On art and how it's not that personal once you share it
Why making your art is a good idea and you don't have to fear reviews :: ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED On july 14th 2022
Can You Turn The Lights Off is much more than a memoir. Yes, the book is made out of my stories (36 of them), but it is really an ode to destroying and deconditioning several systems of oppression out of our nervous systems.
It is an opportunity to examine how we don’t give ourselves permission to be ourselves, and it gives us that slip if we want it. It’s a book of deep acknowledgement for our experiences. A chance to see ourselves clearly. A kind and loving mirror. A portal of opportunity to transmute pain and own our truths.
I have been asked often how I feel since the book got to be available to everyone on the planet 6 days ago.
One, I have a bit of delayed processing (hello autism), so sometimes I don’t know how I feel about something for a long time. Until it’s very very very quiet and it’s just me and my body again. And these past 6 days have been quite loud.
And the truthful answer to that question is (at least right now)… not that much different. So it’s a bit anti climactic. I had already had a great deal of early readers, which was a really smart choice, because I am used to people reading the book on their own timelines, forming a relationship with the book and then reporting back, without my control of things. Without trying to control how they experience it or what they are thinking.
BUT, I will say, the first time I shared the book with one of my best friends, I couldn’t sleep and I cried for nearly 48 hours because I was so scared I was going to get in trouble. I was so scared she would share it with people without my knowledge and that I’d get in BIG BIG trouble.
This was at the very tip top of 2021. I have done A LOT of work to feel safe being seen and I have spent many a therapy sessions (and many a dollar) working on uncoupling that the truth = severe punishment/ potential death over the last year and a half.
Now I can say I feel pretty neutral about it all. I also know that we like books based on what we are going through, who we are, and what we want permission for.
There is a part in the chapter Big Magic in the book, where I call this out. I’ve been told it makes the reader feel really seen, but in some ways, uncomfortably so, because they think they are just reading my story until they realize they’ve been interacting with my story from their perspective and it’s actually quite personal after all. We like art based on us. Not based on the artists we are consuming.
That is so mad as a concept right? Especially when you’re an artist yourself - hard to understand…It’s so not personal.
In fact, I talk a lot of creativity and art and God in the book if this interests you as a creative.
Here is where you can buy the book.
I read this book my friend Hillary suggested this week. It was a queer novel called Written In Our Stars. She rated it 10/10 and she said I must read it. So obviously, I was curious. But I ended up rating it only 8.5/10. And that was being generous of me. I loved reading it though because I really got to know Hillary on a deeper, more intimate level. I could see and understand why this book meant so much to her. Why she felt so seen by it. It made me feel compassion and also sadness for her. I don’t struggle with the same exact things she does - so the book wasn’t as much of a heart tug for me. But last week, I read Book Lovers, by Emily Henry, and the whole book is basically about an older sibling who takes on the parent role for her younger sibling and works her ass off, but everyone judges her for being a workaholic, but she just HAD TO BE TO SURVIVE AND NO ONE GETS THAT, and I loved that book because it made me feel so seen, and I gave it 10/10. Would Hillary? Probably not. She said she liked it too - Book Lovers - but she didn’t gush about it the way she did Written In Our Stars.
But this doesn’t mean either of us are better critics than the other. In fact, we read about the same amount - averaging a book a week. We like the same genres (I like a bit more political books than she does sometimes, and she probably reads more self-help than I do nowadays), but still. We have a lot of overlap. We have similar levels of intelligence, believe more or less the same things, have very common values, but we are fundamentally different people with different experiences and histories. Thus, what art we gravitate to is going to be different and what we will give a glowing 10/10 rating will be dependent more on our own histories than the actual art itself.
And this is why, I don’t really freak out about people loving or hating or even being indifferent to my book.
People who need to be seen by the elements I have written about, are going to be head over heels in love with my book. They will be the gushers. They will evangelize the shit out of this book. I love those people so much. If you are on this list, and you’ve interacted with my work before, you are probably one of those people who will feel seen by Can You Turn The Lights Off?
And people who don’t require to be seen in the themes of my book, will be like yeah it was alright I guess. Or they won’t even pick it up. I understand those people.
People who will be triggered by me, will surely hate the book or they will complain about me to no end - critique me, find what’s wrong with me, etc. I have compassion for these people. I often get triggered by Glennon Doyle because I hate how she speaks about her kids in public sometimes (tweeting stuff like-and I paraphrase because I do not feel like going to fetch the tweet - a man asked me and Abby if we wanted to trade seats on the plane to sit beside our kids, as if this wasn’t intentional. LIKE STFU GLENNON, that’s not funny.) And how she handled springing a new step mom onto her kids - in my perception - too quickly. I would have punched Abby Wambach in the fuckin’ face if I were her kids. But that’s MY shit. My unresolved trauma around my parent’s divorce and how my mom moved on so quickly and I had to share her with people who weren’t my dad and people in general that weren’t guaranteed to be permanent. It’s not about Glennon, yet I have complained about her when I actually really like her art. It’s about me. It’s about all the parts of me that felt less than priority to my parents - second.
So here is my message for you today: MAKE YOUR ART.
Not only will it save your life…
But also once you share it, it’s not even about you anymore.
You can let that go.