Valentine's Shadow

The terrible weight of Valentine's Day is exactly one month away. What better way to celebrate its inexorable gravity than to discuss one of those topics rarely discussed in relation to the writing process: love? Eros, not agape. Laura Broadbent lives, writes, and blogs in Montreal. I first learned of Laura through reading Sachiko Murakami's Writing So Hard interview. It was a candid and heart-rending battle with the three Furies of writing: Procrastination, Poverty, and Love. To paraphrase Corinthians, the greatest of these is Love.

I interviewed Laura in an attempt to follow up her previous interview, half a year later. Procrastination and Poverty in relation to creative writing have been covered before, but Love - not so much. She was as candid as ever, wringing out her heart to the last drop. Her writing has the emotional force of eddying, swirling currents. It's hard to stand in and not feel yourself pulled along. I tried to jump in and join the conversation but when a writer's as strong as Laura, sometimes it's better just to get out of the way and let her do her job.

Koom: In the Writing So Hard interview, you talked very candidly about procrastination, poverty, and love/relationships as impediments to writing. Where are you at now in terms of your balance between these things?

Laura: There is no balance to speak of. Moments of grace here and there, and always spontaneously and briefly. These impediments you ask about are not by virtue bad, impediments are rich (I don't mean to sound Biblical here) even if one impediment is poverty. I exchange poverty for Time as time - to me - is worth more than all the dollars. I call time precious, like others call money precious, or the ring for Gollum in LOTR. I'd rather have time, that would be otherwise spent pursuing money, all to myself, and activities more meaningful to me.

Procrastination can mean a necessary personal system shut-down in order to wait until the mud settles, clear action arises by itself; procrastination does not have to necessarily mean self-sabotage, sometimes it is self-care. Occasional ambivalence is absolutely fine too. One occasionally tires of caring as though things really mean things we think they mean.

Romance has been my deepest education and my most spectacular failure - I am choosing to take a very long break as I've had a very, very bad run as of late. A complete hindrance to writing and a dwarfing of my strength and confidence and power and inspiration as a whole. I throw myself fully into them and I follow them through to the bitter [often bitterly vile, vile] end. What follows is excessive mourning and melancholia, anger, and too much passion. Now I look back and think so much of it was a waste of my time and self. Not that I regret the experiences entirely. I am thirty two and I've had two four-year relationships, two two year relationships, one one-year relationship, and one six month hell-ride. These have depleted me the most – as in to the marrow - and I always feel I would have more books written had I not made this idea of love my biggest (failed) project. It's a miracle I've published two books, considering. Now all I want is time, solitude, shelter, my closest friendships, books, and writing. I'm ready. From these accumulated adventures and upheavals, I've a storage bank loaded with material to work with – not just 'about' relationships but about new knowledge that emerges from romance's days of triumph and their subsequent wreckage. A lot of things – such as civilizations - are built from wreckage.

I see no immediate end to poverty, but I plan to say No to romance for a long, long time because I've spent 7 of my 9 lives on it and because I'd rather devote my energy fully and totally into my work, into reading, and friendships – all things I know to be true and enriching. From this, there'll be a lot less procrastination. My mind is burning to write the three new books I have roughly composed in my head in the past two years.

Koom: Do you think that the energy and love that you pour into your relationships and your writing come from the same pot?

Someone told me once, in the late nineties, that the novelist Barbara Gowdy would only take up relationships where her partner could support her financially so she could devote her full time to writing. I of course didn't know if this was true but it incensed me very much. Now, I'm 41 and I have to admire the cool practical efficacy of the arrangement. I couldn't do it myself as for me, I think that the energies that go into my writing and my romantic attachments are one and the same. They both come out of an intense need to connect and be loved. And Love. One is comprised of expression while the other is comprised of action in a very local capacity. Both will break you but as you (and Leonard Cohen) say, something grows out of that - it allows the light to enter. The big difference is that one is proud of the way that writing breaks one, not so much love. It hurts to love too much. I was rewatching True Detective Season One recently. Something Matthew McConaughey's character says really stuck with me - something to the effect of 'the things that make me wrong for relationships make me right for the job.'

Laura: I'm with McConaughey. Things that make me wrong for relationships make me right for the job. Things that make me right for relationships make me wrong for the job.

Luckily, I suppose, and unlike you, romantic love and writing for me do not come from the same place, though one place easily impedes the other. I am a person of extremes and most often it has been either one or the other. To a person I love, I devote my entire being; similarly, writing is a love to which I devote my entire being. This doesn't mean I am particularly good at either. I spend far too long grieving the end of a relationship and in that time I don't write, then follows exceedingly long stretches of anhedonia in which I obsessively search for meaning or reason in the gone affair and of course I find neither – hence the anhedonia. And a lot of wasted time.

For these reasons and others, I've always secretly equated being a working artist the way I want to be, with being single. It simplifies things. Writing will not betray my trust, it will not abuse, it will not wound, it will not eviscerate me. Love has done these things and likely would again. I have much better taste and judgment when it comes to the arts than I do when it comes to the male species. Besides, in every new affair looms the shadow of its annihilation – but who wants that constant anxiety? Living births a surplus of anxiety as it is. Writing is trustier than that. Every human has a deep desire to love and be loved, this is true, and for that I have friends and family, but in terms of writing, I don't need people to love it whatsoever, I don't have that anxiety as I do in love. Writing is a calm and measured and invigorating place whereas love makes me – in short - psycho. There's an impossibility to writing, but more of an impossibility to romantic love – as Lacan says, “Love is giving something you don't have to someone who doesn't want it.” I only wish I had fully understood this impossibility by the age of 23.

I am lusty for the self-directed spontaneity of doing what I want to do whenever I want to do it, free of the eyes of another who will – no matter how good he is - impede my organic course of action, and in turn I wouldn't want to impede his. There aren't many venues for freedom in the socio-econo-political climate in which we live so I seek it wherever I can. I want to experiment with a writing life sans relationship for as long as possible to see how my general output of writing/studying changes as well as my level of intellectual and creative fulfillment. Just redirect much of my passionate side there. Many people can do both, but I can't. I envy so-called 'normal' functioning couples but it seems I am not of their species. Louise Bourgeoise always struggled so hard with this balance and her journals and writings are always on my bedside table. Among other kindreds for solidarity.

As per Barbara Gowdy's supposed financial/romantic arrangement, I respect her pragmatism and I think I would call it audacity, but I could never do so for myself. I'd feel owned, I'd feel like I owe that person, there'd be too much of an innate power hierarchy. In fact in past relationships I have been the one contributing much more most of the time, even if I can't afford it. It is a pride thing. I cannot tell you how many times (usually older) men have told me – you're young and good-looking, just marry a rich guy! I'd be repulsed and insulted, and they felt what they were saying was perfectly fine. That said, I have friends who are in such arrangements and are happy with it. In abstract, the arrangement seems heavenly – I'd LOVE to be able to just write and read and make, and that is it. But such arrangements just go so against my trenchant personal ethical codes. So suffering and poverty it is so as to have my own complete freedom. Hopefully in time it will evolve into simple self-sustainability and complete personal freedom. There are grants and things as well – I do accept those.

Koom: I think that Rilke in 'Letters to a Young Poet' instructs him to trust in loneliness as essential for creative activity. I didn't understand that then, but I do now. At this point in my life, I can no longer believe in the idea of a 'soulmate.' I had to shelve that notion, along with my belief in Santa and the idea of a Biblical God. What you say, in that writing for all its heartbreaks, gives you something... I think - and I'm not trying to be mercenary here - that I cannot control relationships or draw them into my life necessarily, but I can affect and control my relationship with writing. It is a practice and activity that ultimately adds to oneself, becomes part of oneself, builds oneself, while relationships may engender the opposite.

It upsets me that your encounters with 'the male species', as you refer to us, have been so disheartening, that men have not supported your efforts at writing and communion, that you have poured more in than you have gotten out, that people have callously suggested you marry someone rich instead of search for something meaningful. Why do you think that unhappy relationships have characterized your past? You seem astute and highly aware - do you court unhappiness? Do you think the city where you live in has anything to do with it? This is just my own experience and it was a long time ago but I found Montreal to be a frustrating, heartbreaking city when it came to relationships. Montreal is to me what Chinatown is to Jack Nicholson in the movie Chinatown. A fascinating intoxicating place that I don't particularly feel easy returning to. Although, Toronto is no cake shoppe either.

I know I certainly pushed and courted some of those heartbreaking experiences. I was drawn to pain because I felt it to be instructive. I sometimes forced my partners to examine things in detail, when they would have just preferred to move on, because the cracks fascinated me. I knew I could use them to fuel my writing. There was certainly an inverse relationship between love and writing when I was in my twenties - I felt unknowledgeable and my breaks would fuel my thinking - I would start composing sentences even while pain began to run down my psyche. Now, I'm simply happy for companionship and connection. Someone who actually values books and reading, truly values the arts in life, values learning and thinking - that's a goddamn unicorn. Not someone who tokenly praises those things, not someone who has unfulfilled ambitions, but someone who places reading and reflection at the centre of her life. I'm no good for anybody, I think. Not that I'm a bad person or that I lack character, but I've become an irregular shape. So it's hard to connect. Most people my age want fairly safe and secure things. Like you, I sometimes feel I'm on the outside, looking in - how do these 'normal' people do it?

Laura: I'm definitely with Rilke in loneliness being essential for creative activity, but was late to learn that people are really terrified of loneliness whereas for me it's a state I crave - #lonecore4life;  in the palace of loneliness one can tune into the subtle forces and can inhabit solitude in a state of very active receptivity. Glenn Gould once said for every x amount of time spent with people, he needed 2x amount of time alone, minimum. Glenn Gould was definitely #lonecore4life.

As per the soul-mate thing, I'm more of a magical thinker and it may exist but certainly not in just one person, and one of your 'soul-mates' could in fact be a person who ends up being extremely toxic to you. Our deepest selves are all mixed up with our corporeal existence and culturally inscribed behaviours and memory banks full of traumas and sadnesses which result in twisted thinking and behaviours that often go against what perhaps could be the higher nature of our souls, unsullied by the corporeal. Things get all twisted up.

Courting unhappiness is an interesting concept and a real thing people do; especially, I think, people who have been victims of prolonged abuse in their childhoods which indelibly shred their self-worth and confidence. Such people then very unconsciously seek out people or create situations that will reinforce these early set beliefs which – though it is sick – feels like 'home.' I fit in this category.

Happy and unhappy relationships have characterized my past: 4 years with an angel-type, 4 years with an enchanted and otherworldly but ultimately mortal man, 2 years with a gifted and elegant but very mortal man, 1.5 years with a genius robot, 1.5 years with a monster, 6 months with a demon. I've made the full trajectory from Angels to Demons. I was very much in love with each of them. Some continuum of pain carried through after the first 4-year 'marriage' (as I call them – I like to say I'm like Liz Taylor but broke – a 6-time divorcee), and that pain sometimes abated but mostly gathered tremendous momentum after each subsequent ending and because of heavy life-things in between. The Monster and the Demon were the devastating finale of the avalanche, the casualty being the last-standing threads and fibres of my being. Being buried under an avalanche makes you go cold. Perhaps, in a way, I should be thankful to them for if it was not for them, perhaps I wouldn't have hit the brakes.

You are right about Montreal – it is a Never-Never land full of man-children. Almost an epidemic if not a full-blown one. But of course I hear horror stories in variation from very intelligent and wonderful friends about Toronto and Vancouver and New York...I think the consensus is that there's just armies of shit-heads and much worse everywhere. My friend Matt and I were speculating on what percentage of males in the world are Good. We went in depth about what made 'good.' He figured 20% and I figured 3%.

Luckily, my heart is swollen with love for my friends and animals and plants. It's not all pain and squalor!

You're right about the irregular shape, too. It's not just you. The older we get, the more we get twisted into our own unique irregular shapes and the harder it is to connect fully and fluidly. Adults just get weirder and weirder the older they get – and stiff - both literally and figuratively. It's due to the fact we live in a weird world. As for the 'normals,' it is my conviction that they are just their own form of insane. But all this, all the discord, the impossibility inherent in loving properly or getting things 'right' all funnels into the art if you work with an art form, it's all rich material. Apparently the point is to evolve. We are all in need of massive evolution, that much is clear. Despite how hard it is to connect and how much harder it becomes to connect, the inherent difficulty therein suggests that we should therefore move toward that difficulty since the easy thing is alienation. There's a difference between loneliness and alienation. E.M Forster's 'Only connect!' is a constant haunt in my mind. Personal and collective evolution is not easy but that's ostensibly what we're here for, though in reality we're currently collectively working toward the biggest mass-extinction since the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago. But why care about this burning ship when we have Netflix? I like to stay #positive.

Koom: I fit in the category you speak of. It is those of us deprived of love that quest for it later on. It is those of us without beauty that learn to admire it. Just keep doing what you're doing - your voice is rich and powerful and true and honed and beautiful. That is just as important as physical beauty in my world. Thanks for taking the time to bare your life with us, for making a performance of your soul. I am convinced that when future generations, amidst the rubble, look back and try to figure out why civilization collapsed in the twenty-first century, the answer will not be climate change or globalization or nuclear war. The answer will be: internet dating.