Prologue
When I launched my blog, Tom Aplomb, in June 2008, I was bitter. Although I had recently remarried, the wounds from my divorce and dysfunctional first marriage were fresh. After many years of silence, my quiet, reflective, writerly voice wanted to say something, but my angry, aggrieved, and vehement voice demanded to be heard, to catapult like an angry bird and smash my ex, my pain, my past life to pieces. My early posts took the form of rants—how could she?—or laments—how could this have happened to me? I steered clear of self-pity but made pitiful progress on the road to self-awareness and self-understanding. I was a mess, and I wanted the world to know it wasn’t my fault.
Three things happened to change the blog’s trajectory and alter its target.
First, a Twitter acquaintance told me I needed to use my real name if I wished to be taken seriously. I had been hiding behind a nom de plume, Tom Aplomb, concerned that people who knew me would see my story and devour the details of my emotional and psychological undoing. I hadn’t yet watched Brené Brown’s famous TED talk, and I was as much ashamed of my life as I was outraged at its severely damaged state. I also worried that my ex would find the blog or that parents of my young children’s school classmates would, to use a contemporary term, cancel me—and my sons’ playdates. With trepidation, I took ownership of my truth—deciding to let the reactions fall where they may.
Second, the reactions realigned my direction. As readers related to my story and found wisdom in my words, I realized the purpose of my posts was to help others and not just heal myself. By turning my focus outward, I turned the blog from a source of self-soothing to a source of solace for those who had experienced hurt, heartbreak, harmful relationships—the hard truths of the human condition. The impact my writing was having on readers made my daily discipline (publishing each morning on my commute to Manhattan) a daily delight, a delicious weight, a labor of love.
Third, and most momentous, when my second marriage fizzled, I reconnected with my first love, after nearly twenty years of separation. One of her many gifts was my spiritual awakening. She taught me to listen with my heart and look toward heaven for the message I was meant to convey, and my writing took on a poetic quality and sacred aspect that often astonished me—and still does.
As my posts piled up, I made many attempts to organize, categorize, and synthesize them into a book. But no framework seemed to make sense. Only when I came up with the idea for this volume—a testament to the letters of love from a lover of letters—did I realize I had been writing about love all along. And then everything made sense. So here it is, The Alphabet of Love.
Love is an Art
Sit.
Silently.
Close your eyes and listen.
Let it come to you.
And it will come.
This morning I sat.
Silently.
Listening.
And I thought I heard, no, I knew I heard, the sound of breaking waves.
The sound of water ebbing and flowing, washing whitely over the rocks before receding along the sand.
The cycle of nature, repeating itself.
The cycle of endless regeneration.
And I felt something, deep in my heart.
A strengthening of the muscle.
A quickening of the beat.
A pulsating throb creating flow.
The energy of the artist at work.
Engineers build bridges.
Artists engineer change.
Artists deliver difference.
Our stock in trade is revelation.
Suddenly the phrase be the change made sense to me.
In the context of art.
In the context of God the creator, the ultimate artist, who spoke the world to life with words. Who created light from darkness, being from nothingness. Who brought forth what was not there before. Whose light illuminates every manuscript. Whose music speaks to every composer. Whose hand guides every chisel, brush, and pen.
Be the change.
Banish anger, bitterness, and frustration.
Send them packing.
Fill yourself with love and light.
Give of your heart and free your words.
Spill your blood onto the pages.
The blood of sacrifice.
Sail across the wine-dark sea.
Show them the struggling.
The drowning.
The sinking.
The rising again.
And break like waves upon their heads.
Touch them.
Alter them.
Leave your mark.
And make it . . .
indelible.
Creative freedom is not something you indulge.
It is a serious commitment to being yourself.
To using your brokenness to make the world a little more whole.
The most misunderstood thing about artists is that we're flaky, irresponsible, and self-indulgent.
The world of products and services, of punch clocks and process improvement, of make-work and manufacturing, of profits and five-year plans, lays down a challenge. The world asks: How dare you make art when there is work to be done?
Well, I speak back the artists' challenge: How dare you waste time when there is art to be made?
How dare you expend precious resources making things that don't matter?
How dare you squander ingenuity, consume creativity, and crush spirit in a vise? How dare you try to quench the fire of inspiration?
In my challenge, there is no anger.
Only wonderment.
Because those who would deny art its primacy have somehow lost their wonderment, their sense that anything at all can be wondrous, that life can be magical, surprising, and extraordinary.
Round them up, the captains of conformity, the paragons of playing it safe.
And ship them off.
Make them spend a month in the museum, a week blaring Beethoven, a day reading Dickens, a night in bed with Nabokov.
For God's sake, make them feel. Even if just for a moment.
I will not raise my children to be cogs, to be cut and shaped and filed and smoothed for someone else's purpose.
I hereby and henceforth set them free.
Free to follow their own compass and set their own course.
Free to breathe fire, to inflame the world with their genius.
Free to leave their own indelible marks.
Free to be artists.
Free to be the change.