Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer #35: Music and Fiction, "Walking Man"

I had taken a break from writing about music and musicians, but we return, always, to what is our natural bent, and pretty soon my on-going character, female musician Sossity Chandler, turns up again. He career is outlined in many stories I've written on her (some 35 published), from her early, struggling days to her ascent to fame and super-stardom. A story titled "Walking Man," catches Sossity just after her place as a pop star is established. She no longer has to worry about money or be anxious about making it as a musician. But she does have other concerns, and, in this case, the concerns and her career as a musician are intertwined.

 The title of the story is taken from a song by James Taylor, "Walking Man," the feature song on an album by the same name. I used to be in a cover duo that did a lot of songs from that album (and a lot of Taylor songs in general), "Walking Man" being one of them. It's a fascinating song, one with a little more substance to it than many popular tunes. It's about a man who is "moving in silent desperation / Keeping an eye on the holy land." The character Taylor sketches is someone who lives by a utopian idealism and never connects with the daily things of life that root us in community, in the lives of others, in our own identity. Always seeing that "someone's missing and something's never quite right," he walks through life missing what is essential because of his idealism.

I could particularly identify with this because I attended a college that had a seminary attached to it. So many of the seminarians were what Shakespeare would have called "precise." They thought everything had to be perfect, according to their belief system. If a person or an organization held a different interpretation of the Bible or Christian theology, the seminarians would reject them. Like the figure in Taylor's song, they breezed through life "keeping an eye on the holy land" and missing the quotidian joys that make for human happiness:

                                    Well, the frost in on the pumpkin

                                    and the hay is in the barn

                                    and Pappy's gone to rambling on,

                                    stumbling around drunk down on the farm—

                                    and the Walking Man walks.

                                    He doesn't know nothing at all.

                                    Any other man stops and talks,

                                    but the walking man walks.

Sossity meets a friend whose tendency toward utopianism has ruined his life, wrecking his marriage and impoverishing him. Rich McLauflin is an Episcopal priest. Sossity had come to him for counseling during a particularly rough part of her life (Sossity is an Episcopalian). His radicalism has destroyed his life. 

He lambasted Christians for their materialism, their lack of concern about the poor and oppressed in the world, and said that if Jesus came to earth today he would rebuke not sinners but the rank and file of Christians, the modern Pharisees who risked exile through their neglect of justice for the oppressed.  Completely immersed in all of this, he had neglected his wife, who drifted away from him; and he alienated the wealthier, more influential members of his church, who did not appreciate being equated with Pharisees and King Ahab.  He was asked to leave. A week after that, Emily left him for another man.

He gets a part-time teaching job, is arrested for civil disobedience, engages in affairs with women in his new radical circle, but eventually drifts back to his old town and gets a job in a bookstore. He barely scrapes by on what he makes there and is not able to find a position as a clergyman because of his past behavior. Sossity invites him to hear her sing at a fundraiser held at his old church.

His former wife is there. They speak awkwardly. Sossity greets him. Though she says nothing about his past behavior, she sings the song "Walking Man." He knows it is a message to him. Reflecting on what he has done, he doubts he could ever mend his life. But church is a site of grace. He and his wife talk. He finds out she and the man she took up with have split. She notices the marks of his poverty. They work together handing out refreshments at the reception afterwards. At the end, they leave together. There is perhaps a small chance for reconciliation.

When writing on religion, or at least bringing religion into a story as a thematic point, too many writers turn into walking men. They try to evangelize, or, in the opposite, to vilify religion. But writers need to "tell it slant," as Emily Dickenson once put it. Grace means a second chance. Religion runs deep in most peoples' lives in one form or another. When we write on it, though, we don't need to be "walking" men or women. Religion works into the everyday rhythms of life. How it does is not usually through doctrine but through behavior. In many of my stories, religion has been a theme, but I have approached it "slant."

The story appeared in a journal called Divine Dirt Quarterly. A journal by that name exists, but I can't find my story in the archives, so I think the venue I printed in is defunct and another journal has taken that name. Reading it after so many years, I was impressed that it was one of my better stories. I might try to find a new place for it. We'll see.

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Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #32: Writing on Religion: The Stylite

BuddhistNuns

Some of my writing follows religious themes. I am constantly intrigued with what people believe and how religion affects their lives. I try not to be partisan. My religion is Christianity, but my writing recognizes a wide system of belief or lack of belief. One of my characters begins a prayer, "Lord Buddha, you know I don't believe in you." Religion takes many forms and includes many varieties and stripes of belief, from cool to lukewarm to overly-zealous. I am not hostile to religion, but then again I see the problems too much religious fervor brings about. Fundamentalism of any sort—whether it is a Baptist fundamentalist like Jerry Falwell or an atheist fundamentalist like Richard Dawkins—is not a good deal. Yet religion can make for interesting stories.

The next story in my publishing history was one about religious, titled "The Stylite."

Saint Simon the Stylite

What is a stylite? It's really weird. Stylites were monks who live on the top of platforms. That's it:  they lived on platforms set on poles up to forty feet from the ground. People sent food up to them and they lived on the poles in all kinds of weather, praying, meditating in their solitude, sometimes so many that the areas they lived in were called "forests." These were some of the excesses of piety that existed in the early days of Christianity—unbelievable to us but historically true.

Myrna is a devout girl who belongs to and identifies with the Orthodox Church. Her world is turned upside-down when her brother, Stephen, who lives alone in a house a short distance from where she lives with her parents, declares his intention to become a stylite. The family is alarmed when they can't talk him out of it. They call in the priest who says such behavior might have been a proper expression of devotion in the second century, but now it would amount to spiritual exhibitionism and would become a scandal to the church. He promises to talk to Stephen.

She goes to school the next day. Her friends ask her what her brother is doing. She hopes their priest has altered his inclinations, but when she drives home, she finds a crowd of reporters at his house. The story is all over the internet and on television. With horror, she realizes what this will mean for her at school, where she is popular. Her enemies will use it to brand her as weird. She will topple from her high place on the food-chain there. She despairs, not understanding why her brother would do such a thing. He has been loyal to the church, but never overly devout or pious. She, in fact, is the one who has stayed for different periods of time at convents and seriously entertained the idea of becoming a nun.

While contemplating this, she—like many people in the Bible and throughout Christian history—has a revelation.

Myrna has a date that night. Because of her commitment to religion and to perhaps becoming a nun someday, she has remained a virgin. She asks her boyfriend for a kiss before they head out to a barn dance. He notices the miniskirt she is wearing and says he better not because it might make him try to violate what he calls her "underwear rule"—meaning that underwear will not be removed—in other words, she does not intend to have sex with boys she dates. Myrna simply replies “Tonight you don’t have to worry about my underwear rule. I’m not wearing any.”

The next morning she goes to her brother and sends a note up to him. She will not be a nun, she tells him:  Stephen—I understand. I won’t go to the convent, ever again. I can’t be a nun now. I’m disqualified. It happened last night. I think you know what I mean. Please come down. She watches with relief as a rope comes down and her brother climbs it to the ground, abandoning his place on the stylite platform.

Religion is good in many ways; still, I can't help but thinking that when it leads to extreme asceticism—self-denial and the abrogation of pleasure in life—it isn't helping itself or anyone else—the very thing Stephen is trying to show his sister. Benjamin Franklin, whose views on religion were controversial, said he was in favor of people having faith as long it did some good for the human race. John Milton said he could not praise "a fugitive and cloistered virtue." My views lean toward this. Living on top of a platform is not the best way of showing your devotion toward the Divine—but there are a lot of other ways of showing devotion that are also wrong.

"The Stylite" appeared in a journal called Five Fishes, no longer in operation, but, happily, with an archive. You can read the story here. Some poems are featured first, you will need to scroll down to get to my story.

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