Write? Fight!
Telling your story is hard. Not telling it is harder.
Lately, I’ve been down over the progress of NIHILISTIC the book. I told myself 2026 would be the year it all came to fruition, yet here it is July and I’m nowhere near the finish line.
I know, I know: the end isn’t the point. It’s the fucking journey, right?
Ugh.
Sunday I went to the Old Franklin Schoolhouse in Metuchen, NJ to see Alex Dawson‘s and Arlen Feiles’s new memoir-driven show Room To Swing An Ax (full title: Room To Swing An Ax – A Southern Gothic Song Cycle & Memoiristic Monodrama) and was alternately chagrined, inspired and blown away.
Chagrined because Alex and collaborator Arlen brought us this show hard on the heels of their hugely successful production The Devil & Daisy Dirt and I’ve been at this shit a decade or more.
Inspired because it reminded me what Alex – a Rutgers writing professor – said about NIHILISTIC during an online class I took. As I agonized over whether my memoir should be a book or a podcast or a one-man show or…, he stopped me and said Why limit yourself? Why can’t it be all of those things?
Blown away because Alex took us back to his hardscrabble childhood with specific immediacy, bringing his stepfather, brother and especially his mother to vivid life. When the show was over, grown men and women were verklempt, including me. As I shook his hand, I said to Alex, “I feel like I met your mom.”
On the ride home there was much self-flagellation along the lines of Why can’t YOU do that? Why can’t you move people? What’s stopping you? WHY IS THIS TAKING SO LONG?!
Oh, comparison, you thief of joy. Why do you torment me so, motherfucker?
I called Alex today, to complement him again on his achievement and to wheedle out of him a pep talk he didn’t know he was giving (I didn’t reveal my intent until we were done but he was happy to provide some lift to the altitude-losing B-29 Superfortress of my intent). Alex told me he’d wanted to start a band years back but it never quite gelled. When he met Arlen and they began working together, he realized he enjoyed writing songs. He knew he could meld them with his writing and they’d provide a reinforcing counterpoint to his stories. I said, “In my case, I DID start a band. And the songs are already written. And I’ve been wondering how to incorporate them. Maybe this is the way.”
We also talked about the pitfalls of writing about your life in light of the other people in it. I’m ashamed to admit I’ve lost friends and family members over the more confessional writing in my previous newsletter, See You Next Tue! They disagreed with my version of events or objected to the “airing” of what they considered private or felt I had no right to even share what I did. That attrition was partly the reason I gave up SYNT and pivoted to this. But even a NIHILISTIC book has detractors, those who say I should ponder the potential consequences of same . Whatever that means.
But, as Alex said, Someday we’ll all be dead. This is your story to tell. They can tell theirs. We’re artists, this is what we do!
While I appreciate him including me in the category “artists,” I’m not sure I’ve earned it. Let’s talk again after NIHILISTIC exits the Substack realm and exists in the world. Hang in there with me. The fight continues…
Meanwhile, go see something that does exists in three dimensions and meet Alex’s larger-than-life, utterly bodacious mom. Room To Swing An Ax is at Flounder Brewery in Hillsborough, NJ this Mon., July 20, 6 pm and PhilaMoca in Philadelphia, July 31, 8 pm.
