Why write? Zadie Smith's "Something to Do", an essay from her recently released Intimations, opens with a brief exploration of this question commonly posed to artists - why bother? Why create? Smith notes the rich tradition of writers taking the longform approach to this prompt, collecting their various convoluted and self-serving reasons under essays with titles like "Why I Write", but in these pieces she rarely encountered her truest motivation, which she suspects is closer to universal than personal - it's something to do. Her insight immediately resonated with me. Longtime readers will recall the many instances when I have temporarily suspended the critical activities of TOA to clear my throat ahead of an unnecessary justification (and I stand by those posts) but if I must be honest, I suppose I could offer nothing more than a token defense against anyone who accused this space of being little more than something to do. And if this accuser were Smith herself, then I might not even bother with my flimsy protest, opting instead to put down my pen and plead guilty as charged. It would show, I think, a necessary humility, for who am I to try and argue with a writer of her caliber?
Smith's essay expands from her revelation, weaving in the fact of this expression's ubiquity in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. I remember a few such examples from my own life as friends and colleagues shared news of passions suddenly discovered during the endless days of lockdown - the baker, the weaver, the podcast host, each emerging from the rubble of the pre-pandemic self. It's something to do, you know? The interesting thing about thinking back to this time is that I recall having a similar thought not just about actions, but interactions. The monthly Zoom, the weekly call, the occasional walk, each of the various connections in those extraordinary days shared one unusual feature - an obligatory check-in on my recent activity, which served no function beyond reminding all concerned parties that my pandemic would be defined by nothing happening. I remember talking about this on a walk with a friend who pointed out something that is fairly obvious to me now - well, making conversation, it's something to do. It's true, and about as true as anything can be - even in the midst of a normal activity like a walk, itself always understood as something to do, was an added layer of the same thinking thanks to the underlying norms of social interaction.
If making conversation is something to do, then we have no choice but to find something to say. It's true even when it isn't - most people, feeling that they have nothing to say, will announce "I have nothing to say" rather than sit there, mute, until everyone hears the message. What my friend was likely too polite to tell me applies here - it's rude to sit in silence when someone else is trying to talk to you, just as it would have been rude to skip the check-in despite my being in the midst of the great nothing pandemic. When we ask each other how it's going, the question is more than just an example of finding something to say - it's polite. The challenge created by all this politeness is that we seem oblivious in those moments when someone simply has nothing to say; politeness has filled the signal of silence with the distraction of noise. There is a certain logic to the observation that if the other person is talking, then surely there is something more to say, but I think we all know this is hardly the case, a hard-earned wisdom from having blubbered through enough small talk - weather observations, safe cultural references, those winking complaints about how much we hate small talk. It seems like a lot of speaking is the result of obligation, with the expectation having been previously set by a long-forgotten authority to whom we remain forever loyal; we talk today like we talked yesterday, then we wonder why our conversations never improve.
One example of such an obligation leading to empty speaking is the televised interview. There are certainly cases where such a format has obvious value - I am thinking specifically of programs centered around the interview - but interviews themselves seem to pop up in all manners of unexpected places. Who thought it was a good idea to interview stars on the red carpet? The fact that these interviews happen while live on air suggests to me that everyone is in on it - since nothing of value is going to be said, let's just air everything instead of pretending certain segments are better fit for viewing than others. This situation creates an interesting cycle of nothing leading to more nothing - the interviewer asks a question and the interviewee has nothing to say, but since everyone knows it's live on air there is no choice but to say something, say anything, to fill the air, because doing otherwise would be more than silence - it would be rude.
If it's hard to imagine what a failure of politeness in this regard might look like, I offer the example of San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich. The man is a controversial figure when it comes to handling in-game sideline interviews, with his disdain often coming across as unnecessary rudeness directed at the reporters who are merely doing their jobs. It may seem odd to call him controversial - the fact that even Popovich has described himself as "a jerk" in these interviews suggests a consensus - but the flip side is that viewers find his honesty refreshing in the stale genre of sports interviews. Whether the result of media training or an example of adopting industry best practice, the norm is for most coaches, athletes, and personalities to respond to any and all questions with a string of straight-from-the-can clichés, buzzwords, and truisms. The interview, long considered the purest way to learn more about someone's motivations, is more often a disappointing charade in the sports world - rather than helping us understand more about the game, we are instead reminded that most of conversation remains nothing more than something to do, filled with the incessant banality of something to say.
It's because of these lowered standards that the rare moments of unfiltered honesty become newsworthy events in their own right. Just this past week, Inter manager Antonio Conte caused a minor sensation when he announced that he was dedicating his team's Serie A championship "to himself". The manager of Italy's newest champions elaborated on this remark, noting the many challenges he had faced in this unprecedented season, but I don't think anyone bothered to listen beyond the initial dedication. Observers conditioned to expect a little humility for such an occasion may be forgiven their surprise - managers sometimes refer to themselves as the humble custodians of their respective clubs - and most managers in this situation rush to dedicate victory to anyone who worked hard for the team. But for Conte, this comment would probably have come off as insincere, at least to him. Yes, the players were great all season, but did his predecessor get the same performances out of the team? I'd say ask Conte, but in some ways we've already heard his answer.
The only reason he might give a slightly different response next time would be due to that old friend of ours - politeness. I'm not holding my breath. For whatever reason, some people just don't have much interest in filtering themselves for the sake of marketing their politeness. It's sometimes challenging to find the line between confidence and arrogance, particularly when it comes to understanding successful people, but I think I've circled around one possibility - it's a question of politeness, where after a certain point one's politeness can disguise arrogance as confidence. It could be that in this way politeness operates as its own quality, one which is unfortunately lacking in the arrogant, but I think it's actually more a question of effort. Conte appreciated his players, a fact evident in their tributes for him over the past couple of days, but he simply wasn't interested in deflecting all credit to them, which in part suggests a certain disinterest in making the effort of politeness. My hunch about Conte is that politeness operates more deliberately for him than it does for others. I think it reflects a certain fact about his success - there was a moment, perhaps many moments, when everyone doubted his ability, and the only thing he could do was prove to others what he already knew about himself. No amount of politeness in the world was going to help him defy his critics. So why would he be polite about his success? It's easy to leave behind the unnecessary, and I bet nothing was as unnecessary for Conte as politeness.
The problem with Conte's remarks seems to have more to do with expectations, set by others who have unwittingly hid the truth of their success each time they've invoked the bland nonsense of "saying the right things". The sports world is filled with figures who have overcome tremendous odds to succeed, who have defied expectation at almost every stop on their journeys, but the commonly told story implies the success was always certain, supported throughout by the proverbial village raising the child, with the future star merely a passenger along for the ride. I worry that, someday, a champion will hold a trophy aloft and declare - this was something to do. There is always truth in modesty, but such a truth omits an important factor.
The truth is that for most of us the path to success begins with underestimation. It begins when we receive a set of expectations from someone whom we grant the authority to sell us short. Sometimes, this authority is in the mirror, and we blindly follow our own prophecy. We accept a destiny for ourselves without recognizing the moment as a crossroads. The confident person looks at the situation and resolves to meet the demands. The arrogant person looks at the same and demands better, not out of some deluded notion of superiority, but because meeting expectations defines a life within constraints. It takes confidence to meet someone else's expectations, but it takes arrogance to do better. It takes confidence to come back from a failure and succeed, but it takes arrogance to set a new standard. It takes confidence to give it our all, but it takes arrogance to give even more.
I think we can do well with confidence, but we cannot do better without arrogance. This is the truth that all successful people understand, but for some reason their explanations always have the feel of a watered-down version. We listen for the keys to success and find ourselves buried under clichés, buzzwords, and truisms, dealing forever in marketing terms rather than the substance. We are conditioned to politeness until we can do no better ourselves - we can't ask the right questions and we can't give the right answers. Why do you write? We've explored so many detours, both for the question and the answer, that we can no longer find our way back to the original path.
I know I write because it's something to do. When I typed my first sentences onto TOA, I was one month into a two-year unemployment. At times, I was living the kind of lifestyle - devoid of action, promise, and human contact - that many of us discovered in the nothing of this pandemic. I write now for the same reason I wrote then - I had nothing to do, and writing gave me something to do. But having said these right things, I know that I've only answered a substitute question, like explaining that I saw the sunrise because I woke up in the dark. Yes, it's something to do, but isn't that all of life? I write now for the same reason I wrote then - I expect better of my time, of my craft, and of myself. When I reflected on "Something To Do", I realized something - just a few months ago I'd written the piece Smith describes in her essay, where I explored the differences in writing fiction and nonfiction before explaining my preference for the latter. As I thought about "Something To Do", I realized that I could do better than what I had written, and that I could do better than what I had read. I think I write for a simple reason - I gave it my best effort yesterday, and I think I can do better today.
