I wanna know what love is ...

A little secret - I love love love the Bravo Channel's Inside the Actors Studio with James Lipton. (I do not love love love Lipton himself, despite the fact that the man does showcase the artist he is interviewing - I can't get rid of my deep-seated urge to ask the man to get out of his own way.) I had to move the box of Kleenex to my lap when I watched the interview with Juliette Binoche - something inside of me knows the inside of her. Matt Damon is probably going to get more and more formidable as an actor, I think. And the interiors of Al Pacino and Forest Whitaker are like a kind of masculine room that is immediately comfortable to my feminine self. Not all the interviews are like that - and I'll admit that if I do not much enjoy the work of a particular artist, I do not much enjoy their time at the Actors Studio either.

My secret's second half: I often ask myself the Bernard Pivot Ten Questions. I think about the answers to those questions. I think - a lot - about the artist's psyche and soul, and I cannot spend my time watching anything more personally fascinating than the beauty of it. The beauty of the artists themselves. Through my own lenses, artists look like human art. Artists look like poems. They feel like tapestry and they sound like music and they pull me into themselves like Flemish paintings.

Lately I have been reading Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, and the very natural result of this reading has been my wondering about the fiction authors - the word artists - I love the best. Take Elizabeth Goudge, for instance. I read her words often. And repeatedly. And meditatively. Every book she writes is about the freedom found in duty done for love's sake - and the love found in duty. Her books are the perfect antidote to our modern notions of creativity and love being something we find spontaneously arising in the human soul, needing only release. Humans are not so one-dimensional as that. It works the other way - we build from the outside in as well as from the inside out. To remember this, I read Elizabeth Goudge.

Madeleine L'Engle writes about love too, and the first three books of her Time Quintet helped me show my children some of the most important things I wanted them to know about life. If we will take root, we will be free. If we will understand that the measure of the power of a thing is the measure of its love, we will be strong with the power of eternity. If we can learn to love the thing we most despise, we can redeem it. When I want to remember the fact that Love is the strongest thing there is - because God himself is Love - I read the fiction art of Madeleine L'Engle.


And this brings me to the point. What do I want to write about? Me. My words. What art do I want to create with my own words? What is my own art? On the way to church yesterday, alone in the car with my husband (still a rare occurrence, but less rare now) and in another of our best and most satisfying conversations about all things temporal and eternal and the places where the two touch, the thing came into focus for me. I want to write about love. I want to answer the question in as many ways as I can. What is it? What is love? And what is not love? Is it love when the other people have what they want? When I do? Does that matter at all? That is what I want my art to do. What is love, and what is it not? I want my words to be answers to that question. I want to be an answer to that question.

And this explains the loop tape in my head today. "I wanna know what love is. I want you to show me." Dated music - perfect sentiment. There are dozens of memorized hymns in my head and heart, some of which might explain this notion of mine, but it turns out that pop music says it most succinctly and most basically. I wanna know - I want you to show me.

Here are the Pivot questions. Try answering them for yourself if you never have before. I think this might be my own version of using the shampoo bottle as a microphone in the shower. I've heard of people doing that. Or picking up a figurine while you're dusting, and making your acceptance speech to the Academy. When I play, I answer the obsequious Mr. Lipton - after I've been brilliant, of course.

1. What is your favorite word?

Glory.

2. What is your least favorite word?

Fine. You know ... like when someone says, "fine" in that voice that means "I no longer want to talk to you about this, but I'm giving in because you're more stubborn than I am." It's one word that means "have it your way" and "I don't care what the truth is."

3. What turns you on (creatively, spiritually, emotionally)?

Seeing a thing that is exactly what it is in its most real self - when something is most true to its nature or its reason for being.

4. What turns you off?

Abuse of power - any time anyone uses their advantage for personal power.

5. What is your favorite curse word?

Shit - in any language - I trade off.

6. What sound or noise do you love?

Music.

7. What sound or noise do you hate?

Ignored babies crying.

8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

I'd like to make beautiful fabrics.

9. What profession would you not like to attempt?

Anything medical.

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

"Well done, thou good and faithful servant."