The Unprotected Life

PHOTOGRAPH BY PETER MARLOW / MAGNUM

The following was delivered as the commencement address at the author’s alma mater, Woodberry Forest School, on May 22, 2015.

There is a dream, a type of dream, a category of dreams, known as the Actor’s Nightmare. The Actor’s Nightmare is the dream of standing naked on a stage, alone and unprotected in the play, alone in the lights, unsure of one’s lines, unsure of the story at all. We’ve likely all had this dream, in one form or another, at some point in our lives, maybe when confronting something frightening or difficult in waking life. The Actor’s Nightmare needn’t be concerned with acting or the theatre in a literal sense; it can be shocking in any of its forms. We all have our own versions. I recall an especially convincing installment. This took place some years ago. I was already in middle age, a working writer for a long time by then, living in New York, holding it together, with books behind me and books to come. But I dreamed one night that I got a letter in the mail. I hadn’t finished at Woodberry. I had an uncompleted math requirement, and had to return to the Walker Building, move into my old room on B-dorm, study calculus, and pick a sport. My girlfriend couldn’t come along, and my hard-won accomplishments were not, it turned out, germane; I was not ready, it seemed, to be a citizen of the world.

I came to Woodberry—awake, I mean, by the light of day—in 1975, forty years ago this coming fall. Woodberry was a new world to me, as it must have been for you, in your own ways, when you first arrived—I am speaking directly to the Class of 2015 now—even those of you whose fathers and brothers and uncles graduated from the school. When I got here, I had no confidence, and I was anxious. I started off with low grades that got lower. But my teachers didn’t give up on me. It was here that I began to read on my own—to really read. I found out that I could handle the workload. I was a reasonably good soccer goalie. I made friendships.

We share this place, you and I. We’ve lived—and live—under the honor code; we’ve been to chapel; and we’ve all had to walk past Mr. Reimers to get into the dining hall. I’m not from that far back in time.

Perhaps this is a moment to take you in hand and speak across that time, to assure you that great challenges await, that technology will be confounding and marvelous, but that the weather will be bad, and that the need for war will forever only barely be trumped by compassion and sense; and that evil is real, and that your generation will see change at every level, more and more of it catastrophic in nature, at a scale and at a rate that will be unprecedented and unmanageable through any but the most globally unified, conscious effort. We need you, because the world beyond this place is in trouble.

But you know this. You have a sense of things. You get the same news I do, and I’d only be reminding you to put on serious faces. I can’t see into your future, or protect you from what might come.

Here’s a story of the unprotected life. In 2005, I finished writing a book about my mother’s life and death, a hard story to write and to live with, and, during the writing, I was in grief and anxiety. My mother was a severe alcoholic, and had been dead only a year when I began. It wasn’t enough time, and I felt, as the manuscript grew, that, in telling this family story, I was doing something shameful, and that, surely, punishment was in store. The book took years to write—I had to run from it, and then creep back, and then run from it and come back, again and again; I was in doubt all the time—and, after finally turning it in to the publisher, I fell apart. I went into a depression, and spent a long time in a suicidal state. When the book came out, I was in a psychiatric hospital. I was unable to read the reviews, because I couldn’t make sense of the words. Everything hurt—even moving my eyes—and my beard was wild, and I slept only on large doses of tranquilizers, and then only for little stretches each night; and I could see that the friends who came to visit were scared when I couldn’t pick up or put down a cup, or walk a straight line in my socks down the hall. My nervous system was dying—depression is a disease with a natural history—and when I looked in the mirror I saw a monster’s face. It went on a long time, and I believed that I would never leave hospitals.

I remember a nurse. She accompanied me on long, shuffling walks, up and down the ward. She nodded her head while I wept. I didn’t want to die. Had they unlocked the doors, though, I’d have run out and been lost. I would have been unable to stop myself. She told me that the doctors would never give up, that they wouldn’t quit if I wouldn’t, none of them would.

One day, I felt more air in my chest, a little more balance in movement, clarity coming back, and on our afternoon walk I described this to the nurse. The hospital is on the Hudson River, and I remember looking out a window and seeing the George Washington Bridge in the distance. She said, “That’s right. We heard it earlier this week. We heard it in your voice. We can hear it before you even know. You’re coming through.”

I was alive. For a long time, though—for years—I did not write. It was enough to be restored, and I deeply and sincerely regretted ever writing at all. I’d seen what it could do, what my own choices, my own work, had done to me. I was afraid of what I might write, and afraid, too, that, were I to sit down to it, were I to try, I would only learn that I was broken, and that it was no longer possible for me to bring out a word.

I agonize. I feel stupid and lost. I leave trash piled on my desk so that I can’t get to work. Each thing I finish seems like it may be the last thing I’ll ever finish. But if I can see a place or a person; if, in words and sentences, I can build one piece of the world, or show something in the manner and disposition of characters in their lives; and if I understand that my characters are both me and not me, that their places are mine and theirs equally, then a story can begin.

Why do I write? It took me a long time to come to it. I didn’t write in school or college—it seemed out of reach, too distant, too unlikely, too big a thing to really take on. But I think I knew that it was what I wanted to do. I think I knew this at Woodberry, though, had you asked me about it back then, back here, I would have been cagey. I come from a long line of professors and teachers, people who exalted art, and I simply did not feel entitled to imagine a life as a writer. I kept my desire secret, and I didn’t write any stories, and even my papers for class were labored and brief.

Do you have something that you keep to yourself, something that won’t go away, or that causes some feeling to occur, but that you are maybe afraid to talk about, to imagine or openly pursue? Do you have an idea that you fear other people, even your own family, might not understand or appreciate? Do you have something that you are afraid to look into, that seems off limits? Do you have something that you protect?

I write because writing is the hardest work I’ve ever done. It is slow and painstaking and frustrating. I do not begin with an idea or a theme, and I don’t make outlines. I don’t have a plan for the ending or, usually, for the next page or the next line. Even short pieces might take shape over years. Everything that I have ever seen, done, or felt, had, shared, or lost, is in play, and the word of the day is, on most days, confusion.

But there is also love. I don’t know what else to call it. I love my people. Their predicaments are contingent on my own, and their world is a kaleidoscopic version of this one. They are made of signs and symbols; they are abstractions, and yet can seem real; they do work; they live and suffer, and, in their choices and their actions, they build and become bridges between their author and the reader—one mind to another, one soul to another.

I no longer regret writing, or the life I have made along the way. I’ve learned too much and come too far, and I am in pursuit of an art form. It took a long time, and a lot of work, to get to this point, and I will never find an end to it. I have a problem that can keep me busy for the rest of my life. I have something to look forward to.

It need not be writing. It need not be art. You are here—we are here—to honor your accomplishments, your accomplishment. Some of you, or maybe all of you, had your difficulties getting through this place. Maybe you came here thinking, as I did, that you weren’t sure you’d be able to keep up. When you leave here, when you move on, remember what it feels like to discover a talent or a skill, to push yourself in any way—and don’t lie back. I know what kind of education you have—I know how strong it is—and I know that, for many of you, the next stages may seem, in comparison with Woodberry, like easy passages.

I wish, for each of you, a life in which your work engages you in ways that express trust, empathy, and generosity. I hope that you make a life that brings joy. I hope that your future accomplishments will come, as this one has, your graduating from this school, with a certain amount of difficulty. I hope that you will be faced with difficult choices and decisions, trials that won’t undo you, but that will drive you toward reflection and understanding. Trust that your fears will sometimes tell you about your desires. You will see that you can survive the terror that comes with growth and change, with vulnerability and risk. Depend on others. My story of the hospital is not only one of ordeal and survival—it is a story of people taking care of people. You will not thrive without the people who love you. Many are here today, and there will be others. Take care of them—the people here now, the people to come—and allow yourself your ambitions, no matter how unlikely. Think twice before giving up a dream, even if the dream becomes, on some dark night, your Actor’s Nightmare.

And now, if you will excuse me, I have a math test later, and no idea what’s going to be on it.