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| Written by Woodrow Willow | |
| Monday, 17 July 2006 | |
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Still Crazy After All These Fears by Woodrow S Charles Willow I’m too afraid to tell you my fears; I’m scared you’ll use them against me. No, I’m being facetious. At least now I am, though that was the first fear I had to get over to tell you any others. And for purposes of this article, I’d like to talk mainly about “gendered” fears. Particularly men’s fears. The description that, for me, goes most precisely and painfully to the heart of the matter of men’s fears – one might almost say Men’s Fear - is Howard S. Schwartz’s summary of the neo-Freudian Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel’s writings. I’ve not yet read Chasseguet-Smirgel in the original – an undertaking that seems definitely worthwhile; from what I gather from Schwartz, she sounds like the most recent genius on the Depth Psychology scene – but for the present I find that the, what I can only call the clean thinking of Schwartz himself hits the target well into the red circle. I refer – hell, I urge – the reader to Schwartz’s Revolt of the Primitive: 2001, Praeger Publishers – specifically p. 40, ff. While the whole section, the whole book, merits reading and rereading, the following says it best in a single paragraph. "This is the root of the man’s desire: to be comforted and taken care of by the loving mother, conceived as omnipotent. At the same time, though, it is the source of terror, for the mother is, after all, an other. Her love, for which the man counts for his emotional sustenance is, that is to say, her love. The man has no power over it…she is completely outside his control. So the deeper his love, the deeper the dependence, and the more helpless he becomes. Now we can see the core of men’s emotional orientation toward women. It is complete, profound, and overwhelming ambivalence. [Italics in original.]" So much for how an archetypal male fear applies to my own; now it’s time to address my own, specifically. Because, much as I’d like to stay nice and comfortably abstract here, I can’t speak of anyone else’s fears quite as authentically, can I? As the man said, I wouldn’t talk about myself so much, except it’s the subject on which I have the most information. But one of the advantages of being 53 is that I am qualified to talk a bit about the fears of men 52 and younger. Not that I’m confident younger males, particularly those in the age bracket puberty-to-39, will listen to me. At this particular juncture here in Western civ, those fellows were brought up almost exclusively by women, the father – let alone the male mentor for young men – having been phased out – way out – by the time they were coming of age. I did, however, not too long ago, see an article in the Internet news that indicated that today’s younger men - well, okay, one younger man, anyway – still have what Robert Bly refers to as the hunger for the teaching of older men. So, on the strength of that underwhelming evidence, I’m going to assume that the hunger is an eternal and indestructible one, and proceed. My sons, you won’t believe how many of your hopes and fears – how much of the story of your life right now, is determined by hormones! Much as I try to tell myself otherwise (“Fifty-three’s too young!”…“It’s the antidepressants, I just know it, they have no real idea what long-term effects might…” “Besides, I bet every other male in Western culture is going through the same thing. Pretty much. It’s feminism, I tell you!…” “No – it’s my wife. Her going through the Change has infected me. You know what they say about nuns living together eventually getting their periods at the same…? Maybe if we separate…?”), I’m becoming gradually more resigned to the possibility that I’m now entering andropause – male menopause, puberty-in-reverse, change-of-life, name your poison. It’s a mixed blessing (a rather dark shade of gray, in my estimate, but still, mixed), the good news being that the negative tensions of Sexuality and all its terrible ramifications begin to back off from your life. For example, you know that one, that nagging, awful one, that goes “I’m so scared my woman would betray me if she thought she stood a reasonable chance of gain – in relationship, in wealth – by doing so”? The one that keeps you jumping through all those hoops? Well, after you reach 50 (that is, both of you have to reach 50, it’s a package deal), you can start to relax. It’s not just that she’s no longer top-shelf in the cheese market, though that’s part of it. It’s that she herself begins to lose interest in all that sexual craziness. Or, more precisely, begins to reorient her self away from all that sexual craziness to…grandchildren, as far as I can see. And the charge begins winding down for you, too. It is yet another of Nature’s cruel jokes that just when you can start trusting your spouse not to cheat on you, you stop caring if they do! To an extent, then, it’s a relief to feel All That Sexual Craziness – and all the stupid drama that is its subliminal offspring – easing off. To an extent, but by no means absolutely. I find myself in this phase still unwilling to let go completely, not only of identifying sexual potency with myself as a man, but of many of the by-products of Sex I just mentioned. It’s sad to feel passion and romance fading away, along with plain old horniness. What passion I have left seems to have been reserved for my work – by which I mean, not turning a crank eight-plus hours a day at some other man’s mill of course, but my Work, my Opus, my calling, which in my case is Art. For my Art-Work I still have passion….Too much, I sometimes wonder? For looking at timelines of fellowmen who’ve gone before me (and come up from behind me!), I fear that, at 53, the question of whether my art is going to make a splash in the world has pretty much been decided, and that it is vain to hope otherwise. Do I confuse adolescent ambition with genuine passion? Or is ambition itself a sign of health in a man, so long as there is breath in his body? Do many, most, or all other men feel like this about their own Work? Is this a generic-male genius – or, if you prefer, syndrome – or is it mainly an Artists’ one? The only thing I can tell you for sure is that, for now, certainly, I’d rather stubbornly try and dam up passion, hopes, and even fears, in the reservoirs of my soul, than see them all drain off into a dead-calm sea of Resignation. Woodrow S Charles Willow lives in Boston, Massachusetts, and has, at long last, completed Draft One of an epic novel he is writing and illustrating on Atlantis, the Lost Continent. You can email him at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it or This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it |
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