Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Why chanting is good for writers

Now now... don't worry. I'm not going to proselytize.  

Last weekend me and TCF drove to Madison to see our favorite HindJew Krishna Das (KD) who we've been following all over the place for years because, like yoga, like writing, it works, which for me means it brings the love, opens the heart. And open the heart it did.

But it also opened up something unexpected, something I'm not used to opening much because "I'm a writer" and I let the page do the talking: my mouth.

As a writer for so many years, I tend to tell myself "Oh I'll write about that" whenever something happens or when I know I need to release something; in other words, I tend to save it for the page, which is a well intended, often fruitful practice. However, years and years of writing and editing and shaping words in my head—while deeply beneficial to the page—has gotten me into the habit of withholding my speech, rushing the details, or minimizing its place in the oral tradition. As a quick wit vulnerable to intoxication by repartee, often accused of relying to heavily on "yeah, yeah, yeah," I struggle to embrace the longwinded fanfare of storytelling, especially my own. I've been writing for so long, in fact, I've nearly forgotten the curative power of talking. Don't get me wrong; one of my all time favorite endangered species is long, deep conversation, which is a prompt for another day. I'm just saying when it comes to telling my stories, writing is my telling of choice.

No wonder my chanting went hog wild, renegade. This was not my comfortable key of C.  I  embraced my uglier tones, pushing through vocal ranges ordinarily way out of range, ones I'd rather not tread. I sang it out. I sang off key. I sang out a voice I kept hidden. I sang out a voice that came out sounding like my mother's. I sang out creaky cranky corners of my body that hadn't ever been offered melody. And while it wasn't easy, (an ugly voice brings up some gnarly darkness, shapeshifting memories, rejected and neglected parts of self), I felt like I had no choice: I had to sing through it.

After 3 hours of chanting with KD, we headed back to the hotel and before I knew it, I was talking nonstop, telling TCF all these stories about childhood and college, some rather difficult things. I forget how it came up, but out came the story about my brother's friend Jason, that irresistible combination of gorgeous and bad seed who stayed over night too frequently, or my boss Steve at Venice Beach who I still try and purge with each word I write or the guy who threw glass bottles at my bike as I rode home in the night or my mom's boyfriend or the "slow" girl and blonde boy on the block I took it out on and all  the wrong things I had done and been done to. And as I talked, I could feel these things happening again as though it was happening now, moving through, the same way I feel when I write, in perfect flow.

And I wished I could call all those people up that I'd hurt, intentionally or not, and apologize for what I'd done. And I also realized that there were also people out there, perhaps ones I'd forgotten who were also sitting in hotel rooms at this very moment wishing they could call me up and apologize too. And I realized that it felt so good to talk it out. And that if I hadn't talked it out, it might not have ever surfaced at all, page or otherwise. In fact, once I was done talking I realized I had some great stuff to write about, which I may have never found if I kept saving it for the page. And then it was done and we ate some yogurt and strawberries. Where had those stories been my whole life? What had they been? Unnamed blockages of driftwood? That dissonant wordless song?

So don't be so writerly all the time, writers. Talk a little. Don't save it all (for better or worse) for the page. It's good to talk.