Why does a man leave a career as a Brooklyn patrolman to become a Trappist monk?
At first, Brother Patrick said this was a tough question. But then he confessed it was actually the answer that wasn’t easy.
And so begins another beautiful character study in Blue Highways, by William Least Heat-Moon.
I’ve reflected on that exchange between Heat-Moon and Brother Patrick a lot.
Stories, at least the better ones, rise out of uncertainties and complexities, twists and turns. It’s when we have to wrestle, reflect, test, ask, seek and debate that we rely on language and logic to help us work things out.
It is the unresolved and unresolvable that fuels creativity and art. It’s never “the facts” or one-dimensional ideologies or simple answers. Yet we expend an inordinate amount of energy trying to eliminate, or at least reduce, the complexities and tensions in our lives.
It is why blogs, books and courses built on prescriptions are so popular and attractive. We seem desperate to feel in control and in the right.
And even though offering prescriptions and answers can build a thriving platform and offer a decent living, it very rarely makes good art.
Stories hide where the unresolved thrives.
I think the artist’s job isn’t to solve or simplify. The artist’s job is to achieve clarity and offer access.
Consider gossip. With gossip, we take something simple—a true story—and place a facade of complexity over it, which clouds the truth and blocks others access to it. Or we take something complex—something we don’t truly understand (like string theory or theology)—and place a facade of simplicity over it, which also prevents clarity and blocks others access to it.
Clarity is a pursuit of truth and genius. The truth offers us access to the simple. Genius offers us access to the complex.
For those of us who are writers, artists and creative types, we most often work within the realm of mystery, trying to capture the human experience.
And the human experience is complicated and messy. There are no straight lines or easy-to-explain cause and effects. Many things linger unresolved in life—relationships, careers, health, the future.
As artists, our job isn’t to resolve, fix and tidy up. It is to bring clarity to the unresolvable tensions in life.
I believe this is why our entire body of work tends to hover around one or two themes. For me, I can’t seem to escape the themes of identity and place.
Which is why I’m in a continual search for people and places with complicated, wandering and wondering answers. Like Brother Patrick.
For me, when someone says, “It’s complicated,” I lean in and listen.
That’s where the best stories hide.
From May 2012 to July 2013, I wrote a weekly series of intimate essays for writers and artists seeking a deeper connection with their identity and place as modern creatives. I called this series Root Notes. This was an essay in that series. It was originally published on July 14, 2013.