The World Has Changed (20 page)

 

Q.: Hi. I wanted to ask you about witnessing. I think that in some parts of the Christian church “witnessing” is a word that people use a lot to talk about their faith, but I also know that in my own life I’ve experienced both being a witness to other people’s lives and changes, and seeing how I learned to witness my own that felt very hidden. I think actually that was something I read that Alice Walker wrote about; how do we survive really really painful awful times? And you said that there’s somebody there that witnesses you and sees the shining spirit underneath it all. And that was a real gift to me because I started thinking of the people who had been witnesses in my life when others had not been capable of doing it. But I just wondered if “witness” was a word, being a witness and being witnessed, was a word that had any resonance for any of you both as writers and spiritual beings.

 

A.W.: Very much for me, but do you want to . . . ?

 

I.A.: Go ahead, take it.

 

A.W.: Well, I just really feel that if you’re in a situation where something horrible is happening, and soul is being destroyed, spirit is being crushed, if you can’t do anything else, you can witness it. And that is something that you do in your role as storyteller. You see, you take it in, you know this, you cannot not know it. And that’s why in writing a book like
Possessing the Secret of Joy
I see myself very much in the role of witness. That if nothing else, I say that I know that this is happening. I know that these children are suffering, I know that these women are in pain. And I think that there is power in that because if you have ever been hurt in privacy by anyone, and you have a sense that no one knows this, and this is something that is yours alone to bear, you know how hard that is, it’s a double oppression. But if you have just one person, a teacher, or a friend, or whoever, who at least stands beside you in this role as someone who just knows, then whatever the hurt is is shared.

 

J.S.B.: I feel really strongly about that also. I really think that one of the major functions of a friend or a therapist is being a witness to the life story of another person. And that when somebody that has had something happen to them that makes them feel beyond the pale, which often is true of women who as children were incested, for Vietnam War veterans who did things and saw things that shouldn’t have happened, that if they could tell the story to one other person, and often there’s a compulsion to tell it, and tell it, and tell it, and that’s also why sometimes you need a therapist, because you are gonna wear out your friends. But that there is a community of human souls for which every other human being is an intercessor and ambassador, a healer, a means to bring that beyond-the-pale person into community, but only if they will tell the truth of the story of what happened and find that another human being can accept them and understand and not shun them for what happened to them. And that is what people do for one another when they tell the story and the story is accepted, received, witnessed. That’s a major function of what we can do for one another.

 

I.A.: I also feel very strongly about this because I had the mission of being a witness twenty years ago. And that really changed my life forever. I was a journalist in Chile during the military coup in 1973, and a few journalists decided that our mission was to be the witness of what was going on, what was happening. And although we could not publish the information, we had to remember, we had to be like a living memory, the witness of what was going on. And I felt that when I left my country and went into exile, I had betrayed that cause in a very deep way. And for many years I was like in silence, and I felt that as a witness, I had failed. And everything that I had witnessed was inside me like a heavy load that I was carrying along. All these untold stories, these unwritten words, these emotions that were there without accomplishing what I had to do, and that was to be witness to this and tell the world what had happened. And I always thought that the only way I could do that was through journalism, and the fact that I was not able to work as a journalist made me feel like an invalid. And then one day I started writing books. And in my first book, in my second book, and every time I write, and every time I talk in public, this comes out again. And I feel like being a witness is still my mission in the world, and this is what I do when I tell stories. Before it was about torture, and about people who
were desperate, and about dictatorship and abuse and violence. Now it’s other things, but it’s always about that. Storytelling is about telling other people’s stories, and that’s being a witness.

 

A.W.: I’d just like to add a little story. My first novel,
The Third Life of Grange Copeland
, grew out of the need to witness the murder of a woman when I was thirteen. There was a woman who was murdered by her husband as she came home on Christmas day with a bag of groceries that she had managed to buy. And I saw her body because my sister was the cosmetologist at the funeral home. And I would sometimes be there, and she took me into this room. And there was this woman, and in this little town they carry the bodies to the funeral home in wicker baskets. And then they actually had them, they put the head on an iron pillow, they called it. It was so much like what they said, I was amazed. But there was this woman; she had lots of children, one of them was in my class, and this person had really shot her face off. And it was so, I was so young, and it was just so overwhelming that I couldn’t really forget. And also that she had one shoe still on, and that shoe had an enormous hole in the bottom, and in that hole she had put newspaper. And this shoe, this foot, this face, this woman just lived with me. Because who would know? They didn’t do anything really to her killer. Who would know what this woman’s life was, who would know that she had worked all that week as a maid for $7, that she had gone and tried to make Christmas for her children? And here she comes with this little bag of food, and then she’s met with this. And who would know, who would know about this, who would care? But in the role of storyteller and witness, years later, I had to learn to be able to tell her story. I was able to do this, and it is a way in which I really think that you bring some peace to yourself, but also to the person that you are witnessing.

 

Q.: Most of us, I think, start our writing, birthing, creating process with what we see, and autobiographical experiences, and what we witness, and I’m interested in what is the process moving from that into fiction, and telling those truths through fiction.

 

I.A.: Well I began as a journalist, and I was supposed to be objective. I never was really, but you were supposed to be, expected at least. And I moved to fiction because I had a period of silence, like eight years, that
I couldn’t write, and I couldn’t do anything, I was just paralyzed. And then when I moved into fiction, I used all the techniques and everything that I used in journalism, I just moved it over to literature. And it worked very well. I could finally be myself in the sense that I could not be objective, I could be in the middle of the story if I wanted to. That I could not do when I was a journalist. So it was a swift change.

 

A.W.: I love the freedom of fiction. It really is just wonderful.

 

I.A.: And you can say the deepest truth with the lines of fiction. Somehow it comes out, that truth comes so much easier when you tell it through fiction. In storytelling all the hidden truths are there even if there’s a lot of fantasy around it.

 

J.S.B.: The stories that both of you write are true.

 

I.A.: In a way they are.

 

J.S.B.: They’re true to the human experience. They move people. They’re true.

 

I.A.: Right, I agree.

 

Q.: She just asked my question. I’m very interested in that idea too, the difference between the fiction and the nonfiction. And do you decide, Alice in particular, because you write in many different forms, do you decide what form you’re going to write in? Is it something you want to say, or do you find that when you’re in that contemplative place it speaks to you in a particular way and then insists on being expressed in a certain way? . . . I’m interested in what that process is like for all of you.

 

A.W.: Well, a lot of it has to do with time. So that if I feel that something is going to be a novel, and that I want the freedom to explore it as a novel, I then know that I have to find a year to two years in which to be free myself so that I can be receptive to the growth of this. Poetry is quite different, it kind of strikes, and because it’s short it doesn’t usually take the setting aside of that kind of time, although time and contemplation is always good for whatever you’re doing. Essays are usually, for
me, things that strike me and that kind of grow over time, but I don’t have to think in terms of just blocking out a long span of time. I can think more like a month or so, and not all together either.

 

J.S.B.: Well I thought the question was fiction/nonfiction and since I—

 

Q.: I’m just interested in what the process is like for each of you in terms of the form that you write in.

 

J.S.B.: Oh, the process for me is that I have a sense of having sort of cauldrons on my back burner. And I have a sense of a book that’s forming, and I’m gathering the ingredients. And then when I am writing, if I’m writing from a deep place in myself, which is the only place to write from, . . . the universe lets me know that because synchronistic events keep happening, that the chapter that I’m writing needs just this poem, just this dream, just this whatever, and here it comes. And that happens. The actual doingness of it is—quite a number of years ago I asked a colleague who wrote a lot how on earth she did it with children. I had kids, she had kids, she was a psychiatrist as I was. And I wondered how did you ever find time to write, and she said, “Oh, there’s no problem, I have insomnia.” And out of that came a thought, which was I looked at my mother and she seemed to do fine without much sleep. What is this idea that I needed eight hours of sleep anyway? And I played with the idea, and my psyche got it. And I started to get up naturally, which I now always do when I’m writing, I get up somewhere around five because it’s like an internal clock says, “Time to get up.” And then I can get totally absorbed, and I write for many hours, lose track of time, and then go off and do my other aspects of my life, and when I come back it’s like ready to go again. And I often have felt that the way I write is something to do with the discipline of seeing patients, that is, I see people once or twice a week, and they come in the door and I’m prepared to be involved in their story, and then they go. And unless there’s something very troubling it stops until they come in the door the next week. I found that I could relate to my writing that same way, as an ongoing health process. So there’s no warm-up, I don’t have any time to spend thinking about “I’m going to write,” sharpening pencils, or any of the stuff that I hear people do; I don’t. I just sit down and I meet the experience.

 

A.W.: I would just like to agree with you that it is when the synchronistic support is there that you really know that you’re doing what you should be doing. And it really does feel exactly as if you are just being supported in everything you’re doing, just so that you can do it well. It’s a wonderful feeling.

 

Q.: I know the experience, it’s fantastic. It does propel itself, it creates a momentum. What about when that euphoria is not carrying you? You know, like, taking it all the way, what I have experience with is that in the process of bringing it to a final product, I burn out. And . . . when you’re using the craft and trying to bring it into a final form, somehow . . . you get tired of it, I get tired of it.

 

A.W.: Well, just remember that it’s about you, it’s not about the thing you’re making really. You’re making something, but really you’re making you. And so if the euphoria isn’t there, go do something else that needs doing, you know, fix your whatever. But I think that if you love doing whatever it is, creativity is really wonderful. You want to create something that finally you hold in your hands, but actually maybe it’s not about that. Maybe actually what you are doing is something else entirely.

 

C.D.: I’m curious since the subtitle was something about giving birth; I feel like I’m still being born as a writer, and I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about your birth as writers. You’re very accomplished right now, but I’m sure you didn’t start out that way, and I’d love to hear how it happened and what you think can happen for other people in the process.

 

Q.: I don’t remember very well. Actually, I think that I was telling stories all my life, and in a way I never thought that I could be a writer because it was such a big word. And women in my generation, in the place I was born, were not supposed to be creative, we were supposed to be good wives and help our husbands to be brilliant; they should be brilliant. And I tried hard; it didn’t work.

 

A.W.: He was never brilliant, huh?

 

I.A.: He was never brilliant. Well anyhow, then I was a journalist. Which was like I was always, like, in the periphery of literature. More or less like literature, but we’re not literature, because I never dared say to myself, “Well, I’m a writer,” or “I want to be a writer.” Actually, I wrote, I published three books before I could fill a form in an airplane and say “writer” instead of “housewife” or “journalist” or whatever. And then in 1981 we received a phone call from Chile when my grandfather was dying, and my grandfather was a very important character, very important person in my life. He was the male model that I had when I was a child, in my early childhood. And I couldn’t go back to Chile and bid farewell in a way, and tell him that I remembered everything, that he would never die because I had everything that he had told me stored inside. And I began a letter, a sort of spiritual letter that I knew he would never receive, and that’s how
The House of the Spirits
was born. It was . . . like writing in trance. I didn’t have to think about it, it just came, voices, voices that I was hearing. And I just poured out everything I wanted to say. And most of it is the story of my family.