I've been trying to write a new blog entry about the interview process. Now I’m realizing that my thoughts are complex, just like the people I talk to. I need more time.
For now, I'll just write about one aspect of interviewing, one that has challenged and intrigued me, namely that formerly homeless people never want to talk about life on the streets. They want to fast-forward to having it together.
I’ll ask someone what being homeless was like, hoping that he’ll share sensory details, specific memories. Instead, he’ll tersely say, "It sucked." In other words: it’s none of your business. At other times, the interviewee confuses herself as she tries to remember: “It was like a dream,” she concludes. And so I have to press further. When I do, people will usually oblige with more specifics. As they share details from their pasts, many people break down. Some lose composure completely, shoulders heaving, cradling their faces in their hands. Most often, people pretend that the tears glistening on their cheeks do not exist. “Something in my eye. One second.”
Of course I do not blame anyone for trying to avoid painful and shameful memories. Who would want to relive waking up on the cold pavement, smelling of alcohol and urine? In telling my own story to others, I too gloss over the parts I want to forget. If somebody asks for more detail, I balk.
Initially, I believed that unwillingness to talk about pain or shame stemmed from the desire to avoid revisiting these experiences. Now, I wonder if reticence with regard to the past has a deeper root than eluding discomfort. Perhaps in our unwillingness to speak of the past, we wish to dissociate ourselves from who we once were. I believe that this effort to discard our old selves for better selves shapes the way we think about our lives, and the way we tell our stories to others.
The power of this impulse -- to become new -- is particularly evident to me when I talk to graduates of our long-term rehabilitiation program.
For example, the last person I interviewed from the long-term program -- let's call him "J.R." --gushed, "You should have seen me before. I had long scraggly, hair. Today, I've put on weight and I have a nice haircut. I'm a new man!" What J.R. most wanted was not merely to escape the discomforts of life on the streets, but to become a new person. The only extant evidence of his old self is a single photograph, he said. Today, this photograph is stashed away in the filing cabinet at a detox center -- somewhere in Nevada.
Here’s another example of someone trying to don a new self. One of my favorite college professors – we’ll call him “M” -- told us that when he was four years old, his parents came home to find that someone had colored all over the wallpaper in bold, broad strokes. “Who did this?” they asked their kids.
“It was him,” the children said, pointing to the young M.
All eyes turned. “Well?” his parents asked.
The young boy hesitated, thought for awhile, and then said: “That was the old M. The new M wouldn’t do that.”
M’s story illustrates our willingness to leave behind old selves when we find ourselves in trouble. Of course, for J.R. the stakes are higher than a spanking. Desperate, alone, and confused, he needed to find - or to be given -- a new self, if he was to beat his addictions and (self-proclaimed) self-hatred. Today, J.R. believes he's found that self. "I'm a new creation," he says, beaming from ear to ear. Then, he goes on about his new, smooth hair, and how every day is a beautiful, new day.
He's happy talking about this, I think. I don't want to ask him to go back to the days on the streets. I can tell he won't want to go back. I wouldn't.
But it's my job to unearth his buried old self. From studying focus groups, I’ve learned that donors respond to need, rather than to solutions. (Apparently, middle-aged women especially respond to older men who look like they need saving.) So, if I’m to write effectively, I’ve got to hunt down this man’s former self – the dirty self who lived under a bridge, who ate one meal a week, who fought with cops and had no hope. I've got to find the self he'd rather forget. In pressing for details, I feel rude and invasive ... I wish I could let him continue to delight in his newfound gladness and his new sense of possibilities ... but I can't.
And so I say, slowly … "Let's back up a little bit … to when you were living in the park.”
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1 comment:
Love this post. So insightful. You've made me think about how in my high school photo albums, I have secret photos from my rebellious phase tucked behind the more appropriate ones. Thumbing through the pages of those albums now, years later, I scoff at these "secrets" my old self was saving as treasures to share with a new self I never became (thank God). And I take great pleasure in ripping them up and chucking them in the garbage.
Just the other night, I was on the phone with my friend J.K. and she told me she had found some home movies of us from high school trying to be funny, like Saturday Night Live funny. "Laur, I want to burn them," she said.
I believe the same M you speak of once said that when we reflect on the person we were ten years ago, we usually despise that person. And that in ten years, the same will true when we reflect on who we are now in April, 2008. That's normal, and probably even good! This must be part of that sanctification business.
You have a hard job in digging up those old bones of your interviewees. But I can't think of anyone better to dig alongside than you, L.S. Keep on keeping on! I believe in you.
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