Essay Archives - ANNE MCCLARD

August 7, 2024August 7, 2024

Things My Mother Taught Me

Megan McClard — Sketch of Megan, drawn by her sister Cynthia

Leavings: Memoir of a 1920’s Hollywood Love Child is the book my mother wrote that launched me into publishing. She didn’t conceive of the writings contained in her book as a memoir, but rather an assemblage, individual pieces of a patchwork quilt, written over years in her writing group in Denver. Originally she wanted to call the collection “Rag Bag,” and in the end found herself resistant to publishing the stories at all.

She ended up calling it Leavings, because at the age of ninety-three, her stories are all that was left, like crumbs on a plate after a satisfying meal. She wanted her friends and family to eat her leavings—to remember her life through her words.

I am responsible for making sure her story lives on, and this year Aristata Press will publish a novel that she wrote, which is a companion piece to Leavings—a fictional account of the same period of her life—told in three parts. Each part tells the story from the perspective of a different character.

things my mother taught me: Of fact and fiction

Megan wrestled with the best way to tell her story. The novel, A Time to Heal, was written as her Ph.D. dissertation in creative writing. She never tried to get it published. She was ambivalent about revealing the truths it obscured under the veil of fiction. What would people make of it? I never read her dissertation until last year when she asked me to retrieve a copy because she couldn’t remember ever having written it. She couldn’t remember the title, or what it was about. She wanted evidence that she had earned a doctorate.

And so, I managed to find a copy through an online dissertation repository. Delight spread across her face when I showed her that I had found it, but she didn’t want me to read it to her. “Put it away,” she said. I regret that I didn’t read it to her. It is beautifully written, and while in her memoir she tried to “tell it as it was,” the novel reveals more about her true feelings of the many situations she tried to write about objectively in Leavings. Both the “fact” and the “fiction” communicate their own truths in different ways.

things my mother taught me about point of view

Many years ago, long before reading my mother’s writing, or knowing her preoccupations with writing the truth, I began thinking about how we experience different forms of written expression. As a college student reading “the great books” at St. John’s College, and as an anthropology graduate student at Brown University I noticed my preference for reading poetry, fiction, and narrative prose over more expository, quasi-scientific writing. I became obsessed with voice and point of view, and the value of having multiple perspectives.

One time I expressed frustration with the great books curriculum to my mother, because at the time, the only woman in the curriculum was Jane Austen (although, my Greek class translated Sappho too). I longed for a female perspective. My mother, knowing that I had read Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, suggested I read Society in America by Harriet Martineau, an English social theorist, a contemporary of Tocqueville.

For my senior thesis at St. John’s College I ended up writing a comparison of Tocqueville’s and Martineau’s perspectives on American society, and argued that the college should include Martineau in the curriculum alongside Toqueville’s Democracy in America. My argument failed to win them over, sadly.

On the bright side, my life trajectory turned because of my mother’s introduction of Martineau. I credit her with my decision to become a cultural anthropologist, and subsequently a fiction writer.

things my mother taught me: All writing is fiction

The word ‘fiction’ comes from the Latin fictio, to fashion or shape. My mother taught me that. Everything written, whether ostensibly factual or not, is crafted into a narrative that the writer creates toward a particular end, scientific or otherwise. Subsequently, readers consume the written word and interpret it through their own lenses. The original point of view belongs to the writer (or employer), as does the motive for writing a particular thing. Sometimes writers express someone else’s point of view, but there always is a point of view. Truth may exist, but it’s fool-hardy to believe when someone says “this is a true story” that it is. We all weave stories to please ourselves and others.

My mother planted these seeds in me. Those were some good leavings.

July 22, 2024August 3, 2024

When Frogs Sing, We Listen

Why do frogs sing?

I am sure some people wonder why I bother spending time writing books and songs. I sometimes worry that friends and acquaintances think my writing activities are egoistic. It’s possible that some think I am a pretentious poser, or that I am a bad writer, a bad singer, or a poor musician, and don’t understand why I bother. One has to start someplace, and typically, one doesn’t start at the top. And, besides, frogs sing because they have to.

I write because I like telling stories, and love the process of piecing things together. My two favorite idioms are opposites—song and novel—short and long form. Each of these forms comes with its challenges. The challenge with the long form is how to keep readers engaged, maintaining continuity, and keeping track of all of the characters and events. The challenge of the short form is to tell a complete and satisfying story in few words that lasts between three and four minutes, and also pleases the ear (most of the time). The joy lies in the process. That doesn’t mean that I don’t want an appreciative audience. That brings its own satisfaction, but it isn’t my goal. I love exploring words, thoughts and ideas at my leisure without too much regard for what other people might think about them.

Songwriting as Truth-Telling

I participate in Matt Meighan’s songwriting workshops, something I began at the onset of the pandemic, and have continued to do. He calls his class “Songwriting as Truth-Telling.” I don’t know how many of his classes I have participated in to this point, but quite a few. To date, I have written more than seventy songs, most of them as part of Matt’s workshop. The only daylight most of my songs ever see is in that context. Some songs are better than others, but they are all worthwhile, and that is the truth.

During the pandemic, and while taking care of my mother who was dying, songwriting, music and fiction writing were my refuge. Many of the songs I wrote were about my mother, some inspired by things she said in delirium, some inspired by her lived life, and then later, her death. Those were not happy times, but Matt’s workshop gave me an outlet for dealing with the difficulties in my life.

In today’s post, I want to tell you more about how Matt’s classes work, because being a part of them has brought so much joy to my life, and I feel like there are lessons in it to be gleaned by anybody who has ever been on the giving or receiving end of criticism.

Each workshop lasts four to six weeks, virtual or in-person depending on the season, and also on the songwriters geographic locations. Every week eight to ten songwriters—a mix of first timers and highly experienced—get together to share something they have written, a song, a poem, an idea for a song, whatever they are able to bring on that day. Matt suggests prompts every week, but no one is required to adhere to the prompt. Many people never use it. I am embarrassed to say that I usually do, as I love the surprises that emerge, and frankly I don’t always have a song waiting in the wings.

You can’t teach a frog to sing if you step on it

Matt doesn’t offer direct instruction or song critique, in fact, critique is prohibited. Each person sings or reads in turn. We don’t spend a lot of time discussing form or the specifics of “how to” write a song. That isn’t the goal. The goal is to listen to other people’s songs closely—to hear the words, story, word choices, voices, melody, and the chord progression . There are rules. Listen. Hear. Be generous. Kind. At first, I was disappointed that Matt or my fellow workshop participants were not offering up suggestions about how to make my songs better, but in time my perspective changed.

Initially, I wanted to learn more about structure, and different song forms, so I signed up for a Berkeley class. I got what I needed out of it—it had great course material, not such good human interaction. People were not kind. I didn’t want to put my songs “out there” so that some snotty twenty-something year-old could take a dump on me. And, after several times of attending “Songwriting as Truth-Telling,” I began to understand that the positive responses to specific aspects of my, and other people’s songs, were the lessons. Turns out a one-word, one-chord song can be a good song, even when a frog is singing it—especially then.

An old frog sings

In case any of you are interested in hearing an old frog perform a few thus-far unperformed songs, I will be singing several at the open mic at Threshold Brewing and Blending, located at SE 79th and Stark on the 27th of July. It starts at 6 and ends at 9. We are looking for a few more songwriters to perform. Reach out to me if you are interested, and I will get you on the list. The slots are 10 to 15 minutes each—so 2-3 songs.

Stay tuned for my next post that will focus on the long-form writing I do! In the meantime, if you haven’t read my first novel, Butterfly Dreams, or ordered my second novel, Margaux and the Vicious Circle, now is an excellent opportunity to do so. While you are at it, check out some of the other great books in the Aristata Press Bookstore!

I am looking for early reviews of Margaux and the Vicious Circle. Reach out to me personally if you would like a free copy of the ePub to read. I will send you a download link.

February 27, 2018February 27, 2018

Just Say No to Easy Fixes

Many years ago, when I first moved to Portland, Oregon from Colorado, I began suffering from a bout of depression, undoubtedly related to the absence of sunshine (Solar Affective Disorder). It wasn’t a true clinical depression, as I could still function relatively well. The worst symptom for me was how irritable I was. I felt that my irritability was getting in the way of my work relationships, and I mentioned it to my primary care physician who was more than happy to prescribe 10 mg of Prozac for the condition.

I began taking the drug, and immediately felt more energized with improvements in my mood. After about four months, I decided that I would stop taking it. My doctor, didn’t see why I would want to stop taking it if it was working. “I don’t want to be dependent on a drug,” I had said. “I would prefer to figure out how to be happy without it.” I tapered off it, and have never looked back. I think the drug was a good thing for me in that moment; it helped me to break some mental behavioral habits that I had fallen into, but it didn’t seem like something I wanted to be locked into for life.

A couple of years later, a teacher suggested evaluating our middle-school daughter for ADD. We did that, and left the doctor’s office with a prescription for Adderall. I felt ambivalent about it at the time, as it seemed wrong to me that so many children were being put on drugs for the sake of classroom management, and frankly, nobody really knows what the long-term impact of drugs like these will have on children’s developing bodies and brains. We gave it a go anyway. Our daughter began taking the meds, and we could see an improvement in her ability to concentrate. After about ten days on the drug, however, she began to complain of headaches, and generally not feeling great. By the end of a month, she was still complaining, so we honored her wishes and took her off it. We have never looked back.

Recently, in my own life, after going through treatment for an early-stage breast cancer, and then having a serious post-surgical infection that required the use of six different antibiotics to cure it, I experienced a bout of anxiety and depression. I had to take a leave of absence from work, as I was fairly dysfunctional. When I tried to get my short-term disability (STD) insurance to cover during my absence from work, I was denied. I wondered if I should appeal the decision and began doing research. I learned that STD will deny coverage for mental health absences if the patient is not on drugs and not seeing a psychiatrist at least twice a week. I had said/done all the wrong things.

Of course, my primary care physician offered to put me on drugs when I casually mentioned that I was experiencing anxiety and depression, but I had declined. My reason for declining was that I had no idea what was causing my altered mental state. I suspected that it was the last antibiotic that I was on, Zyvox, a weak MAOI, but it also could have been the result of dealing with the traumas I had endured for the months prior, or the fact that my situation at work was less than stellar, or that due to my cancer treatment my estrogen level was at zero, or all of the above. I wanted to solve the problem through proper nutrition and exercise, which is what ultimately I did. I did yoga, walked and went bike riding daily with my daughter. I rested. After about six weeks, the anxiety and depression dissipated, and I was back to being myself. It upset me that the insurance, which I had paid for, and never tried to use until then, would not cover me unless I were on drugs, as if somehow being on drugs proves that one is suffering from a bona fide mental illness.

This morning, I stumbled upon an article about menopause, and treating it with ADHD drugs. During menopause, as estrogen declines many women experience what is known as “brain fog,” an inability to concentrate for which many doctors are prescribing attention deficit disorder drugs. Then I Googled “Menopause and ADHD.” Lo and behold, a slew of articles popped up touting the benefits of all sorts of amphetamines for menopausal women. It turns out that doctors are handing out amphetamines to women like candy. I have several friends and relatives who are taking them, ostensibly to treat their late-diagnosed cases of ADD. No doubt, menopausal women experience hormone related attention issues, but I would argue that taking amphetamines is not a wonderful long-term solution. The list of side effects for amphetamines is daunting, and some of the long-term mental and physical consequences are dire.

What disturbs me most about the suggestion that menopausal symptoms, and menopausal women, should be treated with powerful psychoactive drugs is that it reflects the medical industry’s continued view of women as psychologically fragile. I am reminded of a story my mother tells of having high blood pressure back in the sixties that began as the result of taking birth control pills. Her doctor prescribed Meprobamate, a tranquilizer, a practice that was driven by the belief that women are prone to neurosis by virtue of their hormonal imbalances. The drug was intended to subdue her as much as it was to lower her blood pressure.

Gender bias in diagnoses and treatments is a well documented phenomenon that doesn’t just have an impact on women; it has an impact on everybody. According to the World Health Organization, men suffer from mental health disorders at the same level as women, but “doctors are more likely to diagnose depression in women compared with men, even when they have similar scores on standardized measures of depression or present with identical symptoms.” Furthermore, being female “is a significant predictor of being prescribed mood altering psychotropic drugs” (https://tinyurl.com/yythl5d), a fact that bothers me greatly.

I am not anti-medicine. There are many compelling reasons for people to take medications for mental health issues, for hormonal imbalances, and for any number of other health issues. I feel strongly, based on my own family’s experiences, that doctors are too willing to hand out pills as easy fixes to difficult problems. Looking at people’s whole lives–their families, diets, cultures, physical and mental activities–and helping people make changes without lifetime use of drugs should be a preferred goal. We need to question the biases and motives of our medical practitioners. They do not know everything, and they come with all of the cultural baggage the rest of us do.