Visible

Because I grew up and lived there, I knew my home city of Providence and home state of Rhode Island were real. I tromped around in them for twenty-four years, went to school there, made friends there, had fun and disappointment there. But if you were someone, like I was, who watched a lot of TV and movies, and if the stories you watched on the small and big screens were like another reality to you, and if that reality often seemed to mean as much as the one in which you lived, you might be forgiven if you sometimes believed that the place you called home wasn’t real.

After all, it was never mentioned in any of those stories. They seemed to be told in a world without a Rhode Island. I felt as if I was peering through a one-way glass at that other world, the one everyone shared. I knew about it, but it didn’t know about me. Very rarely, someone on a show would mention Providence by name, and I would stand up and point at the TV. “Hey!” I’d declare. “They said it.” Oh, to be recognized, to know you aren’t invisible after all.

When I was twenty-five, I moved to Los Angeles, where most of those stories were told. LA was an unreal place in its own way, so expansive, so dry, so ambitious and glittering. I was happy to leave it for Seattle, about the same time, it turns out, the series Frasier began running, which claimed to be set in my new home city. The landmark Space Needle skyline appeared in Dr. Crane’s living room window, and he often met his brother at a trendy coffee shop. But it didn’t actually feel like the city I’d come to know. Why, it was all just make-believe.

I still felt invisible sometimes, though I couldn’t blame my locale anymore. I seemed to have carried the one-way glass through which I looked at the world with me. Interestingly, those glasses are like mirrors to anyone on the other side. When I would eventually find myself giving to talks to crowds, and when one of the audience members would greet me after I’d told them stories about growing up in Providence or moving to Los Angeles, the first thing they wanted to do after they shook my hand was tell me their own story.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com