Breathing Lessons
Reflections: Norman Mailer at 100, ed. Gerald R. Lucas and Maggie McKinley (The Norman Mailer Society, 2023), p. 55; transcribed from the final interior PDF
From Reflections: Norman Mailer at 100 (The Norman Mailer Society, 2023), p. 55.
Years ago, on the occasion of some big news to do with NM (which now fades from memory), I recall one of my sisters exclaiming: “I don’t care about his news. I’ve got my own news! Yeah, I’ve got my own news, damn it!” The siblings had a good laugh about this phrase, and would pull it out whenever one of us was feeling their oats. And, in an adolescent way I could agree with the sentiment. I was looking for my own news too, which was not always automatic as the child of Norman Mailer. But Dad’s way of noting the important news about his children was particular, and not obvious. I think he cared more about the way we paid attention to life, and the exigencies of the moment, than to the script lines of our personal stories.
One lesson he did try to impart was the importance of breathing properly. In fact, I received my first meditation instruction from Dad. He would emphasize letting the stale air out on the out-breath, and taking in new, fresh air with each inhalation. The essential newness of a real breath, rather than recycled air. I think Dad was teaching me the news of the breath.
These lessons came before the onslaught of digital life. I’ve been thinking lately about the way news is circulated, breathed in as it were, through cell phones and screens, delivered in square bits of information whose shape speaks only of repetition, and replication. I find there is an inherently stale, recycled quality, like a poor breath. It doesn’t feel like news, and I’m not sure technology will ever learn how to breathe. And so I find myself leaning on Dad’s instructions. Or in his words: “The only time I know the truth is at the point of my pen.”
Maggie Mailer