Authenticity

"There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity." ~Helene Hegemann, 17-year-old best-selling German novelist accused of plagiarism.

"Autobiography is not important. Authenticity is important." ~ Jeanette Winterson, Weight.

What is authenticity? I’ve been thinking about it for years. I could say, “I know it when I see it,” but that’s lazy and I really don’t know it when I see it, so that would be a lie. I’ve been tricked by what I’ve thought is authentic. I’m susceptible to being fooled. My therapist said before I left town, “you have a good bullshit meter but you override it. Start trusting it.”

Now I’m writing a book. A memoir. As I go along, writing slowly, laboriously, editing and reediting despite what my book-writing group says about not doing that, I think about how memory works. You have to fill in the holes to create a story because memory is not linear nor is it narrative. I have to allow myself to do this hole-filling freely because anyone who disputes my memory based on their memory is no more or less accurate than I am. But I worry about the holes because I am caught up in truth and then I circle back around to authenticity – which is more human than just truth/lies -- and I know that I have a story that is real, sincere, not torqued to please others. I’ve never written to please.

The story I’m telling is the truth of me. It is authentic. It’s about the betrayals that formed me and that I’ve railed against and broken away from and reenacted and finally found freedom from. And in writing the story, I’ve come to rely on the memory in my mind and in my body. My body holds the information from my lifetime that my mind couldn’t manage, or I’d override.

And when I’m writing and my mind says no, don’t write this, this is too hard, don’t go there, this is a secret, this is shameful, this is perverse, this is exposing, people will hate me, this is too old; and my mind wants to explode and I can’t sit and type another word and I pace or walk or if the timing is right, I go for a run. Until I get some sort of body release, I can’t sleep, I can’t sit still. And when my body is in motion, it seems to say: you know what you know; trust yourself.

My body has a honed "bullshit meter." My mind is not so great with that. I don’t have a scam-oriented mind although I was raised with scams and lies, betrayal and deception. As a child I had an acute sense that something was fishy, but I didn’t know how to make sense of that sense. I was confused. I’ve known since when something is wrong but I haven't listened to myself, and I lived with turmoil and confusion as if it were manageable. It can feel like a normal state when it’s what you’re raised with.

Since I’ve moved back to NYC, met new people, seen old friends, and started writing, I’ve been more interested than ever in authenticity. Authenticity is not static. It is not as simple as honesty. As sociologist Erving Goffman pointed out, we are different selves in different settings. We perform differently in different contexts. The Internet has made this performance even more fragmented than in Goffman’s time. We can now practice online becoming an idealized persona in a dehumanized setting without even being perceived. But in order to be authentic, a person has to have a core. That’s what I’m on the lookout for. There has to be a "there there" for a person … or a memoir … to be authentic. It doesn’t mean we have to be anchored to facts, or reportage; we can recreate ourself as we go along, but please make it about you, don't become something you're not for the sake of another, don't use your persona to deceive anyone, and don’t construct yourself or your story to be impressive. Authenticity requires humility.