I used to identify as a fiction writer. I only wanted to invent stories not report them, so much so that I spent good money on grad school for an irrelevant creative writing MFA and dropped jobs regularly to perform the proper hermitage required to produce large blocks of frivolous freaky (beautiful!) texts for books and magazines. Then kids happened—apoptosis!—and that all went by the wayside. Part of this “block” is due to obstacles I’ve covered here (lack of logistical means and brain space), but another part involves the question of mattering.
Once babies emerged from my EasyBake Oven, the ego combusted. No more was there just “me”; I was now a collective consciousness with little room for any assertion of self artistically. What would be the point? The art would have to be incredible and speak to generations upon generations, now that the whole world and all of its future (or demise!) was automatically absorbed into my household and immediate care through these drooling babies. Art for art’s sake wouldn’t cut it, and who has the time.
Not that I wasn’t productive. I’ve been writing tons through these 16 or so years (the age of my eldest), but there’s a difference. It’s for money, it’s for work (money), or it’s for a purpose. I’m writing with results rather than just for the sake of it. With intention. Utilitarian.
For the last four years, in my day job life, I’m serving as the assistant to the Town Supervisor. His real title is “Problem Solver,” which is not only on top of his car in a sign with his phone number like a pizza delivery but on a nearly-life size wooden cut out behind my desk, pointing people into his office and urging the distraught citizens with issues to “call us anytime.” And they do. But behind the politician there is the person and behind that there’s me, scrambling to bring to magical fruition the 1,000 schemes he’s hatched or said yes to. And he says yes to everyone. I happily hide behind the curtain and columnize the yeses in a spreadsheet, or write the pleading letter on behalf of so-and-so citizen to some other agency that can actually help them, or try, mostly unsuccessfully, to reign him in, or—gasp—say no.
I made peace with the alluring pap of social media when I decided to just stop caring. Friend everyone who’s not a friend but only enter with intention (never boredom and scrolling), when I’m on a mission. Treat it as a useful tool—whether I’m buying/selling used whatevers on Marketplace, or posting for the sake of crowd-sourcing information, spreading the word on an event I’m hosting (hint hint), or, of course, sharing self-indulgent links to one of these essays. (There is an inch of ego still left in me, for what purpose an essay written if no readers?)
One of these essays—which has scratched an itch like no other writing pursuit I’ve had, by the way, to follow my heart and head here to wherever I please each week, but with purpose—was obsessively exploring the unsolved story surrounding the word I got tattooed on me through participating in author Shelley Jackson’s enticing and now (20+ years later) apparently abandoned Skin Project. I explored that exhaustively there, but I wasn’t exhausted enough to stop. In summary, Shelley wrote a 2,095 word story that will only exist on different people via tattoo, word by word around the world. What started in 2003-2004 seemed to have hit a wall by 2007-2010. It was a very wide wall that endures to this day. I’d love to think she had kids—a very relatable excuse—but it’s not that. In any case, she jumped ship on the project, without admitting as much, so in her wake there’s all these folks out there who got a tattoo but never got the accompanying story as promised (contracted!), or all these “accepted” applicants who never got their words, and all these homeless words that never got assigned a person. So the story is woefully unfinished and now we’re talking decades not years and Shelley, much to the orphaned inked words’ dismay, only occasionally diddles in the snow on Instagram (“a story, weather permitting”).
Because I do my requisite rudimentary, utilitarian social media sharing, I put the tattoo story links on various group pages that have some disgruntled “words” gathering on them (i.e. people who tattooed themselves for this project and often never heard boo) on Facebook and Reddit and elsewhere. Someone commented on my post of June 2023 that I should pitch this saga to so-and-so famous podcast because they have been known for years to dive deep and thoughtfully into resolving matters that deserve closure. Why not? I wanted to do whatever it took to Problem Solve the heck out of hundreds of ignored experimentees and their hard-inked pains. I wrote the show an email. I guess it was a pitch? But that’s a funny concept to me because I don’t like public speaking—or pitching. I’m a writer and am best communicating through keyboard, yet I really thought this might be helpful (and cool). Another brick thrown at Shelley’s wall to finally shake her silence. Over a year later, long after I had forgotten, the senior producer responded with apologies that they had been on hiatus while searching for a new home for their podcast for however long, which they now have, and they’d like to talk to me if I’m still around and interested in pursuing this. Hell ya. (And secretly oh no!)
At first, as I told the producer, it would be a nice outcome to get the author to acknowledge us, her “words,” to say something, to admit some chagrin that she majorly dropped the ball. But now, I don’t think I care about her sorry, and it seems petty and whiny like waiting for language from someone when you can sooner find your own healing independently of them. It’s not what she can do to make me/us feel better, it’s about what we “words” can do if we get together and pool our collective power. If the podcast brings attention to this, and to this absurd aborted (beautiful!) project, could the “words” rise up and get this done ourselves? Could we have the closure of completing this somehow? Take over the many thousands of emails that clogged her inbox and the precious stamped paper production that never got sent. More interestingly, to be artistic in viewpoint, which is the point, could the word-revolt be part of Shelley’s plan? The mortality of the words were built into the scheme (she vowed she would attend our funerals!) but also perhaps is the expected, inevitable revolt of the words to reform their own sentences. Was this all part of the design, individuals coming into our own, conjoining into clumps, rejecting our author and taking back the story?
The senior producer came to my house today, very tall woman, podcast logo on her coat, with a huge long puff of a microphone, and a laptop set up, from which I would videochat with the host comfortably from my living room couch. But I wasn’t comfortable. I was hunched over and so nervous that my face still can’t relax hours later. He’s out in the Midwest somewhere. Would my nervous shy visage be a part of this? No, said the producer. Thank goodness. Cuz, you know, “Don’t Look at Me” is my schtick and what I just wrote about last week. All audio only, but the video is helpful behind the scenes to bond with my interviewer. And boy did he interview, for two hours. I had to immediately detox from the stress of such prolonged performance art with a very sugar-rich Lime-a-Rita alcoholic drink from my corner bodega. To be a writer at heart and not a speaker for show means I immediately have regrets. In writing, you can go back here and edit indefinitely. Words launched from my mouth though are uncatchable. Oh how I could have said this or that. I should have mentioned this. I emailed the producer five times within 10 minutes of leaving my house with screenshots and better language. Poor producer.
I don’t mean to be cagey in hiding the title of this thrilling podcast that miraculously finds this quest I shared fascinating, but the fact is, it may never happen. All this effort might not result in an actual show if they can’t get the ultimate Author hidden behind the Skin Project to participate, since we’re not here to just bash Shelley one-sided in the dark. It’s a closure podcast. They gotta close it first before they officially get started. I’m honored, just beside myself. Quite literally. Outside of myself. And madly sending them documents and contacts to help their search happen.
I’m thrilled to potentially play a role in achieving some resolution for so many people who feel hurt, dismissed, angry, and abandoned. To have been the piece of annoying sand (the most annoying!) that might prove to become the pearl in time.
I will write fiction again someday when the coast is clear, and by that I don’t mean removing this sand but letting it run through my fingers, looking at it very closely to see how each grain is its own exquisite tiny rock. And each rock will have to matter.
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Word here. I recall the origin of the project being something like a living hyperlink - we'd each be out in the world existing in our unique ways and the word that was first a part of a sentence within a specific work created by a specific author would come to have a life of its own similar to clicking a hyperlink in a we page and jumping to a new page with new content revealed - in that way, the creator of the piece is no longer needed to drive or contain the project, because we're all multitudes in our meanings and abundant in our experiences of being words with layers upon layers of meaning. I do sometimes wonder if Shelley ever did attend a word's funeral as posited in her original plan. But I don't feel at all like this project is abandoned - its just expanded beyond its original frame - rather than some kind of collection of 404 page not found broken links
Love this push to wrap up this mystery, and your words, spoken as well as written, are smart and worthy. Hope to hear you on air!