“In order to arrive at what you do not know / You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.” — T.S. Eliot, East Coker
A few weeks ago, I mentioned there is a danger in believing you already have all the information you’ll ever need. That posture biases your perception of the world, inhibiting you from looking with fresh eyes. This danger is never more present than in the creation of art. When you capture a subject with eyes that are wearied of it, it becomes blurred, bland, banal. People can tell when you’re not interested in the things you’re writing about. And if you’re not interested, why should they be?
This is an invitation to, occasionally, forget what you think you know about everything.
I won’t pretend it’s as simple as that. The process of forgetting what you know about your kitchen sink can be as ephemeral and mystifying as trying to hear the voice of God (more on that here). It is, however, essential to your job as a writer. It may seem an unfair burden, but you are expected to see through eyes of revelation and to transmit your holy vision to your readers to the extent that the constraints of language allow.
Ann Patchett, in her novel Bel Canto, demonstrates the power of being gifted eyes to see. The gift comes in the unlikely form of a terrorist occupation. The Vice President has been pistol-whipped for telling the truth. His cheek has split open. By the second chapter, it’s clear he needs medical attention. It’s within this context that his children’s governess is transformed.
“The girl… was coming down the stairs now with the square wicker box held under one arm. She would not have stood out among so many women dressed in evening wear. She was a country girl in a uniform, a black skirt and blouse, a white collar and cuffs, her dark, long braid, as big around as a child’s fist, sliding across her back with every step. But now everyone in the room looked at her, the way she moved so easily, the way she seemed completely comfortable, as if this was any other day in her life and she had a moment to finish some mending. Her eyes were smart, and she kept her chin up. Suddenly, the whole room saw her as beautiful, and the marble staircase she walked on shimmered in her light.”
The Vice President is moved to say her name, “Esmeralda.” Within the square wicker box, she carries the needle and thread that she will use to stitch the wound in her employer’s face, and this closeness, this vision of Esmeralda sticks with the Vice President throughout the book, returning to his thoughts over and over.
The problem with our old eyes is how much we take for granted. We are unwilling to be surprised. But who hasn’t experienced the joy (or horror) a revelation about someone we’ve known our entire lives can inspire? It is powerful. It turns friends into lovers. Relatives into demons. Mythology into history.
If I told you to picture a bison (incorrectly known as a buffalo). You would picture… a bison. Standing in a field. Chewing grass.
So what?
Here’s how Hernan Diaz handles an immigrant laying eyes on bison for the first time in his novel In the Distance:
“It seemed to Håkan that these beasts were made out of two different bodies ineptly put together. Their hind legs and quarters were positively equine — slender and toned — but with the last rib began a transformation, and, as if nature had changed its mind halfway through it, the animal swelled in a stupendous, monstrous fashion, suddenly becoming thicker and taller. Its back rose steeply and abruptly, leading to a head so massive (could that dense, anvil-solid block of bone that seemed impenetrable even to sound contain a brain or any flesh at all?) that, compared to the animal’s smaller back end, it seemed to have been dreamed onto the rest of the body. Below a pair of sharp horns, a pair of black eyes had been bored into either side of the skull.”
Diaz forces you to look at an image you think you know how to see through the eyes of someone who is not yet numb to it1. He’s world-building, but the elements from which he constructs his story are elements with which we think ourselves familiar.
I won’t quote any more passages, but the entire book Autumn by Karl Ove Knausgaard is filled with short essays that manage to peer under the veil and see the wonder that indwells mundane minutiae. There are chapters on tin cans, teeth, plastic bags, and piss and they are all rendered with a surprising tenderness one would not expect given the subject matter. It’s a masterclass in the art of making all things new.
Art is meant to do more than convey information. It is not a mere vehicle to travel from thought A to thought B. Good art takes the downtrodden and overlooked world and redeems it for full value, casting its diffuse light over the curtains that hold your lover’s silhouette, describing a mystery that cannot be grasped. For this reason, we should approach our subject matter with care. If we cannot see the splendor within the horrors of this world, we have no business writing about it.
Admittedly, his entry into and out of the parenthetical reads a little clumsily to me, even after reading it several times.
Double-vision is the ticket, right? That's something the marks good writing across forms and across faith—it elevates Christian writers but also in avowed atheists like John Banville.
Love this, Dan! An old boss I had a few years back really encouraged Beginner’s Mind when we approached new projects and that mindset has crept into my every day life, too, which I am immensely grateful for!