Appreciation

Once I started writing personal narrative regularly, it didn’t take me long to understand that my readers, no matter how much they liked my stories, didn’t actually care about me. This wouldn’t have surprised me when I was writing fiction, but I thought, given that I was my stories’ protagonist, it might be different in memoir, both short and long. After all, doesn’t the reader have to care about the hero to enjoy a story?

Yes, but if I care about a protagonist, it’s always because I see myself in him or her. Their suffering and success become mine. I read, you see, for myself; to inspire and entertain and amuse myself. As, I am certain, do all my readers. It’s a kind of beautiful and necessary selfishness, the kind of selfishness, in fact, that compels a writer to write. I don’t care what the reader wants when I start a story. I don’t really care about their lives and struggles and hopes and joys. All of that belongs to them. Instead, I begin by asking myself what I care about. It’s the only thing I can know for sure.

However, that question is enough to create something capable of connecting to a perfect stranger. I am a stranger to most of the artists whose work I have loved over my lifetime. I’m so glad they made what they made, but I don’t think and worry about them the way I do my family and friends. I’m not bothered by their addictions or infidelities, nor am I interested in how they decorate their homes or where they want to go on vacation this year. It’s none of my business and has nothing to do with me.

While I don’t care about any of that, I do appreciate what they have made. I have not always understood the value of appreciation. I placed it vaguely in the same category as politeness, the right thing to do if you like something, they way I learned to clap at the end of a performance. But if I pay attention, I’m aware that I’m applauding as much for myself as the artist. In that moment, I feel as connected to life as when I create. To appreciate, is to recognize what I love, to see it outside of myself and in myself at the same time, and in so doing the space between what I am and a stranger disappears.

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You can find William at: williamkenower.com