and his subject matter, although it was meant to pertain to everyone's individual view of self, I couldn't shake the fact that underlying all of this, he was talking about himself.  And if there were any doubt in your mind, a paragraph of having a bronze bust created of him while he watched a Bears game was enough of a give away.  Somehow this essay, although bringing many poignant points was ultimately brought down by this underlying desire to talk about himself.  Citing Freud's mother and politicians was a good attempt at dulling the sharp hints that underneath it all, it was really about him.  What really got me absorbed was this universal want of our virtues and how we see ourselves to convey itself on film.  I could relate to that as having almost never taken a good picture in my life besides my drivers license.  But then to take that idea and having a glorified sculpture put in a library while you are too busy to watch a game seemed, frankly, UGLY to me.  It made me feel as though he deserved the shiny bald spot poking through, the huge pores, the bags under the eyes.  Something about ending the piece with himself doing something ugly made feel the overall piece was a self absorbed essay of what the writer thinks he deserves which frankly makes him look like er...how do I put this softly?  An ass.
However, there is something to be learned through this essay.  Many might like it.  I wish to like it as well so if there's any insight that others think I have missed I feel completely open to accepting that.  So far only consulting myself, this is what I have taken from the essay.  There is a fine line between writing about yourself  and universalizing is and being simply self gratifying.  It will show, it will seep through and ooze ego.  And it is definitely something one should be careful of.  In light that nothing written is never done on accident, perhaps the paradox of a flawless bust being created for a man watching a game being the same man who's photo was ugly for a beautiful book he wrote is what the writer was trying to express.  The idea of mediums in which beauty can contradict themselves to the eye.  
 Lastly, we have Lowry.  This essay i feared was not long enough to delve into the amazing depth that this was heading.  The obsession with death, the idea of change, and the evolution of judgment through horrible experiences in life.  I felt that this essay had so much to offer that I wanted to know about.  This piece also struck me because I am a sucker for relationships.  Any way in which two people find themselves entwined in ach other's lives is always a unique and complicated concept.  There will be so much not absorbed by the people who observe it.  And this piece was also layered:  It was about several relationships.  It was about marriage, friendship, Karla's relationship with God and the evolution of even the author's relationship with God, having gone through the loss of her own son.  The common relationship that was only grazed upon but was always present in the essay was everyone's relationship with death, some more obvious than others.  Karla's relationship with death looms over the whole essay because she is sentenced to die.  The author's relationship with death is a clear obsession based on trauma.  And even Dana's relationship with death is subtle but it is there.  Dana is a minister on death row having interacted with the condemned as part of his daily life.  And if Karla indeed does get executed that will alter something within Dana about the end of life and wanting to be eternally bound to someone who is no longer in this world.  
 This essay was extremely helpful in expressing the use of themes.  These themes seem more embedded psychologically because each character is tied to them in some way and since it's Non Fiction, these are not merely artistic choices they are real afflictions.  This seems important because themes tie people and characters together, which makes the narrative more relative.  It conveys to the audience that, even if it refers to deviant behavior, that it exists in more than one person, in more than one realm.

 

What is Creative Non-Fiction (to me)

I actually had a few discussions about taking this class.  When talking to other friends who are starting schools and discussing our schedules I had gotten a few weird looks as soon as I explained that I had a Creative Non Fiction class.  "What's creative about non fiction?"  was the most prevalent question.  How can something that is already in existence be creative?  Naturally, as  a Theater Major I had plenty of answers to the question.  My whole life is mostly taking a story that has been told and figuring out a new way to tell it, or in my case, make it visible in a different and "new" way.   Most of us have been told several times throughout our academic career that nothing is actually new.  Everything has been done before.  i disagree because even if you try to replicate something no one can.  My favorite part about theater is the live human experience leaves so much for interpretation, so many things to go wrong, or differently, that makes everything different, no matter how hard we all try to make each performance exactly the same.

The same can be said of any writing including non fiction.  Although people styles of writing have been mimicked there is something distinctly different.  What discourages us (besides our moral compass) from plagiarizing is the idea that we will get caught.  And every year when we attend our first day of class every professor tells you that your way of writing is like your fingerprint.  It is distinct and if something is "off"  about your writing they CAN tell and they WILL find out.  It's the difference in all of our styles that makes anything although striving to reach standards and emulate our favorite authors, that we will always be definitively different no matter how hard we try.

It seems like I think that difference= creativity.   It's a small part but the other part of creativity is not only what is innate in all of us.  It's beyond the elements of our character that we ooze and the way it influences what we make.  The other part of creativity is what we have taken in, what we have learned, what thought processes we go through, what other people say, what we know we do well, etc.  It is everything we have been taught and what we have internalized and the way we project it to the world that is creativity.  Even if something already exists the way we recycle it and present it to the world is creative.  That's why we love "reality" television, why we are intrigued by documentaries, why we religious watch shark week every year.  Sharks don't change mating habits or how they tear surfers apart but we watch a new interpretation of it.  Creative Nonfiction to me is taking the creativity and perspective that is natural to each of us as individuals and applying it to something real.  It then becomes an interpretation which is the centerpiece of creative nonfiction.  Yes it is real.  Yes we may already know the facts but what makes it creative is the aspect of interpretation.  At least, that's what I think.