Questions + Answers
From Peter C.
Hi Allison.
Since the 50s, the BBC has had a radio show called Desert Island Discs. There are hundreds of shows online in which celebrities and public figures have to choice their favourite 8 pieces of music and at the end, they are only allowed to take one piece of music to the desert island with them. They get the Bible, the Complete Works of Shakespeare and one other book of their choice.
So I was wondering which book you would take with you if you were stranded on a desert island. That’s my question!
Love and Blessings,
Peter x
Dear Peter,
These are my least favorite kinds of questions — the ones that require concrete answers, as I much prefer to muse over endless possibility — but I’ll give it a go.
On my nightstand, which is to my left at this very second, there are sixteen books.
I drive myself absolutely nuts with this endless stacking of things I’m always reading at. I’d like to read one book at the time, but it seems to be nearly impossible for me. So maybe that means I really need to answer this question.
If I had to choose one book, I think it would need to be one that would do more than most books can do: it would need to nurture my spirit, comfort my soul, stimulate my mind, and provide answers to my questions. I thought about the Bible, but that’s not me. I thought about The Prophet, but that’s not it either. I could choose a Steinbeck or Hemingway, if only because their knowing undercurrents about human nature would remind me about other people. I could choose Slouching Toward Bethlehem, a collection of Joan Didion essays, which reach into me like the rays of a 6am sunrise that’s urging a too-early acknowledgment of a bad hangover — the pain of recognition is so awful and satisfying. But neither of those quite check all the boxes. There are many spiritual and spiritually-leaning texts that I feel like would be good choices, but I will ultimately settle on Letters To a Young Poet, by Rainer Maria Rilke. This is sort of a surprise to me. But what other book holds so much hope?
Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within yourself the possibility of shaping and forming as a particularly happy and pure way of living; train yourself to it — but take whatever comes with great trust, and if it only comes out of your own will, out of some need of your inmost being, take it upon yourself and hate nothing.
Peter, I hope to never have to make this choice for any reason, and I certainly don’t want to be stranded on a desert island, but if I were, I hope I could find comfort with or without a book. The thing about reading is, even if you forget the exact words, you don’t forget the feeling they gave you. I carry so many collected words and thoughts with me — one of my frustrations in life is forgetting more than I can remember. But life is about collecting experience, in a way. If I am lucky enough to reach old age, I hope I still have the enthusiasm for books and reading that I do now, and I hope my nightstand is just as weighed down. And if I do get stranded, maybe I should hope for the book with the most pages so I could write in the margins, because that would be a good story.
Thank you for the question.
Y’all have a lovely weekend.
Allison
new paintings — other worlds
Allison: please don't ever go out on a "three hour cruise"!!! If you were stranded on an island, the world would be a cold place. Which might help with climate change but at too high a cost.
Very thoughtful answer. I always found those “choose one thing” scenarios to be painful. I call my bedside stack “the leaning tower of literature ( and all other forms of published word)”. It’s never going to be finished and falls over with clocklike regularity