August 22, 2022

Welcome to the Ampersand Gazette, a metaphysical take on the news of the day. If you know others like us, who want to create a world that includes and works for everyone, please feel free to share this newsletter. The sign-up is here. And now, on with the latest …

Four words registered on my retinas as I scanned the news on a quiet Saturday: “Mr. Rushdie was stabbed.” I’d kept on scrolling until, in seconds, their meaning came clear to me. What?!

What?! How—? Where—? When—?

Chautauqua, New York. As he took the stage to participate in a literary panel attended by some four thousand souls. Yesterday morning. He’s in critical condition in a Pennsylvania hospital, and I am heartsick over the Why.

Why? The proverbial question that arises in the face of “bad” things. The short answer is … because of hate. But there is a far longer answer, woven into historical archives, literary license, and pure us v. them a.k.a. Or beliefs.

Salman Rushdie is, nearly inarguably, a literary goliath, a leviathan, a Titan—a continent of his own. His prose is like the finest chocolate or a first snowflake melting on your tongue. His intent in writing is literary, exploratory, curious. He means to excel at storytelling, and he does.

He was scheduled to give a talk at a noted literary organization, The Chautauqua Institution, on—oh, the irony—the United States as a safe haven for exiled writers.

Enter 24-year-old, New Jerseyite, Hadi Matar, acting under the misunderstanding that a 1989 fatwa declared against Mr. Rushdie, and unendorsed in 1999, was alive, and well, and needed to be acted upon.

What’s above is a retelling, in my own words, of a dreadful, shameful action in our time.

Please, won’t you pray with me for Mr. Rushdie’s full recovery? (I know. I didn’t really have to ask. Of course, you will.)

Now I’m going to make a list of names, and groups. Please read them slowly, and bear with me. The list will be long. Too long. Regardless, there is a vital point to be made.

Salman Rushdie
The Leadership of Iran
The Police
Witnesses
Helicopter pilot
Hospital staff in Erie, PA
Surgeon
Andrew Wylie, Mr. Rushdie’s agent
Major Eugene J. Staniszewski of the New York State Police
Hadi Matar, the attacker
The F.B.I.
The Local sheriff’s office
Linda Abrams, a front-row audience member
Rita Landman, a physician audience member
Ralph Henry Reese, the discussion moderator
Suzanne Nossel, the CEO of PEN America, which promotes free expression
The Prophet Muhammad
Muslims
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, now dead, Supreme Leader of Iran after the 1979 Revolution
City of Asylum, a residency program for exiled writers
Mary Newsom, an audience member
Chuck Koch, an Ohio attorney in the audience
Michael Hill, the president of Chautauqua Institute
Literary figures
Public officials
Markus Dohle, CEO of Penguin Random House
Prime Minister Boris Johnson
Gov. Kathy Hochul
Citizens in Bangladesh, Sudan, Sri Lanka, and India
Hitoshi Igarashi, Mr. Rushdie’s Japanese translator, stabbed to death in 1991
Ettore Capriolo, his Italian translator, badly wounded
William Nygaard, his Norwegian publisher, shot three times outside his home in Oslo
President Mohammad Khatami, said Iran no longer supported the killing in 1998
Joseph Anton, Mr. Rushdie’s nom de guerre, as he spent 10 years in a safe house in London (taken from the first names of Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov)
Ayad Akhtar, writer and the president of Pen America

Including Mr. Rushdie, I’ve listed thirty-five names or groups, and not even mentioned the readers of news and newspapers and news feeds all over the world. Or Mr. Rushie’s family. Or friends. Or colleagues. And these are just the individuals and groups who are mentioned in the article.

So, of course, I’m sure you thought to yourself, Yes, I’ll pray for Mr. Rushdie! That’s a no-brainer, isn’t it?

But what isn’t the no-brainer is the list of “persons who have been touched by this incident” who also need our prayers. Yes, including the persons who issued the fatwa (which has not been revoked even to this day) and the man with the knife. Even them. No matter how hard that is for you. And, it is hard. I know.

This story, Beloved, as devastatingly sad as it is, and make no mistake, it is that if nothing else, but this story is why I think, no, I know, that And is the most important word in every language.

Because yes, what happened to Mr. Rushdie is inexcusable, awful, downright idiocy, BUT … it didn’t only happen to Mr. Rushdie. It happened to all of us. Because we are all connected.

For as long as we—even one of us in the we—refuse to care for all of us in the we, these dreaded chimera of hatred will insist upon raising their ugly heads, fangs and all, for the cause of Or.

This event, this one event, is the reason for Ampersand.

So, won’t you join me in praying for all those touched by the Or that is behind Mr. Rushdie’s benighted misfortune? All, Beloved. All. No exceptions.

inspired by an article “Salman Rushdie is attacked onstage in Western New York.”
in the New York Times
Saturday, August 13, 2022

&

“We should be able to evaluate various figures, past and present, by noting their indecorous or hateful views and continuing to appreciate, even celebrate, their achievements without making them candidates for cancellation. …

“But most of the time, emphasizing people’s contributions despite their flaws—seeing them in totality and not boiling down their lives to their specific missteps—is just civilized rationality. The idea that an isolated breach of social justice etiquette should derail a career is calisthenic.”

from an Opinion Essay by linguist John McWhorter
“Let’s Have Fewer Cancellations. Let People Take Their Lumps, Then Move On.”
in The New York Times
August 13, 2022

“An isolated breach of social justice …” is what caught me about this. It’s something, said a little differently, but I’ve read repeatedly in essays from incarcerated writers. “Don’t judge me based on the worst decision I ever made in my life. Judge me based on the whole of my life.”

Oooh, that judgment thing. “Use good judgment” is something my mother repeated throughout my upbringing. An early girlfriend of mine gave me a jar of pennies as a gift; she labeled it “Common Sense.” We laughed, but she meant it. She definitely thought I was lacking in the common sense department.

Beloved, there have always and forever been and will be taboos. There’s nothing new about that. One of the ones I was taught was sacrosanct as a kid was, Never wear white shoes after Labor Day. I’m serious!

And I know, I know, you’re thinking, yeah, but … now, with social media, and the Internet, and the 24-hour news cycle, we know a lot more than we used to about gaffes, mistakes, and gotchas. Maybe. But I’d venture to say it’s actually not more, what we know is just faster. That’s all.

The thing is here, it’s so easy to mind the business of other people, isn’t it? And it’s a proven tactic that if I will accuse before I am accused, I could (not will) escape accusation. Et tu? But again, I’ve said for years that if we’d spend a whole lot more time minding our own business than that of others, we’d grow faster, we’d heal better, and we’d be one whole hell of a lot happier, but that’s another essay.

I think what’s most important here is that we turn our minding, our focus, our attention, our caring about what we think, what we say, and what we do onto ourselves. The reason is simple. We each have more to learn. And that’s why we’re here.

In our household, we have an unspoken policy that if one of us uses a phrase that’s no longer appropriate in the social world—for whatever reason—we gently point it out to one another. I’ve used the word “tribe” for years and years related to my teaching about the first chakra.

Do I have a tribe, per se? No, not a real one. But there are persons who do. I have no intent to take that from them, but I dilute the meaning of the world when I apply it to those of us who belong together more genuinely in an affinity group than a tribe. I work at dissociating “tribe” from my vocabulary—it’s not mine to use appropriately.

Another one? “That’s crazy, isn’t it?” Well, holy Toledo, Batman, that can mean a hundred and one things, can’t it? That’s wild. Unbelievable. Surprising. Amazing. Inane. Arcane. I could go on and on. But crazy is a broad-stroke word that has become deeply entwined with mental illness, isn’t it? And is that what I mean when I say something’s crazy? No, it isn’t. Now, I understand that crazy is a pejorative derogation in the milieu of mental well-being, but because it has such a connotation, I think I ought to let my usage of it go. Again, I practice.

Let us stop with the examples, of which there are legion, and speak to what’s really important here. What matters is: what are the red flags to me about my own ideas, language, and behaviors? I know we love to talk about red flags as though they’re warnings from outside ourselves, but really, the far more important red flags live within us.

Letting go of language that excludes is part of growing up, Beloved. Being more compassionate. Caring about each other more. It’s worth the time and effort it takes to examine ourselves.

The next time you’re inclined to make a snap judgment on someone else’s alleged taboo—stop. Wait. Breathe. See yourself in their situation. What might you have been able to do differently in that same circumstance? Then breathe for a minute or two.

Still feel the need for a gotcha? Mind your own business first. Check your intention. If you still need to comment, do, but at least do it as kindly and gently as you can. That might be the worst day of their lives, and besides, that could be you tomorrow.

&

“‘The very way my brain worked seemed to be changing. It was then that I began worrying about my inability to pay attention to one thing for more than a couple of minutes. At first I’d figured that the problem was a symptom of middle-age mind rot. But my brain, I realized, wasn’t just drifting. It was hungry. It was demanding to be fed the way the Net fed it—and the more it was fed, the hungrier it became. Even when I was away from my computer, I yearned to check email, click links, do some Googling. I wanted to be connected.’ [from Nicholas Carr’s book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains]

“That was the word that hooked me. That’s how my brain felt to me, too. Hungry. Needy. Itchy. Once it wanted information. But then it was distraction. And then, with social media, validation. A drumbeat of: You exist. You are seen.

from an Opinion Essay by Ezra Klein
“I Didn’t Want It to Be True, but the Medium Really Is the Message”
in The New York Times, August 7, 2022

Look at the list of wants, Beloved.

Information. Distraction. Validation.

Wait! What?! Okay, I get information. Curious is good, no? Of course it is. Distraction? Oh, alright. I’ll admit to drowning sadness in umpteen games of computer solitaire once upon a time.

But validation? That freeze-framed my brain.

A computer. Supplying validation. Whoa.

Actually, no, not whoa. SLAM ON THE BRAKES! FULL STOP. No, no, no, a thousand and one times no. Computers do not validate anyone’s existence, and if it’s really come to that, we ought to toss them all. And have a big Savonarola bonfire of the vanities, for real.

The Silicon Valley wizards have uniformly admitted that they studied addiction theory for the brain in the process of designing these mechanical wonders. Some of them are even worried about it, and sorry for it.

Okay, good enough, as far as it goes, but, Beloved, have we forgotten that we are in charge of these mechanisms? For real and for true. You can turn the blessed thing off IF YOU WANT. You can.

Stop a minute and seriously reflect. Are you receiving recognition of your every existence because you’re on Facebook? Or Twitter? Or whatever’s the latest fad? Get up, right now. Get up and go look in the bathroom mirror. Say aloud, “I am valid. I am here. I exist.” Do it as often as you need until you believe it.

I bet there are computers that you can program to say that to you every time you, say, Google something, but you have to remember, like the witch who does the love spell, that you programmed it. And you’ll never know if it’s true because you set it up. Ever. Just like that witch will never know if he really loves her.

Metaphysics would tell us all that reality is, of course, subject forever and always to our perception. It is. What we perceive is, essentially, what we receive. And what we don’t perceive, we don’t receive. For real.

So use your own perception, Beloved, to create that validation loop starting today. I promise with my whole heart that you’ll be so very glad you did. Because, you see, you already are. It’s just that, as usual with humans, you’re the last to know.

&

And from the same essay … I Didn’t Want It To Be True, But the Medium Really is the Message.

“I’ve found myself going back to a wise, indescribable book that Jenny Odell, a visual artist, published in 2019. In How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, Odell suggests that any theory of media must first start with a theory of attention. ‘One thing I have learned about attention is that certain forms of it are contagious,’ she writes.

“‘When you spend enough time with someone who pays close attention to something (if you were hanging out with me, it would be birds), you inevitably start to pay attention to some of the same things. I’ve also learned that patterns of attention—what we choose to notice and what we do not—are how we render reality for ourselves, and thus have a direct bearing on what we feel is possible at any given time. These aspects, taken together, suggest to me the revolutionary potential of taking back our attention.’”

Taking back our attention. Attention is one of those things that we don’t usually think of as an asset, but it is one—a big one. We even use the expression “pay attention,” so that at some level we realize there’s a cost to attention. In my book, God’s Dictionary, the meaning of attention is that if we’re attending to Der Rosenkavalier, then we’re not attending to The Sound of Music.

We do pay for attention, Beloved. We pay for attention with our time. Ah, Time. The great leveler. It doesn’t matter whether you’re Bill Gates or Andrew Lloyd Weber or me, or you, we all have the same amount of time available to us.

May I make a radical recommendation to you, Beloved? As we approach the end of summer, the return to school—that so many of us think of as the real start to the year—and perhaps a new leaf, why not make the time to do an Attention Audit?

For the next few weeks, pick a day of the week, and at least one weekend day, and keep a log of where and how you pay your attention. It’s a strategy that’s been used successfully with time management, food choices, and financial planning. It’s a pain, I know, but wow, the information that you will get! For real.

What if the deepest desire of your heart is to write a novel, but you “have no time” to write? Well, if on one given weekday you find that you’re spending three hours a day on Facebook or answering emails, you get to be in charge of where you place your attention, dear. Change it!

Tell all your friends you’ll only be answering emails from 8-9 AM and from 4-5 PM, period. Use it as a auto-responder. Then take that extra hour, and write your novel! Once you’ve started, the book itself will draw you.

Or, no time to exercise. Again, take that hour, and walk on your lunch break and listen to an audiobook at the same time! Point being, your attention belongs to no one else, Beloved, other than you.

You get to use it as you see fit. Now, make some deliberate choices about how and where you pay attention. I bet you’ll find you have all kinds of time to work toward your dreams.

&

And in publishing news …

Doing lots of podcasts on metaphysics and the chakra system. At last count, six are all in post-production and will be released between now and November. I’m still plugging away at finding, researching, and approaching other podcast hosts for podguesting opportunities.

If you happen to know any podcasters whose shows you think my work might fit or even podcasts you follow that you think my work might fit, please let me know through the Contact Form on either of my websites. I’m a good researcher, no question, but there are millions of podcasts. More eyes on the possibilities are always better.

I want to say a word about how I came to podcasts as the way to go for promoting Ampersand and metaphysics and both my fiction and my nonfiction …

When I first started to learn about how to promote books, the first book I read—four years ago now—was called How To Market A Book by Joanna Penn. She was prescient, although I didn’t know that at the time.

Fast forward a few years and a lot of tuition later …

I heard an interview between Heart of Business founder, Mark Silver, and Paul Zelizer about podcasts. Then I took a class with Thomas Umstattd about Podguesting in particular. And, speaking of whom: he has a remarkable resource for podguesters called the Podcast Host Directory which can be accessed for a ten-dollar monthly contribution via Patreon, and is worth its weight in gold! (More on that in a minute.)

Let’s back up to go forward, which is so often the case in human experience, no?

Back to Joanna Penn, first. She says in her book (paraphrased)

“if you don’t pick promotional venues that you like
(italics mine),
you won’t do them.”

There’s a reason I made that so big, honestly. She was so, so, so very right. In the three years since I first read her book, I’ve danced with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest (a little), TikTok, Linked In, Medium, Instagram, Patreon, and there are probably more I’ve forgotten along the way.

When I fell over podcasts, I knew in my bones I’d found my best promotional medium.

How?

Well, as a speaker, I’m always at my very best extempore.
The same is true for me as a teacher.
I really, really like deep, one-on-one, or one-on-two conversations about real things.
I am completely uninterested in letting someone else’s algorithm be in charge of my customers or my life.
And a curated life isn’t a life at all, at least, not to me, whereas real life lived by real people is fascinating.

Podcasts are deep conversation. On focused subjects. Wherein, after 40 years, I am something of an expert. Voila!

Now, let’s talk about the process of becoming a guest …

One of the reasons I like even the process is that it’s just like old-fashioned applying for a job—the way I was taught to apply for jobs more than forty years ago.

Learn about the podcast. LISTEN to some episodes. Write a stellar cover letter (now known as an email.) Send.

It used to be that it took me hours to find emails so that I could approach hosts directly, but now, with The Podcast Host Directory, it’s a total breeze. In the months, I’ve been using this incredible resource, there are only two podcasts for which the directory did not have direct emails for the hosts! It cut my researching time by two-thirds, for real.

So, I choose a podcast.

I check out its history. How long it’s been on. How many episodes. If it’s current. If they even interview guests.

Then I listen to an episode until there is something I can/want to comment on in my cover letter. (Sometimes that means the whole episode or even more than one; other times, bingo, right up front. I make sure, no matter what, that I could discuss the episode with the host if that were required.)

I have a template for a podguesting pitch that I’m constantly tweaking to improve it. (Especially the email Subject line.) The template is the part about me, and the value I might bring to the host’s audience, but I even change that in most emails.

The cover letter part is written fresh for each podhost. No attachments. SENT.

I send five inquiries per week, and five follow-ups to ones I’ve already queried. With the follow-ups, I attach my Chakra FAQs. The link will take you right to them if you’re curious.

The other reason I knew podguesting was my home is that on the day I started approaching hosts, I had an invite to be a guest in less than 30 minutes! I kid you not. Talk about confirmation!

There’s a whole page on my website listing the current episodes. I’ll keep adding them as they go live.

Oh, and if you’re desirous of getting into podguesting, and want a coach to help you get started, send me an inquiry on either of my contact forms. I enjoy helping other authors and experts on something I have such fun doing.

So, off into the end of summer, the much-happier-for-me beginning of fall, and until then Be Ampersand,

S.