A State of Grace: Writing, Dancing and Torture: by Elizabeth Stark

There’s a period between handing over the latest iteration of a work and hearing what the reader makes of it that I think of as a sort of Zen torture. Someone once told me that not knowing was a state of grace. In that case, most of us are in a state of grace about some significant thing much of the time.

Not knowing is a state of grace.

What happens to me in that state of grace is that I stop knowing. That seems redundant to say, but it’s shocking to live through. Whatever clarity of mind and years of experience brought me to the point where I was willing to hand over the draft—and I’ll be the first to admit that there’s always some measure of just needing to be rid of it for a while mixed in with the sweat, tears and fine-tooth-combing through sentences—whatever sense of purpose, drive and ability got me here in the first place, all of these vanish.

I am now only a suspended thing. I long to live in the country, where space is a defining factor, inside and out. I picture a long path outside my back door. Bicycling to a spot where the farmers put out fresh organic eggs and a metal coffee can for the money you leave in exchange.

In reality, there are sirens in the distance. I wake up at three in the morning and can’t get back to sleep, so I tell myself the story of my book, scene by scene. I mean to write a letter to myself before I hear back, to connect to my own sense of the book. What do I love about it? What do I think still needs work?

Last night my mother took me to see Michelle Shocked sing. The last time I saw her perform was in Santa Cruz twenty or more years ago. She looked exactly the same. Same body, same clothes, same twinkling eyes, same haircut. More miraculous, she had the same politics. She had said, that earlier decade, “Singing is like politics; it’s too important to leave to the professionals.”

Last night she called four volunteers to the stage one at a time and each led us in a song, those old, moving, sincere folk songs that connect me to my deepest values, my strongest sense of spirit and to every other person in the room. Then she sang some of her old songs, the ones that connect me to being nineteen years old and full of desire and nostalgia. Yes, I was born nostalgic. If anything, it’s decreased with age, which has firmly rooted me in the logistics of the dishwasher and the day. But last night I was nostalgic again, as if I were young.

After a little “rally” about foreclosures and the occupy movement, she tried to lift the room by persuading a young woman to come up on stage and dance. The woman, who was a dancer, resisted, and when she finally went up, she did not know what to do, quite, and blushed. She was joined by two other women who’d been dancing in the back of the audience—one of them my 70-year-old mother—and together with Michelle Shocked, the four kicked up quite a show.

In the end, the best I can do while I’m waiting is to dance, to sing old songs, to allow the next book to take seed in tiny ways, and to clean up the kitchen in between. And remember that I’ll be nostalgic for this time by and by, these days of floating in an unbearable state of grace.

Elizabeth Stark is the author of the novel Shy Girl (FSG, Seal Press) and co-director and co-writer of several short films, including FtF: Female to Femme and Little Mutinies (both distributed by Frameline). She earned an M.F.A. from Columbia University in Creative Writing. Currently the lead mentor and teacher at the Book Writing World, she’s taught writing and literature at UCSC, Pratt Institute, the Peralta Colleges, Hobart & William Smith Colleges and St. Mary’s College. She’s at work on a novel about Kafka.