Big Love for BIG MAGIC

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If you're looking for a book that truly invigorates you into doing something with all those brilliant ideas swimming in your mind, Elizabeth Gilbert's latest brain-child is just the thing. Not quite a self-help book, BIG MAGIC hits and exposes the nerve what prevents people from creating, which--unsurprisingly--is fear. Creating is a big responsibility, and it's one that no one else but ourselves really beholds us to. As soon as it gets tough or scary, dropping and running away from the idea becomes a far more pleasant choice over grooming it into the book, or movie or small business we've dreamt of. Carrying the seed is a piece of cake--carrying the tree... not so much.

Gilbert believes that leaving an idea is not so simple, though. To her, ideas are invisible beings that float among our heads and collide into the cranium of a person they think will do something spectacular with them, almost as if they were people who spot us from the other side of the room and build up the courage to ask us out to dinner. Take a story someone told her about a jungle literally swallowing up abandoned construction equipment in the Amazon:

"... chills ran up my arms. the hairs on the back of my neck stood up for an instant, and I felt a little sick... I felt like  was falling in love, or had just hears alarming news, or was looking over a precipice at something beautiful and mesmerizing, but dangerous... this is what it feels like when an idea comes to you."

And, just as is common with romantic relationships, the opportunities for self-sabotage are plentiful--a million poisonous spines of self-doubt and fear that shut us down from the inside. Here are some reasons she lists for why we might cut ourselves at the knees in the face of something with big and magical potential:

You're afraid you'll be rejected, or criticized or ridiculed or misunderstood or--worst of all--ignored.
You're afraid somebody else did it better.
You're afraid everybody else did it better.
You're afraid you won't be taken seriously.
You're afraid you're too fat (I don't know what this has to do with creativity, exactly, but experience has taught me that most of us are afraid we're too fat, so let's just put that on the anxiety list, for good measure)
You're afraid you're too young to start.
You're afraid you're too old to start
Etc.
"Creative living," she says, "is a path for the brave."

And it is, but oddly enough, Gilbert also let's us off the hook by reassuring us that the world will not punish us so terribly if our ideas and projects are not the greatest things ever. The spotlight that shines on us shines brightest when we're operating it, so to say. In other words--no one is looking so critically at us as we think. Our motivation, rather than pleasing and impressing others, should be providing ourselves with the pleasure of creating something we genuinely enjoy.

Perhaps the most refreshing chapter in BIG MAGIC is the one in which Gilbert unabashedly admits she wrote the book for herself--not you or me. She wrote this because she "truly [enjoys] thinking about the subject of creativity." She goes so far to tell us not to create or take on a project to help other people--to martyrize creativity as a means to shoulder the the burdens of those who are meek and voiceless (gag). She uses a great line from Katharine Whitehorn to help explain why: "You can recognize the people who live for others by the haunted look on the faces of the others."

Glibert is glad she might help someone but really, she's doing this for the sake of her own delight, first and foremost. Isn't that fucking great? How validating to hear a professional writer assure us that, as human beings, we can "appreciate the value of [our] own joy." This, I think, is the operative concept in eradicating any fear we have in the face of living creatively, for fear is not as complicated as it feels when compared to the expansive relief of happiness. Fear is painful and debilitating, but really, compared to the potential of inspiration and pleasure, it is punitive, and a sorry excuse for letting a great opportunity wander off. Just like a potential lover, an idea won't stick around forever while we get our shit together. Attention must be paid! And not out of fear or doubt. As Gilbert says, "We simply do not have time any more to think so small."

On sale 9/22/2015

Two Books That Will Change How You Think and Behave Forever

SO YOU'VE BEEN PUBLICLY SHAMED

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I loved this book before I picked it up. The cover is brilliant in its quiet complexity and neon smears, and the title makes it sound like a self-help book for villains. And, delightfully, it kind of is. Only, Ronson isn't only trying to sell this to the bad guys wallowing in the mud. The book's message is also, if not, more so for everyone else. He's holding up a mirror to you, me, the millions of Twitter/Facebook users, and--at an arm's length away--himself. He is, after all, a self-proclaimed shamer. Though the title appears to address those who have fallen from grace (see Jonah Lehrer, Lindsay Stone, and Justine Sacco), what it might also say is, "So you've fallen in with the anonymous, millions-strong crowd of online commenters who make their jabs and carry on."

By interviewing those who have royally screwed up, and those who exposed and shamed them, Ronson reveals one of humanity's most wicked tendencies: frisson. But it's not just regular frisson, which is our desire to stare at a car-wreck on the side of the road. When it comes to shaming, and in the case of this book, publicly shaming,  we take this desire a step further. We're not only watching the car wreck; we're throwing stones at the people crawling out from beneath it.

Though Ronson isn't telling us to be more understanding and sympathetic, he is strongly suggesting it (and very convincingly at that). He doesn't come off as scolding, or reprimanding. He simply asks hard-to-ask questions and in so doing, takes away our privilege to remove ourselves from the public demise from a transgressor. He's not telling us to love transgressors or to stand between them and the stones. What he is telling us is that we can do whatever we want, but now, we can't do it without our own impunity. By sharing the stories of lives that have been ruined by public shaming, he leaves us with no choice but to dip our feet into their shoes.

In any case, there isn't a slow or benign moment in this book, and the last line is the best line--the hook-in-cheek phrase that drags our attention through our protective bubbles and toward the places we don't want to look, the margins where the results of our actions tend to rot.


THE PSYCHOPATH TEST

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Read this and you'll question the sanity of everyone you know--including the author's and your own. You won't be able to help it. Ronson gives us actual symptoms in psychopathy throughout his journey through the madness industry, each one relatively plain in description. As I read them, I had to wonder, "Do I do that? I think I do that! A lot actually!" I have to admit, this was kind of horrifying to read, and I would have stopped had it not also made me starvingly curious. At points, Ronson tips the scales with his subjects, not once allowing his readers to make any easy decisions about criminal minds and psychotherapy as a practice. I found myself wishing everyone else had read it so I could say, "This book, right?? Are you not losing your mind?" I dare anyone to read past the first few chapters and try not to diagnose at least five other people in their lives as psychotic, or at least semi-psychotic.

In lieu of causing us to suspect we and everyone around us might be a secret murderer, Ronson also does a good job in humanizing those who have actually been deemed psychotic. He takes away our lazy privilege of making up our mind about people and shrugging off their existence. Whether or not he intended it, he has pieced together a kind of narrative that reads like a house of mirrors: simple, yet beguiling in its many directions. The sides from which to see the people in this book are more numerous than you'd think. The close-up encounters with ruthless, violent and charming psychotics more than just dangerous--they're complex. They are the objects of an entire industry of medical and psychiatric research. It's a world that I've given little thought to, and one that I'm now very intrigued by.

On a personal level, Psychopath Test, has an introspective effect. Since it will no doubt cause you to worry that you yourself are psychotic, your attention will be brought inward, to a point of reflection. By seeing these extremes in psychological behavior, we have a backdrop we can compare our own behavior against. I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that a book on the madness industry would cause its readers to consider the nuances of their own minds. Ronson deserves credit for the obvious things: excellent writing, brave journalism, and relieving self-deprecation, but his crowning achievement is instilling in his readers a curiosity they didn't know they had.