Thinking through things
In class last week, we talked a lot about the classic writing workshop distinction between showing and telling, and read Mark Doty’s essay, “Still Life with Oysters and Lemon” in which he tells us: “To think through things, that is the still life painter’s work— and the poet’s.”
Doty’s emphasis here is on things. It’s not that painters and poets (and, I’d argue, all writers) think things through; it’s that they think about ideas by thinking through the things — the actual stuff — that’s all around them and describing (or showing) that stuff. Doty goes on to call this “a tangible vocabulary," where the stuff becomes “containers of feeling and experience, memory and time,” and he writes about how a four hundred year-old still life painting at the Met Museum causes him to reconsider his own feelings about intimacy and independence.
I didn’t go to the Met Museum to look at paintings this week. I didn’t have to, because a visual gift from the gods dropped straight in to my lap and I have not been able to stop thinking about it since:
One of the things I talk about as a writing teacher is the imagined reader of your writing. Who are you writing for and what can you assume they know? Can I reasonably expect you to know who either or both of the men in this photo are? Could I assume that you, like I do, follow them both on Instagram? (Do you even know what Instagram is?) Or maybe you follow neither of them specifically but are an avid reader of People magazine? (Do you even know what People magazine is?) Maybe you’re a Deadhead or a Watch What Happens Live viewer, or maybe you have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about.
Shall we do a poll? Click the button to tell me whether you know who they are.
The men in the photo are Andy Cohen and John Mayer and, for better or worse, I love them both. Andy (front) is a gay TV executive and late night host who basically invented most of my favorite shows on Bravo: Project Runway, Top Chef, and all the Real Housewives. John (behind) is a straight and more-than-slightly-racist musician* who has nonetheless made some of my favorite music. They are friends now, brought together by their shared love of The Grateful Dead and the psychopharmaceuticals that accompany them. Andy received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame last week, and John was there to make a speech, along with a couple of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and I guess these two crazy guys decided it would be funny to take a prom style photo. They were right!
WRITING PROMPT: Write a scene in which two people become unlikely friends. Bonus points if one or both people are real-life celebrities.
While both John and Andy are extremely famous, their friendship has always felt like a private joke told just for me. There can’t be that many housewives aficionados who have seen John Mayer perform live for every album he’s ever released, can there?
But how and why, then, can I expect you, my reader, to care about it? This is one of the essential paradoxes of writing: I have to find a subject matter that’s sufficiently surprising and unfamiliar to pique your interest, but not so random as to be totally impenetrable or off-putting. One of the things I have to bet on as I’m making this calculation is something I set up in the beginning: if I tell you I can’t stop thinking about something, I have to hope that you’ll trust me enough to explain my obsession to you. If all goes according to plan, you’ll end up fascinated, too.
So, why do I love this photo so much? I think the main reason is that the joke is not the obvious homophobic, “OMG wouldn’t it be so funny if these two men went to prom together?” or “OMG men who love each other are gay and being gay is funny/weird/gross.” (“Guy Love,” anyone?) No, the joke is that prom photos are silly to begin with, and they look even sillier when created with two grown men. It’s also irreverent and silly and unexpected: celebrities are literally trained in how to pose for pictures on step and repeats, so it’s refreshing to see something new.
WRITING PROMPT: Write about a weird image that fascinates you but might just seem boring/strange to someone else.
But what I love most about the photo isn’t the funny part of it at all; its the fact that these two really do love each other! I think their relationship is genuinely platonic and that both of them are secure enough in their sexuality and their love for each other to proclaim it publicly. I could take it further and say that there might even be a weird parallel between John, who became famous at a young age, and Andy, who was closeted as a young man, so that both of them had to do some emotional maturing later in life and couldn’t really be themselves in public…. until now. It’s still pretty rare to see friendships between straight men and Queer men and I think these two have helped each other to evolve. And as someone who has followed them both for a long time, I’m just pleased they found each other!
READING PROMPT: Go through this newsletter post and highlight every sentence in which I’m showing you something in one color. Highlight every sentence in which I’m telling you in a different color. What do you notice about each kind of writing and where it appears?
And so it is that John Mayer, a straight man who used to have his picture taken with hotties including, but not limited to, the Jennifers Aniston and Love Hewitt, Katy Perry, Cameron Diaz, Taylor Swift, and Jessica Simpson, now lives a life in which he has been iconically photographed as the sole straight man at Andy’s legendary all-housewife baby shower, resulting in this, a piece of visual art comparable in scope and beauty only to The Last Supper:
Those Real Housewife bodies truly are a wonderland.
Mark Doty asks in his essay, “Why should we have been born knowing how to love the world?” and suggests that still life paintings can provide “demonstrations” of how to do this. Thinking through this weird prom photo of John Mayer and Andy Cohen has allowed me to discover and articulate for the first time exactly what I love about them. You probably won’t love them as much as I do (or at all!) but that isn’t the point. The point, I hope, is to see that writing about something that fascinates you should be all you need to make a reader care, too. And if I failed in my mission and that didn’t work, then I dare you to not be moved by John performing a Diana Ross song for Andy for his 50th birthday.
* I am fine to separate the art from this particular artist because he has a) publicly repented and b) since received the just retribution of being absolutely demolished by Taylor Swift, which is punishment enough for anyone. Just ask Jake Gylenhaal.
