Theory & Practice

by Michelle de Kretser

My mother told me, they’ll want you to tell them your story, the girl said. My mother said, don’t. You are not anyone’s story. ALI SMITH, Spring

The smooth little word ‘and’ makes the transition from theory to practice seem effortless, but I’d rarely found that to be the case.

An artist once told me that she no longer wanted to make art that looked like art. I was discovering that I no longer wanted to write novels that read like novels. Instead of shapeliness and disguise, I wanted a form that allowed for formlessness and mess. It occurred to me that one way to find that form might be to tell the truth.

When the truth was told, someone had to be shamed – usually the teller of truth. It was time, I told myself, to stop fearing shame.

The way to counter shame was to seek out solidarity. She was only twelve but she understood that.

Many years had to pass before I’d realise that life isn’t about wishes coming true but about the slow revelation of what we really wished.

What politics asked of us was to care about people we couldn’t see into, and the difficulty of that was the difficulty of life.