The Lightning Room With Rebecca Nison

In our December issue, Rebecca Nison’s “Eastward.” We talked about public performance, New York sensory experiences, and constructed environments, among other things.

1. “Eastward” is very precisely located: Manhattan, Union Square, proceeding east street by street. Yet despite such a specific setting, the story reads almost like a fable, of a woman breaking free from her bounds and returning to nature. Is this a modern myth? What does it tell us about the way we lead our lives?

I’m a fan of Chekhov’s belief that art should ask questions, not answer them.  Following that thinking, I never intend to tell anything about the way we live our lives.  I only hope that this story raises questions about the containers we put ourselves in (clothing, house, city, memories, past) and what we might uncover if we step out of them, even if just for a day, an hour, a moment.  If this can be called a modern myth, perhaps it’s one about stripping away the myths we tell ourselves.

2. This is also a story about public vulnerability, a body exposed to the eyes and attentions of innumerable strangers. You describe your narrator’s body, its past and its present, but overall, what comes across is a tremendous sense of awareness. Can you talk a little about the physicality of this piece?

The body is our first and final home.  Also our most important one.  As she separates from her former shelters and restrictions, Celia recognizes that her body remains what she’s left with – and her physical awareness awakens through this realization.  By living in her body on display, she undoes her shame and relearns herself.

While writing this, I thought a lot about Galway Kinnell’s poem “Saint Francis and the Sow,” and particularly the lines, “sometimes it is necessary / to reteach a thing its loveliness.”  Celia – like all of us – must act as both teacher and student in reteaching her own loveliness.  Recognizing her body as the most vital shelter frees her from other constraints, allowing her to live herself more fully. 

3. Though this story is clearly born of the city – the crowds, the exposure, the fight between private to public – at the same time there is a yearning for the natural and the simple, as, in the end, the narrator writes, “There was a time when you needed nothing but dirt, water, sun. With those you made seeds. Now grow.” Can you tell us something about the balance between the two?

I chose New York City partially for the stimulation that confronts Celia along the way – here, there are so many eyes, so many actions and reactions, all the time, everywhere! – but also because the city is a constructed environment.  It’s an ecosystem that almost wholly eliminates nature outside of human nature: a human-designed space with completely unpredictable happenings within it.  Celia needed this kind of unnatural space to reclaim her natural state.  Her progress would occur too easily in an open field or beside a lake.  In New York City, reclaiming the natural becomes a fight.

I think maintaining a balance between the city’s complexities and nature’s simplicity is tremendously difficult, if not impossible–especially in a place like New York.  We are animals–but how much of our lives do we spend revolting against or burying this fact?  Is it always for the best that we do?

4. Reading this piece is like taking giant breaths of fresh air. As a New Yorker, what is your favorite sensory experience?

What an incredible compliment.  Thank you.  I have heaps of favorite sensory experiences as a New Yorker.  It’s hard to pick one, so I hope it’s alright if I list a few.

Walking the Williamsburg Bridge and looking out at the building-lined waterway through the cagey bars.  Spending time on any unfinished rooftop at night, with all the twinkling and rushing both below you and above you.  Sometimes light reflects pinky-gold in building windows, and it seems the reflection’s even more gorgeous than the sun itself.  Lying in grass when spring’s just beginning.  In summertime, when lots of musicians play, I love standing at the exact place in a park where I can hear two different songs at once: a banjo in one ear, a sax in another.  Every once in awhile the blend makes its own rhythm.

5. Implied in this story is a history of enforced isolation. What do you seek to break free from? Are you a lifelong New Yorker?

Though I’m not a lifelong New Yorker, I’ve always lived in the Northeastern US.  It’s important for me to live away for awhile, and I hope to in the near future.  I have inherent wanderlust that I find little opportunity to nourish.  Routine hinders me, and I’m always searching for ways to shatter or escape it in my daily life.

6. This piece is written as an instructional. Who is giving the instructions?

I’m so glad you asked this!  The voice is actually intended to be her own voice, coaxing herself on.  The way I might say to myself, “Beck, relax.  Just hit the ‘submit’ button,” she commands herself through these moments of unraveling.  This is partially her attempt to gain back her own power–she is used to being commanded, and now she commands herself–and partially meant to contribute a layer of distance between the self she’s trying to reach, and the self she’s been.