Newsletter from Jay Wilcox - August 2020: On Dichotomies and Identity
Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening!
I have been described as structured. At a party years ago, a friend of a friend said that everything in my life seemed very regimented--that I came across as a follower of schedules and routines. Naturally, I attributed his remarks to malice. Who in our culture wants to be described as structured? Do we not desire to be exciting? If I'm an organized, predictable person, that must mean I hold less value in the country of Hollywood blockbusters and impulsive foreign policy.
I jest about this person's malice, of course. Still, we often assess people in terms of dichotomies--smart versus dumb, logical versus creative, athletic versus whatever-the-hell-I-was-in-fifth-grade. Describing me as structured speaks to opposite adjectives, words like creative and spontaneous. It raises me up on one side of a seesaw and leaves me weightless, insubstantial, seated opposite the artistic types.
Yes, my life is structured. But is there not a difference between starting a fire and building a fire? My daily writing schedule channels energy and light, drawing my flame upward through interwoven habits and sustaining me even when I don't feel like working. I write today because I wrote yesterday. If this sounds dry--like it's totally opposite the sexy spontaneity of our archetypal creative--consider that even Jackson Pollock planned his paintings. Structure produces. Routines get results, and completing any sort of creative project requires a certain degree of structured squareness.
What sits opposite squareness on the seesaw?
I write to explore the either/or of interpersonal judgments. We're often quick with stark binaries, labeling each other--and ourselves--left-brain or right-brain, morning-person or night-person, athletic or totally-horrible-at-sports. I went to school with countless STEM students who scoffed at poetry, as well as English majors who boasted about their lack of math skills. Thinking in binaries encourages us to push down the other side of the seesaw, raising ourselves higher by externalizing our opposites and suppressing their worth. Binaries sit us far apart from a whole half of our brains.
In painting, colors acquire realistic shadow and depth by incorporating their opposites--red darkens with green, blue with orange. How does a person become similarly real? How does our understanding of assumed opposites shape the wider world? In politics, our discourse has boiled down to a basic, brutal binary: If you're not with me, you're against me. We gleefully throw babies out with bathwater and eliminate imperfect allies, outlining new enemies with hasty monochromes. We've all but lost our surprising politicians. We like seeing bipartisan bills but so often curse compromisers.
Maybe binaries were made to be blended. Whether you're electing a representative or finding a life partner or just looking deeply inward, consider the strength of an incorporated opposite. The cold, hard study of neurobiology can make us warmer friends. Reading fiction builds the requisite empathy for our awesome technological age, elevating us above our embittered social-media personas. This matters now more than ever. Writing by hand matters. A pen these days might seem the opposite of efficiency, but maybe words matter extra if they take extra time.
Going back to one of my earlier points, spontaneity is not squareness's opposite. The latter makes the former possible, in the same sense that practicing an instrument allows one to later improvise. Similarly, the best painters need some degree of geometric reasoning--and even if your ambition isn't to craft a masterpiece, you're still better at math than you think. You're more than capable of every opposite, every small but significant surprise.
Infinite Regards,
Jay