sincerity

Yesterday, I went to a concert in the living room of a good friend. Two touring folk artists (Aaron Invisible and Isaac Gillespie) came and set up a microphone in front of the fireplace. It was just their voices, two instruments, and nothing else. There was a group of maybe 20 there to listen and I was struck in that intimate setting by how sincere it was, their music.

A few hours before that, I was sitting in a coffee shop finishing a book called The Help (It's worthy of the hype it's been getting lately. Check out this book review my friend Lauren blogged awhile back) I was reading a passage that so sincerely described one of the character's fears that I was brought to tears. Her pain was made so genuine to me that I began to cry, right there in the coffee shop. The reality of the story was moving in such a raw, truthful way.

As I was getting into bed last night and thinking about the day, the importance of that word, sincerity, kept coming back to me. I realized that every single thing that has ever moved me, ever really affected me in a profound way, has been rooted in that word. I think this is probably universal. We may like things that aren't really 100% truthful - romantic comedies, most pop songs, reality TV shows - but we aren't typically changed by them forever. We know that they are hiding something. But when we run into real things - real pain, real hope, real beauty - we know it and are drawn to it. This happened to me at the concert, at the reading of the words of that book. When other people manage to be sincere, it is a miracle and a blessing and it matters. It's not too easy, either.

I think of two days ago when I was trying to write a poem and it took me nearly two hours before I even got a line out that I liked, that was honest. I think of how often I have to start over and start over and start over and it's as if I'm peeling back an onion, tearing away all the things that are fake and insincere until I get to the root of what I really want and need to say.

My own writing aside, I am perplexed by other's abilities to create things that are really, really genuine. Being an "English person" trying to figure out what that means and why that matters, I find myself inspired and encouraged by authors who have managed to create truly sincere work. Those are the books that sell and that are read over and over. Every teenage student reads To Kill A Mockingbird and Catcher in the Rye not just because they are good stories, but because they are real. They dig out things that are hidden too often.

I think of a quotation that was on my English teacher's board once in high school, something George Orwell said. It was about a writer's possession of emotional sincerity being more important than the truth. I've always been perplexed by that. But the more I think about confronting sincerity, the more it makes sense. Fictitious characters,like the people I read about in The Help, can show us who we are and how we really feel. What a beautiful thing these characters and settings and stories so often become - like friends ringing your doorbell, asking to come in for a cup of coffee and the chance to chat about what the world is really like. The words of stories are powerful because of this: they give us a chance to step outside our bodies and then look ourselves right in the eyes.

How funny it seems, though, that being sincere is such a scary, difficult thing sometimes. Maybe that is what makes it so precious.

So I'm adding that onto my list of things to do this year: Strive for sincerity. Strive to write things that are honest, not hidden behind false emotions because it is easier that way. Strive to be genuine in relationships. Strive to surround myself by music and art and literature that leaves me with clear reflections instead of blurry, tainted images. Strive just to find out what this thing even is, this deep-down honesty that makes me cry in a coffee shop and mesmerizes me in a living room filled with music. Strive to capture it more often.