"Who's Afraid of Joan Didion?"

Who's Afraid of Joan Didion? I am.

“Grammar is a piano I play by ear.” 
― Joan Didion, Essays & Conversations

“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” 
― Joan Didion

“Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.” 
― Joan Didion, On Self-Respect

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” 
― Joan Didion, The White Album
Source:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/238.Joan_Didion


I've been afraid of Joan Didion since I was a kid.  Something she said about becoming obsessed with gruesome news; the need to run it down to the ends of the earth in order to stop fearing it--and the subsequent fact-based terror generated upon finding out that the actual truth is a lot scarier than anything you imagined.  This resonated a little too closely to my own inner life, even then.  From fearing her I got the mental image I place before me when I am serious about writing something that will get your attention: Strong, fierce, beautiful, skinny Joan, reaching outward and upward from the pages of The White Album with a vise-like, blue-veined, alabaster eagle's claw to snatch you into its fathomless depths and drown you in unbearable truth.  I opened that book in the middle, read a few lines, and came as close as I ever want to arrive at a panic attack.  I still don't know what's in it.  I am utterly certain that were I given the chance to explain, the lady would advise me never to read it; I already know what's there.

My fellow JD has had a life that everyone wants to know about, but no one wants to live, like Job.  Yes, beauty.  Yes, intellect.  Yes, brilliance and talent. That's the story we want to live.  It's the heartache and the calamity we desperately strive to avoid.  You want to know how Ms. Didion feels about it, not how it actually feels to lose a husband and a daughter; to wind up right back in the cruel company of life's worst vulnerabilities--bereft of the life and family you fought to create.  Death came, sudden and unexpected, to cut the anchor of her equilibrium without a thought.  Not a thought for fame.  Not a thought for beauty and elan.  Not a thought for what she may have been expecting.  Just the unbearable truth of life's unfairness.

Everybody wants to tell their story these days.  Storytelling as marketing.  Storytelling as trust-builder. Storytelling as tribe leader qualification.  Storytelling as blah, blah blah.

There's a problem with story-telling as a substitute for marketing, trust-building, or anything else.  That problem is the unalterable human need to embellish a tale.

Marketing stories hide the flaws in a product, brand, or service.  Trust-building stories leave out the character flaws of the storyteller. Tribe-leader stories obscure that person's capacity for leadership with a good story about leading people.  Self-promotional stories conflate our self-delusion with our need for a viable revenue stream, and misrepresentation is the result.  I'm all for a good story.  I just don't want it to replace the actual truth here on the interwebs.

I try to keep in mind that a web is a trap devised by a clever predator.  

We admire its beauty and ingenuity--until we find ourselves a prey, struggling to free ourselves from its sticky, silken threads.

I hope I look this fetching when I become as well-seasoned and long-lived as this woman.

Miss Joan, I don't know whom to credit for these photos of you.

Thanks for taking the time to read this blog.

#FriendsofMalachiMaxwellGlass