On Sincerity, or Mastery, or Something Else Entirely
Interlude: Meatless ministries for Earth Month.
I’m typing this initial draft into the Notes app on my phone while on a plane, watching David Sedaris’s “master class.” Do I think this series of interviews is “masterful”? No, but it’s clear the audience is people on planes or those who have a desire to be a writer they’ll never actually act on. It’s useful, too, to those of us who act on this impulse, if for generally providing ample permission. It’s good to reup on permission. These quotes prompted me to type them out:
“You’re not going to be perfect. If you’re very lucky, you’ll learn how to be yourself.” Exactly.
“There are plenty of people out there who are happy to give 10%. I don’t know their names, because they don’t have books.” Boom. I want to say something like this a lot, not because I think of “traditional” “publishing” “success” as something deeply meaningful, but because people think what I do is easy. I look up his star sign, as many readers will note is a habit of mine when I find in someone a parallel of my workhorse nature, and he’s a Capricorn: Friend, I think.
*
Behind us, a man is giving the flight attendant a terrible time about not ensuring gluten-free food for him. When his wife gets up to go to the bathroom, she grips my seat for support and gets fistfuls of my hair at the same time. I sit up with a startle, like someone whose hair is being pulled without consent, and she lets it go. There is no gesture of apology. These are the things one needs to notice, note, and greet with bemusement in order to go on living.
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I watched a TikTok where Jeremy Irons, dressed fabulously like a down-and-out sailor at the corner pub, told a class of actors not to think about what they’re good at. He told them, indeed, to forget what they’re good at and focus on what they struggle with, and this became instruction for me when I felt horrified and disappointed by photos of me at events. I do put thought into my clothes—a lot of it—and have a standard makeup routine that works in natural light. Generally, I love how I look! Or so I thought. Nothing I do works for being on stage, for being photographed. I accept now that I’m good at doing my job in public, at speaking and teaching. I don’t have to worry about that anymore. So, according to Irons, I need to focus on looking good for pictures and video. This is the advice and insight I needed a year out from my next book release, next book tour.
I loved how I looked at my first book tour but I know it’s because I was so shell-shocked by all of it that I couldn’t help but act natural, and acting natural is what makes me look good in photos. Wait, so do I have to just remember I can do it all—if I don’t put my mind to it? If I just show up as myself? Apparently. I’ll still be spending the next year on the project of loving candid photos of myself speaking.
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People lined up after the Farm to People event to talk to me, and my cousin got in last to make a joke on me but it was useful because I got to turn it into a conversation point: “This isn’t really a line—that’s my cousin and I saw him on Easter,” two days beforehand. It’s my version of politician folksy, to spread my Long Island accent on thick and point out that I’m friends with my cousins.
Afterwards, I threw my emotional support notebook on the bar and said, with faux-exasperation to a friend I’ve known since high school, “People want me to fix all their problems!” Pope Francis had just passed, so many joked that I was his natural replacement. If only! Said friend noted how many people around him in the audience were making affirmative noises as I spoke. Little “mm-hmms.” Sincerity never plays well with people I grew up around—family or friend—so let me tell you that my sincerity and enthusiasm have always made me ripe for mockery. There were also laughs in the audience, thankfully, because I’ve learned I can’t be sincere without some sardonic and silly touches. I’m a melange of these three S-words. They’ve helped with my hopeful mastery of public speaking.
The Farm to People event in Bushwick was the third of my three public appearances, an Earth Day cherry on top of a lot of conversation about how to get people to eat less meat. Vegetarian and vegans struggle. Be kind to your plant-based friends when they make you something or suggest a meatless restaurant. They’re trying to help us all out! There was a big spread of food that included heaping bowls of my beans en escabeche, which were stunning and might become a prepared food item you can order from them. Hilariously (to me), there was some charcuterie included, and if I became like the pope in my meatless ministry, I also think I need a bit of Morrissey in me.
The Saturday prior, as part of the New York Public Library’s World Arts & Literature Festival, I’d discussed the role of cookbook authors in how to make plant-based or vegetable-forward cooking doable and desirable. I’d chosen Lukas Volger (Start Simple), Hetty Lui McKinnon (Tenderheart), Joe Yonan (Mastering the Art of Plant-Based Cooking), and Lesley Eston (Belly Full) as the panelists, and they were brilliant—funny, down-to-earth, fired up in equal measure. (My mom enjoyed it and wants Joe specifically to have a podcast, and my mom finds few people entertaining.) It was especially useful to hear McKinnon talk about how she only develops recipes out of what she wants to eat and what’s on hand: This is why she’s so prolific and so good at making a ton of flavor out of pantry staples.
On the Tuesday before that, I’d gone to Port Authority Bus Terminal to go to Easton, Pennsylvania, home of Lafayette College, where I spent the day doing an impromptu environmental justice lecture; touring their campus farm; making a visit to a food justice class that was reading No Meat Required; and had a fireside chat with Dr. Ben Cohen, professor of that food justice class, with whom I have a ton of research and interest overlap. It was an exhausting but invigorating day—my first time as keynote speaker—where the students gave me a lot to think about in terms of my work and how it can better reach the people it needs to. I write for teenagers, honestly (me and Anna Sulan Masing agree on the significance of this as a posture), and I want to make them less scared of the world than I was—I want them to know their power, the significance of asserting it. But I also don’t envy teachers of undergraduates: it’s rough! Because sincerity is embarrassing, and the ones who put themselves out there so fully are really on a limb. I admire it. I was afraid of everything at their age.
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There are a million stories in the everyday for a writer. I’m chronicling here the bare surface, because even if I tried, I couldn’t yet explain what this week has meant to me (a lot, truly). I have to process it. Stories I’ve told 1,000 times and lived 25 years ago only became writing last year for my next book.
Another thing Sedaris says in these videos is that he doesn’t know what normal people do: I’ve always wondered the same. If you don’t write, what do you do with it—all of it? It’s always been so obvious to me that I have to turn everything into something, otherwise I’d explode. I had to turn this flight into this missive, invite you into my mind and my days. I couldn’t help it. Now, where’s my dog?
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