Being Married To An Accountant The following exchange is a typical example of how being in business school can cause... Read>> Posted September 13, 2008
WILL I GET USED TO IT? Trauma, Drama, and Emotions at the Gravity Lounge I guess I should go to more concerts. For the first time in something like three years I went to a live show on Tuesday night. For those keeping track, the band was the two-member Jon Foreman/Sean Watkins side-project band Fiction Family. The harmony of word and deed between these guys' music, their vibrant personalities, and poetic lyrics was so great that, after the concert was over, I had to just stand in place pondering the contrast between this experience and the past few weeks in my traumatic (but good) Business Ethics through Literature class. Both experiences featured love, life, death, murder, revenge, loss, triumph, happiness, etc. but the impact on me couldn’t be more different.
A quick comment on the two guys in the concert. First of all, Jon Foreman. His band Switchfoot has sold more than 5 million albums, gone on several world tours, and played for sold-out stadiums for over a decade. Secondly, Sean Watkins' band Nickel Creek has won a Grammy, had multiple Platinum albums, and just been equally successful as Switchfoot. These two guys, however, seemed like the most normal people I've ever met. After the concert I stood around and chatted with them about loss, love, faith, and the inevitable doubts that creep into my mind whenever I think about the stuff they write about. They seemed completely comfortable talking about things that I find difficult bringing up at Darden - in the company of friends... How do they get the courage/strength/sensitivity to discuss this stuff from a stage? All over the world? To audiences that are frequently much larger than the 120 people at this concert?
Apparently, they think that sensitivity and honesty are the key. Foreman reminded me that he doesn't say the same things with Switchfoot that he does when he’s touring with Sean, and that part of the reason for this is that Switchfoot’s happy/upbeat medium is not the ideal platform for the content Fiction Family is addressing. He believes his message (lyrics) and medium (music) have to BOTH be in harmony to expect to have the maximum impact on people in concert.
This is a stark contrast to the way many of the authors I’ve been reading lately try to impact the reader. I have been reading from this very different and difficult genre lately because I am taking an ethics class that uses literature as its textbook. I frequently enjoy the class, but one thing that has still been bothering me is the way that we are frequently subjected to extremely traumatic stories. This is seemingly justified by a belief that any potential emotional, sexual, or psychological damage caused by searing the purpose of the reading onto our minds is justified by the resulting good caused by walking away with a better understanding of literature, life, morality, or whatever.
I guess my concern is that this "searing" process is causing damage to my ability to empathize and feel pain when exposed to a similar situation in the future. For example, both professors in my class (it is team-taught) read certain passages without much difficulty – the very same passages that haunt my thoughts and keep me awake at night. Likewise, certain sexually graphic scenes strike me with a force that derails my thought process for pages afterwards... many classmates of mine, however, seem to be not bothered much at all by these very same scenes and remark that since they have read stuff like this in the past they are able to calmly read these passages simply for the message of the story and then walk away without any dramatic feeling of guilt or pain.
This reminds me of a story from my childhood. When I was a kid our home was frequently under construction as we built additions and remodeled rooms. Since I was the eldest boy in the house, I liked to “help out” dad and this frequently meant holding large pieces of plywood steady as he ran them through his table saw. We never used hearing protection because in the 80’s and early 90’s we just didn’t have the safety culture that currently exists. In my very early years, I would cover my ears and watch as my dad made those terrifying cuts that seemed so awesome to me at the time. While he was focused on the task at hand, he could still see me holding my ears and would kind of chuckle at my childish sensitivity. Later on, however, when I became a teenager, it became more important to keep the wood straight and he began to get annoyed with my ear-holding tendencies. Once, as a board was getting bound up in the saw-blade and I was holding a board with only one hand while valiantly trying to cover both ears with my other hand, my dad got annoyed. “Christopher, stop covering your ears!” he yelled over the sound of the sawblade, “it hurts at first, but you’ll get used to it in a few minutes, and I need your help”. I dutifully obeyed and, much to my amazement, in just a few minutes I was able to work without covering my ears and could focus exclusively on the task at hand. I was elated and, as a result, learned much about making good clean cuts without cutting off your fingers - knowledge I retain to this day. Unfortunately, I also retain something else to this day (as does my dad). Permanent hearing loss. The dulling of the pain we experienced is a direct result physical damage to the eardrum, which is, as far as my knowledge of modern science goes, irreparable.
Similarly, due to luck, laziness, and perhaps a bit of personal effort I have, apparently been “sheltered” from the level of pornographic/psychographic literature (both sexual and violent) that most people have been exposed to and still feel pain when reading literature of a traumatic nature. I suppose Fairchild and Freeman are now “getting me up to speed” with the rest of the world, but I wonder what the effect will be. Do I really need to be beaten up with graphic literature to learn that black people have a hard life? Or that people in a ménage á trois find it perfectly normal and/or fun? That women are often disadvantaged and shut out from the power structures available to them? Or that racism is still alive and well in these United States of America? I know these things are true, and I appreciate the value of hearing these stories told… Still, if I am now on the road toward being desensitized and I know that there is a finite amount of experiences that will ever impact my soul this deeply, shouldn’t I jealously guard my limited quantity of “ability to feel”?
To bring it around to what I’m thinking right now, I guess it just seems like I was equally impacted with the sadness of murder and/or loss after attending this concert (in which many of us were driven to tears by a particular song) as I was by the tales of death/loss in stories I’ve read so far. But one seems to scar my faculty of feeling while the other seems to leave me more likely to empathize and more able to feel, as opposed to the numbing state of shock I feel after reading (for example) Going to Meet the Man
That’s all I’ve got today. But I thought I’d share. For more information about Fiction Family, check out this article on them in a recent Wall Street Journal “Foreman and Watkins’ Dynamic Duo”.
Posted January 29, 2009 as always Posted by: mandy you are eloquent in your assertions. i think that you are able to feel. this is good. i am not sure that an unfeeling end awaits, however. i believe that it takes work not to become desensitized. just as i still empathize with the pain an animal feels when it's injured, i still work on my family's cattle ranch when we brand, castrate, notch ears, etc. i think that the two can coexist. that is my hope, at any rate... Posted 2009-02-06 10:45:00 MOM Posted by: brenda Don't ever become desensitized....it will be a conscious decision you have to make your whole life, but it's worth it, and worth the pain. Good thoughts there son, good to read what you're thinking....... Posted 2009-03-15 18:15:51 COMMENT ON THIS POST
