Elizabeth Gilbert is an incredible human person. I wanted to say 'incredible writer', but she is more than just a writer. She is a genius, the woman behind the book-turned-movie sensation Eat, Pray, Love. The memoir sort of reads like how Hermann Hesse would have written Siddhartha, has he been born a woman in contemporary American society. Anyway, I'm not here to talk about the book. I am writing to talk about Gilbert. She is a person who has gone through a lot, and after the freakish success of her book, people are giving this suicidal vibes to her, insinuating the terror that what if her biggest success in her life is behind her. On defence of the fragile human psyche-- her fragile human psyche-- she talks about how she cope and maintain her sanity on TED:
It's like this. Centuries ago, in the deserts of North Africa, people used to gather for this moonlight dances-- sacred dances with moonlight and music-- that would go on for hours and hours until dawn. And they're always magnificent because the dancers are professionals, and they were terrific. But once in a while, very rarely, something will happen, where one of these performers would become transcendent. And I know you know what I'm talking about, because I know you've all seen, at some point in your life, a performance like this. It's like this: time would stop, and the dancer would step into some kind of portal, and he wasn't doing anything different than what he had ever done a thousand nights before. But everything would align. All of the sudden, he would appear to be no longer merely human, you know, he would be lit from within, lit from below, and all lit up on fire with divinity. And when this happen back then, people knew it for what it was, and they called by its name. They would put their hands together, and they would start to chant Alla! Alla! Alla! God, god, god.That's god.Curious historical footnote: when the Moors invaded Southern Spain, they took this custom with them, and the pronunciation changed over the centuries from Alla! Alla! Alla! to Ole! Ole! Ole! which you still hear in bullfights and flamingo dancing in Spain when a performer has done something impossible, and magic. Alla, Ole, Ole, Alla, magnificent, bravo, incomprehensible, there it is: a glimpse of god.Which is great, because we need that. The tricky bit comes the next morning, right, for the dancer himself, when he woke up and realised that it was Tuesday morning, 11 a.m., and he's no longer a glimpse of god. He's just an aging mortal with really bad knees. And may be he's never going to ascend to that height again. And may be nobody will never chant god's name again when he spins. What is he then to do with his life?This is hard. This is the most painful reconciliation to make in a creative life.But may be it doesn't have to be so full of anguish, if you never happen to believe in the first place, that the most extraordinary aspects of your being came from you, that may be if you just believed that they were on loan to you from some unimaginable source for some exquisite portion of your life to be passed along when you're finished to somebody else. And if we think of it this way, it starts to change everything.What I have to keep telling myself whenever I get psyched up about that is: Don't be afraid. Don't be daunted. Just do your job. Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that might be. If your job is to dance, do your dance. If the divine, cock-eyed genius assigned to your case decides to let some sort of wonderment be glimpsed for just one moment through your efforts, then Ole! and if not, then do your dance anyhow-- and Ole! to you nonetheless. I believe this, and I feel that we must teach it.Ole! to you nonetheless just for having the same sheer human love-- and stubbornness-- to keep showing up.
An extraordinary statement. The length to which she goes to craft this protective psychological construct is mind-boggling, and the way she puts everything so elegantly, I think, is incredible. Anyway, for me, watching other people dance has had this sort of paranormal impact on me, and I see it as an honour and a privilege to have been able to be moved so deeply by the way other people dance. Some people never have been, and perhaps would never be. However, what's incredible and at the same time humbling is to be told that I've made an impact on others in a remotely similar fashion. Perhaps they said it in passing as something to fill up the conversation, perhaps they never meant it, which would then make it ludicrous for me to now be so affected by it. But anyhoo, for my sanity, if I really did so, I thank you. I know it's not about the technique or anything along that line. It's about that fleeting moment that Gilbert said to be 'exquisite' where the connection is formed, and the artistry is conveyed. I may never have that ever again, so thank you.
