Crying, pasta, the dog, and J.D. Salinger
An essay (a letter?) I wrote on my thirty-third birthday while listening to opera on Spotify.
There’s this great J.D. Salinger quote. It goes: “Sentimentality is loving something more than God does.” Woof. I had a phenomenal professor who used to say this anytime any of the writers in the class veered into the sentimental. And this was a class full of poets!!! (I know this sounds like a “poet joke,” and it kind of is, but also I swear it’s one hundred percent true.)
I didn’t get the Salinger quote at first. I mean, cognitively, yes. Emotionally, no. I weep when I listen to opera. I've been known to be moved to tears over a good, chewy pasta. When I look at my dog and remember that both of us, despite all my best efforts, will not live forever, I cannot get off the couch.
The quote feels very Salinger. Like, if the quote were wearing clothes it’s wearing a leather biker jacket that looks like a hand-me-down but is actually brand new. I’m trying to say that the quote is definitively cool. It’s pithy and punk in a way that was once edgy and is now charmingly dated. Yet, there’s truth it. I know it. I sense it anytime I write something that is going for the emotional jugular.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, sentimentality is defined as “the quality or state of being sentimental especially to excess or in affectation.” Remember the part about “to excess or in affectation.” We’ll get back to that.
Sentimental, on the other hand, is defined as “marked or governed by feeling, sensibility, or emotional idealism.” Oh, my heart! Crying over a bowl of tagliatelle or, say, the dog’s mortality, isn’t sentimentality… it’s sentimental. Or, at least, that’s how I see it. The line between sentimentality and the sentimental is, like most things, subjective. It depends on where you’re standing! Whether or not you ate breakfast this morning! Attachment theory!
Why is this coming up? I’m thirty-three today. Last night, my husband and I walked home in the rain under the same umbrella. I made coffee this morning in my favorite Keats mug (a sentimentalist if e’er there were one.) The window is open. I started writing poetry again. The dog is asleep at my feet.
Where am I going with this? I’ve been thinking a lot about integrity. Over the last year, I’ve made a concerted effort to be more frank in my life, work, relationships, and art. It feels so good, like splashing water on your face or finally getting to laugh after you’ve been holding it in. It’s also hard as hell.
So, in the spirit of frankness, I’ll say it. I like crying. Not sad crying (though there’s catharsis in that.) I like crying when I listen to Andrea Bocelli sing Con Te Partirò or Renée Fleming sing O Mio Babbino Caro. And I like that this is unoriginal. I like that I come from a long line of proud Sicilians who can’t make it through a family toast without breaking down. I like that any story ever about an underdog and a dream/impossible task makes me ugly cry (Seabiscuit, Rudy, The Natural, Lord of the Rings etc.)
Also, I find it funny that a quote that is trying *too hard* to be cool is also underhandedly critiquing excess and affectation. Also, in that same breath, I use this quote to check myself and my art. Am I veering into the sentimental or sentimentality? Am I going for the emotional jugular or is this incidentally just emotional?
Today, I’m veering into sentimentality. Fuck it. I’m thirty-three. I love my life and my people inarticulately. I’m going to blow out candles on cake and feel stupidly grateful for all of it. Sadie John Erin Matthew Mom Dad best friends oxygen books opera Keats pasta really good negronis taking myself out to breakfast fresh clean sheets good weather art museums parks skinny dipping waffles butter comfortable pants jazz.