Another in an occasional series of posts about being human.
I am large, I contain multitudes. — Walt Whitman, from “Song of Myself”
Having many selves is one of the most human things people do, and one of the most fascinating. I was reminded again of this by a quotation that Karina posted a while back. Here’s a part of it:
A self is deciduous, it leafs out as one grows, changes with oneâs seasons, yet somehow stays briskly the same. The brain composes a self-portrait from a confetti of facts and sensations, and as pieces are added or removed the likeness changes, though the sense of unity remains, thanks to well-furnished illusions. We need illusion to feel true. A medley of different selves accompanies us everywhere. Some are lovable, some weird, some disapproving of each other, some childish or adult. Unless the selves drift too far apart, that solo ensemble works fine and copes well with novel events. As the psychoanalyst Philip M. Bromberg writes in Standing in the Spaces: âhealth is not integration. Health is the ability to stand in the spaces between realities without losing any of them. This is what I believe self-acceptance means and what creativity is really all about — the capacity to feel like one self while being many.â
— Diane Ackerman, from An Alchemy of Mind
So many doors fling themselves open in my mind and spirit when I read that. The book is here on my desk, waiting to be read in whole, and I can only imagine what treasures await me!
But in the meantime, here is what Ackerman and Bromberg are talking about: from the Aubrey/Maturin books by Patrick O’Brian. These are beautiful books, stuffed full of humanity. I think O’Brian is possibly the best writer I’ve ever read at expressing the inner multitudes of characters. This series of 21 books traces a decades-long friendship between Jack Aubrey, sea captain in the 18th-century British Navy, and Stephen Maturin, physician and British spy. They’ve spent more time together at sea than they have with their wives and families. They talk often, deeply, intimately together throughout these books. And it’s one of their long-standing customs to play the violin together at every opportunity. Music is also a daily conversation between them.
Jack and Stephen are men by every measure of their time — they are mainstream in gender presentation and sexual expression, culturally entitled, unafraid of physical hardship and stoic about bodily suffering, fully engaged with their culture’s notions of honor and bravery that “real men” were assumed to embrace without question. And at the same time O’Brian gives us two people who deeply love each other, who share the secrets of their hearts with trust, who are unafraid of the sentimentality that occasionally rises between them. It’s a magnificent demonstration of how to write gendered characters without assuming that gender limits their ability to be human, to feel and yearn and wonder and love as humans do.
In one of the earlier books, Stephen is tortured and his hands are badly damaged. In this scene, many books and many years later, Stephen is visiting Jack at his estate.
Stephen had been put to sleep in his usual room, far from children and noise, away in that corner of the house which looked down to the orchard and the bowling-green, and in spite of his long absence it was so familiar to him that when he woke about three he made his way to the window almost as quickly as if dawn had already broken, opened it and walked out on to the balcony. The moon had set: there was barely a star to be seen. The still air was delightfully fresh with falling dew, and a late nightingale, in indifferent voice, was uttering a routine jug-jug far down in Jack’s plantation; closer at hand, and more agreeable by far, nightjars churred in the orchard, two of them, or perhaps three, the sound rising and falling, intertwining so that the source could not be made out for sure. There were few birds he preferred to nightjars, but it was not they that had brought him out of bed: he stood leaning on the balcony rail and presently Jack Aubrey, in a summer-house by the bowling-green, began again, playing very gently in the darkness, improvising wholly for himself, dreaming away on his violin with a mastery that Stephen had never heard equalled, though they had played together for years and years.
Like many other sailors Jack Aubrey had long dreamed of lying in his warm bed all night long; yet although he could now do so with a clear conscience he often rose at unChristian hours, particularly if he were moved by strong emotion, and crept from his bedroom in a watch-coat, to walk about the house or into the stables or to pace the bowling-green. Sometimes he took his fiddle with him. He was in fact a better player than Stephen, and now that he was using his precious Guarnieri rather than a robust sea-going fiddle the difference was still more evident: but the Guarnieri did not account for the whole of it, nor anything like. Jack certainly concealed his excellence when they were playing together, keeping to Stephen’s mediocre level: this had become perfectly clear when Stephen’s hands were at last recovered from the thumbscrews and other implements applied by French counterintelligence officers in Minorca; but on reflexion Stephen thought it had been the case much earlier, since quite apart from his delicacy at that period, Jack hated showing away.
Now, in the warm night, there was no one to be comforted, kept in countenance, no one who could scorn him for virtuosity, and he could let himself go entirely; and as the grave and subtle music wound on and on, Stephen once more contemplated on the apparent contradiction between the big, cheerful, florid sea-officer whom most people liked on sight but who would never have been described as subtle or capable of subtlety by any one of them (except perhaps his surviving opponents in battle) and the intricate, reflective music he was now creating.
— from The Commodore by Patrick O’Brian (Book 17 of the Aubrey/Maturin series)
I hope someday that I can say so much about this essential human thing, this multiplicity of self that we all manage every day, sometimes with grace and wit, sometimes with struggle and bitterness, sometimes with confusion, sometimes with joy… I hope someday that I can so simply and so elegantly write of this as O’Brian has here.
This is a beautiful passage. I’ve been living under a rock for the past 30 years, so it’s the first time I ever hear of the Aubrey/Maturin series. I must read it now. Book by book.
Just now, I come from a workshop where a discussion around un-gendered characters took place. Mostly, about how important it is for readers to be able to assign male or female identities to protagonists and the whole bunch or others. It was very interesting to see how strongly people in general feel about it, how puzzled readers are when the richness of a character cannot be constrained and anchored to a specific gender.
I’m glad there’s always at least one other person in every group that can empathize with my desire/need to embrace characters with many selves. Especially in a class with an aboriginal focus. In Native American culture, GLBT people are called “Two Spirit”, hinting at the multiplicity of selves. I like this. I like that we can choose to assume one or both and even many responsibilities and roles within a society. Two Spirit people are usually shamans, they are bridges between the many worlds, the many aspects of being human and alive. But they can also be hunters or cooks or weavers, they can anchor themselves onto a gender if they so choose. I like having the option to choose and to choose none and everything.
Thanks for this. It’s just what I needed to read right now. Oh, how I missed your blog all day. It was a long and exhausting day. I’m glad to be here, back home, at home in these words.
I’m horrified that you’ve posted this!! My oldest brother, a hard core right wing republican – war mongering, troops on borders – English only speakers . . . the endagered white man . . .THAT person just loves these Aubry books. So, I can’t bring myself to read them.
I hate being challenged in this way . . . .
Sigh . . . Robin
Let me add . . . my brother has only talked to me about the battle tactics involved, and of “conquering of the sea”. He’s never talked about any relationships or ‘being human’ aspects of the story. I assumed there were none . . . my being human failing . . . how????
AARRRRRGHH!!! I can’t tell you how perception-altering this is for me today. I may have to read them . . . .
Oh, Robin, I do apologize (grin). Truly, I didn’t wake up and say oh, goody, let’s turn Robin’s brain inside out today… But as I like to say, this is how it happens, you turn a corner of the internet and bam, there it is, something wonderful or surprising or deeply disturbing…….
For what it is worth, there truly is great beauty and humanity in these books. These are the books, along with Lord of the Rings, that solidified my faith in the possibility of true and deep friendship between men without the “excuses” that we impose on men in modern culture. Jack and Stephen spend pretty much their entire adult lives together and they love each other unconditionally. And they are not gay, there’s no sexual tension there, they are simply and purely friends who share themselves on nearly every psychological and emotional level. They are connected in the ways that I always hope to be with the people I love. They support each other, they anger each other, they forgive, they look with compassion upon each other’s weaknesses, they admire each other extremely, they work well as a team, they accept each other. And isn’t that the greatest gift we can give? To know someone so very well, and to accept them?
Itâs why I was horrified Kelley!!! I immediately knew I had been (what?) enlightened? Forced to reconsider a strongly held belief? I recall the first time I was slammed in such a way . . . when I realized that I could hold completely opposing ideas in my head and heart at the same time. I must have been 13 and starting junior high . I loved my brother (I have two!) but detested/hated/abhorred him as a drinker. I looked at him and knew I held these completely opposed views. The same when I realized my parents were never going to help him (or me). I was raised Catholic and as long as I lived in my parentâs house I had to go to confession on a pretty regular basis. Can I say how many times I âconfessedâ this hatred for my brother who was only a couple of years my senior? Or my rage at never being able to express the reasons for it??? It was a completely internal struggle for me for many, many years. Reconciling and integrating these opposing beliefs (still, on ongoing process) has been one of the great emotional accomplishments of my life. Reconciling any such set of conditions is the basis for what I call courage. It takes courage to be that brave. Itâs why I became a psychologist â my sense that everyone is born with the capability to discover their own self-hero, to become courageous and brave in the face of unspeakable odds. If Iâve been able to help one or two people find even part of that place for themselves then I am grateful and fulfilled. That Aubry and Stephen can provide me with yet another opportunity is fine by me. Anything which helps me understand what it means to be human . . .
As an aside, I would also like to give credit to this same âendangered white manâ brother for introducing me to The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings when I was much too young to understand them. With his help I worked my way through them anyway. I love/d them and love him for literally acting some of the characters out for me!
I wonât thank you for twisting me all up, but I will begrudgingly thank you for opening a door. I submit to being human one more day.
p.s. The Ackerman book is just stupendous . . . crack it open now and then and enjoy!!
What is it like to be you today?
“Itâs why I became a psychologist â my sense that everyone is born with the capability to discover their own self-hero, to become courageous and brave in the face of unspeakable odds.”
Robin, I love this, it’s fabulous. I too believe that courage lies in making these choices, living with these tensions, traveling through life towards our own centers, finding the will to return to some kind of balance and self-love and love of others again and again…. And it ain’t always easy. Honestly, sometimes it just sucks. Sometimes I think I find my greatest moments of courage not in the risks I take, but in the times that I just make myself stand in the balancing place and look at what is and find a way to make space for it within my picture of myself.
If you decide to read the books, I hope you enjoy them. I wonder what your brother would think if you read them?
Responding late to Karina — the thing that interests me is how many people think they cannot or should not be “many selves.” That it’s somehow weak or flawed. So many human cultures have this weird disconnect, an essential tension, that says on the one hand we should know who are and be that person (consistent, rational, thought-directed, emotionally linear…) — and on the other hand that we do have deep and unexplainable places in us that compel us to behave in ways that “aren’t like us.” The role of artists in our culture seems to be to “live” in those places so that normal stable people don’t have to. Or something.
The culture loves artists, sometimes reveres them, and also always expects them to be depressed and broken and flaky and amoral and selfish and yadda yadda. Oh, and crazy. With all that to live up to, who has time to actually make art?
Oh, absolutely. Artists are expected to be crazy. I believe one of the main reasons why I’m finally able to sit down and write my ass off is that there’s no high drama in my life. I spent years living in a vortex of depressed, amoral and all-those-things-you-mention “artists”, thinking that only roles I could play were “producer”, “therapist”, “crisis solver”. I had no energy or desire to create.
Thank goodness for time spent alone, then finding Esmeralda and being able to create a household where the biggest argument we’ve ever had was about how much space my books take up. We both dropped it when I offered to bring out the measuring tape and see how much space her furniture was using. Then I went back to writing and translating and she made me a big carrot cake.
I love my many selves. I just let the more balanced ones run the practical aspects of my life and create stories or blogs or poems for the rest to run around and indulge in mayhem and drama.