Saturday, February 25, 2006
Frey Okay
I gotta do it because this is what blogs are for.
I didn't want to make a comment until I was done reading the book myself and checking up on a few things first. Still, I am most likely speaking much too quickly and impetuously. I don't care. I have to say something before I go to bed.
A Million Little Pieces. James Frey. Finished in tonight. I completely understand why Oprah called him 'the man that was keeping her up at nights'. Oprah is easily a personality that borders on addictive and is obsessively driven. I see this in her as I am both of those things myself. When I latch on to something, I go overboard and am passionate to the point of blindness. People like us, and there are millions of us, were affected by this book. I read this book in a few days, giving up hours of sleep. Its pace, the way it talked, thought, ran...the way it lived on the page the way a mind does - it was infectious. The book pulled me in. It kept me there. And for a book about addiction that seems appropriate and superbly executed. After I finished it tonight I felt hung-over and slightly nauseous.
Maybe that is because of this controversy. Maybe it is because I lived so much of that six weeks in rehab with James. I don't know. Thing is this. Memoir or not, the book has affected people positively. Period. Period. Period. I am not saying Truth does not matter, but Truth is grey, not black and white and Truth is individual and Truth is a feeling not a fact. And I know many and most of you reading this will disagree and that is okay because that is Your Truth. My Truth is that, fabricated or not, somehow Mr. Frey created something that has rung True for thousands and thousands of people. If something in it rang True for them and helped lead them to peace, happniess, joy and surrender then GOOD ON YOU JAMES FREY. You can be a liar and a saint and an addict and an artist and a success and a coward and a joke and a hero all at the same time. That is what makes Humanity so exciting and mysterious and beautiful. I saw the book trying to get across that message. I got the message. The message is what matters. But no. No, no, no, no. Instead we are going to focus on the facts that aren't exact and the exageration of a root canal. We are going to run away from The Message because we are all more concerned with being Right and Miserable than maybe being Wrong and Happy.
This is how I was raised. 'There is no excuse for ignorance'. It is better to KNOW and have it make you feel alone and afraid than to NOT KNOW and feel joy. I watched my family hurt each other to prove their point. Faith was a swear word in my family. Facts, Science, Intellectualizing everything until every bit of magic was sucked out of it was what I was taught to believe in.
Well, no more. I refuse to be right and miserable. I don't care if I lose a debate based on structured research. I am learning to trust the validity in what I feel over what I think and especially what I think I know. I am learning that I would rather spend my life happy happy happy happy because I believed than superior and correct, believing nothing and dead inside.
Read the book yourself and make up your own mind. I reserve no judgment on James Frey and will conclude by saying this book reminded me of the strength that is inside of each and every one of us, insdie of Me...reminded me that it is up to each one of us to Write Our Own Bible.
And for that, lies or not, I am deeply grateful.
I didn't want to make a comment until I was done reading the book myself and checking up on a few things first. Still, I am most likely speaking much too quickly and impetuously. I don't care. I have to say something before I go to bed.
A Million Little Pieces. James Frey. Finished in tonight. I completely understand why Oprah called him 'the man that was keeping her up at nights'. Oprah is easily a personality that borders on addictive and is obsessively driven. I see this in her as I am both of those things myself. When I latch on to something, I go overboard and am passionate to the point of blindness. People like us, and there are millions of us, were affected by this book. I read this book in a few days, giving up hours of sleep. Its pace, the way it talked, thought, ran...the way it lived on the page the way a mind does - it was infectious. The book pulled me in. It kept me there. And for a book about addiction that seems appropriate and superbly executed. After I finished it tonight I felt hung-over and slightly nauseous.
Maybe that is because of this controversy. Maybe it is because I lived so much of that six weeks in rehab with James. I don't know. Thing is this. Memoir or not, the book has affected people positively. Period. Period. Period. I am not saying Truth does not matter, but Truth is grey, not black and white and Truth is individual and Truth is a feeling not a fact. And I know many and most of you reading this will disagree and that is okay because that is Your Truth. My Truth is that, fabricated or not, somehow Mr. Frey created something that has rung True for thousands and thousands of people. If something in it rang True for them and helped lead them to peace, happniess, joy and surrender then GOOD ON YOU JAMES FREY. You can be a liar and a saint and an addict and an artist and a success and a coward and a joke and a hero all at the same time. That is what makes Humanity so exciting and mysterious and beautiful. I saw the book trying to get across that message. I got the message. The message is what matters. But no. No, no, no, no. Instead we are going to focus on the facts that aren't exact and the exageration of a root canal. We are going to run away from The Message because we are all more concerned with being Right and Miserable than maybe being Wrong and Happy.
This is how I was raised. 'There is no excuse for ignorance'. It is better to KNOW and have it make you feel alone and afraid than to NOT KNOW and feel joy. I watched my family hurt each other to prove their point. Faith was a swear word in my family. Facts, Science, Intellectualizing everything until every bit of magic was sucked out of it was what I was taught to believe in.
Well, no more. I refuse to be right and miserable. I don't care if I lose a debate based on structured research. I am learning to trust the validity in what I feel over what I think and especially what I think I know. I am learning that I would rather spend my life happy happy happy happy because I believed than superior and correct, believing nothing and dead inside.
Read the book yourself and make up your own mind. I reserve no judgment on James Frey and will conclude by saying this book reminded me of the strength that is inside of each and every one of us, insdie of Me...reminded me that it is up to each one of us to Write Our Own Bible.
And for that, lies or not, I am deeply grateful.
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