The burning of the pile: A written response

I suppose it’s like this for every artist and musician and writer – for people who make something that they think is good. They want at least a few people to tell them that it’s so.

That’s the way I say it in words, but it feels something more deeply.

I believe that even Wendell Berry, for example, feels this. He knows that when he writes something, people like me will read and appreciate what he has to say. He has established a reputation for good and thoughtful writing. But although writers are supposed to put their words on a page and wait for readers to come those words, I think that he feels what I feel. He wants some few people to tell him to his face that he did well. It’s only human, after all.

We are often embarrassed by our humanity. We want to be above all that primal stuff, although we stand at the monkey enclosure and laugh at how much they are like us. It’s a tricky thing – this being human and personal out in public.

Children wear their personalities like red underwear on the outside of their tights. And we grownups say, ooh and ahh, what a nice drawing, how well you played the piano, why that’s your name, isn’t it?

And then suddenly, in slow-motion, it all changes. But it doesn’t, really.

I went to a fire last night. A really big fire – five years of accumulated brush and wooden pallets and stuff. A piece of performance art, really. The burning of the pile.

Friends and strangers stood around as a match was applied to some paper and then the wood caught and the dark, twenty degree November night was transformed into light and heat. We edged away from the pile, our faces not quite searing, our backsides cold. We turned and looked away from the fire. Sparks flew skyward. Ashes drifted down onto hair and shoulders. Some stood with drink in hand. We talked and joked and laughed.

We grownups watched the kids who only watched each other. A group of middle school girls, happy voices sparkling out of a close cluster, some game where two by two they rolled backward onto a blanket on the ground awkwardly flailing their arms and legs, their faces were  lit and shadowed by the fire and the night. And some boys were boys, hovering over and beside them, looking for attention.

I stared into the flames – a continuation of fire from millions of years ago. When did humans realize that fire could destroy and enhance life? I turned to Amy – it was her’s and Doug’s nursery where we had come to gather around the fire. “Except for the last two inches, I’m warm,” I said, and she laughed.

That was a good line, I thought. Not really worth writing down, but I did anyway.

Art calls for a response. Not from everyone, or at least not the same way. We make what we make and we say what we say in part because we are simply responding to life and in part because we want to connect with each other.

Fire or no fire, it would have been a colder night if Amy had just walked away.

I felt like a boy again - last night. Human.

A good fire in Vinland Valley.