Sharing who we are

A photo I took in Monte Carlo, where I didn’t tell anyone I was going. And these guys didn’t sign model releases, so I can only publish this because you can’t see their faces.

When I was a performing songwriter, there was one moment when I was onstage somewhere and thought, “Why on earth should I bare my soul to these people?”

Back then, most of the songs I had written were like the songs I had been hearing singer-songwriters perform for most of my life. They were confessionals about love and romance and adjacent topics. You know, feelings and stuff. This material was so entrenched that I couldn’t seem to write about anything else.

As I grew as a musician and songwriter I got more intentional about what I wanted to express. I wrote a song about the creepy guy who falsely confessed to the murder of JonBenét Ramsey. I wrote a song from the perspective of someone who (accidentally or not?) contributed to a major nuclear disaster. Most recently, I wrote a song in which Baron Godin de Lépinay tells Ferdinand de Lesseps that his plan for a sea level canal at the isthmus Panama will be a failure and it should be a canal with locks instead (history would prove him right, eventually).

Writing about other people and events, real and imaginary, was so much more fun than mining my soul for something fresh to say about heartbreak or longing. In fact, this was a way to say something fresh about human emotions, but it allowed me to perform freely without worrying about who was there and what they would think.

I believe there is a similar solution to be found with respect to sharing things—our work, our writing, our art, our photos—online. We don’t need to let it all hang out in order be authentic. We can if we want to, but that’s not the only way to connect with people. We can still have private thoughts and emotions and lives.

A few years ago, I retreated from sharing much on social media. I stopped Instagramming my travels and removed my birthday from Facebook. I decided that I would only include pictures of other people if they were already on social media, which meant that I wouldn’t be sharing pictures of my little nieces and nephews.

Then, I began blogging every day. Whereas I felt exposed and uncomfortable when I shared details about my life on social media, it was liberating to share my ideas here. I didn’t feel like I was trying to get attention or sympathy; it felt like I was being myself, living my life. Metaphorically speaking, instead of showing up at a huge party and doing something desperate to attract eyeballs, I was having a few people over for tea.

Ironically, what I share online now feels more personal than it ever did before, yet I never feel like I’m revealing too much the way I did in the past. As in my songs, I’m talking about what it feels like to be a person, but not necessarily what it feels like to be this particular person on this particular day. The distinction, for me, is an important one.

There aren’t any universal rules about what you can and can’t reveal to others, whether online or in real life. What I do might not work for you, and what someone else chooses may not work for both of us. We all get to choose how to balance what we share and what we hold close, and these choices are unique to each of us. For instance, it’s easy for me to talk about feelings, but I often feel uncomfortable sharing pictures of myself. I feel even more uncomfortable about sharing pictures of my home. I’ll tell you about this dumb mistake I made, but not this other one. And that’s allowed.

When students at The Rulerless School and The Little Middle School are writing essays, we give them the option to fabricate any personal details that may otherwise be included (for instance, if they are writing about a trip they took or careers they’re interested in). Why should we, as teachers, have the power to force students to reveal intimate information about their families, preferences, hopes, and dreams? It’s none of our business. They can craft any persona they wish, and we won’t necessarily know if it’s the “real” one. However, on some level, it’s still real. That’s art.

At a certain point, having written enough songs about other people, I realized that I could sing any of my songs with confidence. No one would assume that a given song was about me, right? But of course, people still would make this assumption—and they would be right, since they were still all about me in one way or another. I was okay with that. The layer of protection helped me to be more fully myself. Where we find (or create) that protection may be somewhat arbitrary, but if it helps to give us the courage to share who we are, it has value.