Thoughts on writing an autobiography:

One thing is certain, you have to be a legend, before you write about one-even your own. I liked Johnny Cash’s book, “Cash on Cash”. He already was Cash. He didn’t need to invent himself. The readers knew him. He just wanted to help them read between the lines of his life to see more.
My favorite autobiographies are more like cubist collages, where you can open at any page, and meet the same person at different moments or stages on their journeys.
I’m currently, trying to make a collage like that about my own book of my life. It’s not as easy as it appears!
In my case, so many cities, places, faces, nations, bridges and parks, and seemingly supernatural moments which settled right into the natural.
It’s hard when writing a book, not to give just the highlights. I find the lowlights work better for implying the highlights.
For me, yes there was being at 911, living in Jerusalem and talking a man off a bridge in Paris using art. Things like that. Or getting arrested for being a clown, while carrying a bible. But those are just the iceberg showing off above the surface of the water. The real story is beneath the water.
I’m amazed to have lived my life. It still gives me wonder, not only that I am here, but that I survived my own story.
Some people, seem to need to invent themselves. That has not been my case. I am, therefore I have an interesting story. In truth, I think all people are, not just have, interesting stories. All worth reading forever, I’m sure.
We must by now all be part of God’s grand library where He pulls out a book for His own pleasure to read by firelight on certain evenings.
But some of us are compelled to try to piece together and share our own stories while on earth. Not sure why yet. But for me, I am, therefore I must express it.
Maybe biographies are closer to the truth than autobiographies. We aren’t really objective about our own stories, as we are still living them; and, in some sense, we are untrustworthy narrators. And yet, we are compelled to tell our own stories. And hopefully they will help others live theirs better—with more honesty and integrity or at least authenticity.
Our stories, unlike popular post modern beliefs, do have beginnings, middles and endings, or at least ellipses at the end, as we trail off into our after death unknown chapters. But I still believe in grand narratives, not just for the universe, but for each person. Each person was born, lived a life and dies. And the whole story reveals who they really were and are—somehow forever.
True stories are when you can see our deeper selves poking out from behind our masks and personas we hide from the world and God with—our false or invented selves we try to project our real selves with. I like true stories, but you can often read a person, by the type of mask they chose to wear.
Did they wear rock star, spiritual guru, noble pauper or powerful king….which mask we chose from wardrobe reveals and maybe even reflects who we think we are, or how we think we need to protect that inner name or identity.
When we write our stories, we find what we have been hiding behind most of our lives; or what version of ourselves we chose to show the world-either for approval, acceptance, or more basically, to feel that we exist or matter in life.
The best autobiographies are more like interviews with our inner or deeper selves. Sometimes the interview is conducted or facilitated by our outer personas—the mask interviews the real inner self; other times, we let someone else, like a friend who really know us, interview us, as in Nike Cave’s recent book, which he calls an interview.
Maybe interviews like this are the truest way to speak or converse or dialogue deep to deep or face to face, as they say. I’m not sure.
But as a fan of people, I like to know the real person behind the mask, as that is who I really find I love. Love penetrates into the depths as they say.
In fact, love is the only way of really knowing something. Love is the only true epistemology to put it in philosophical terms!
I am both known by Love and know by loving. St John taught us at least that much in his gospel and letters.
In that book, speaking of it, my favorite keyholes are Jeremiah, King David and Paul-as they all revealed more of their real selves as part of what they had to say. Their biographies were part of their message.
I want to write a book like that, where my life, as David put it, becomes a portent or symbol of whatever I have to say about it.
My thesis is simple. We have identities and stories which are treasured by God. We have names because God is the Father of all names, as Paul put it. We are all loved not generically, but by name. Loved by name is the sermon, I carry—a celebration of identity. Or as Thomas Merton put it—“A tree praises God by being a tree, why not we!” True identity itself is a testimony about and written by God. He knit us together in the womb, before we knew our own names, and therefore gave us a meaningful story to live out” (Ephesians 2:10, my paraphrase).
But the facts of what I carry. The idea or the thesis isn’t as same as the story. The story of my life, is the thesis. The thesis is like the afterthought.
My writer friends tell me, it is difficult to find your real voice, so that you are not just imitating, but it is even harder to keep it. That may be true.
Our deeper selves are elusive in certain seasons of life; and most of my writer friends have to hide away from the world for a while to stay “in their voice” long enough to write a book, or even a poem in my case. And yet, our real names want to pronounce themselves, our inner narrator wants to tell our stories.
Sometimes to write or make art in general, we need to see another artist, and think, I could do that. I could tell my story, and could paint from me real self. Others are so advanced in knowing their voice, that they intimidate us beginners.
But if the spiritual literature is true, we must become like kids or beginners to learn anything about real life, including our own.
Then, writing, becomes like prayer or expression or trying to express from our authentic selves, becomes an encounter with God.
I suppose that is the real reason for writing or making art, to meet and know and be known by The Great Author, who wrote us, and will one day place us on the shelves of the greatest library ever, where every book cherished and read and re-read forever.
In the meantime, I’ll keep trying to write mine, or listening to the Editor as it is being written.
Mine is like a series of collaged poetical prose short stories, or a cubist painting, or more like a Chagall painting, where everything is floating with equal weight pointing towards the same Reality. Or maybe it is one written on receipts and bathroom walls across the planet, and must be pieced together by angels later. But for now, I will try to gather my tales, and make them as tall as they need to be to be True.