Member-only story
Your Personal Myth
I came to believe that to live in Hollywood — Los Angeles is, I believe, its proper name — is to engage in a particular form of astral projection. One’s body, one’s mind, one’s home, one’s automobile are all separate and divine from the corporeal entity formally known as Tennessee Williams. Your body is cared for, fed, buffed, improved, plucked so as to be as perfect as possible. One’s mind is to be filled with nothing larger than an aphorism that will cleanse your heart and mind and keep you perky for close-ups at the studio or crudities with the ladies. One’s automobile and one’s home are attended to by staffs of servile and attractive men and women who do not make eye contact. Everything in place. Everything arrested. Everything temporary. It is the closest approximation one can find on earth to the preparation and presentation of the altar in the Catholic mass. Perfect placement, perfect presentation feverishly in search of meaning.
— Tennessee Williams
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Make up a story… For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don’t tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief’s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear’s caul.
― Toni Morrison,
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