Elizabeth Gilbert on Life and Love

No, oh, that's brilliant, that was great, good evening, thank you, hello everyone, thank you very much for coming. I'm delighted to see so many of you here delighted, but not in the least surprised, where else would you like to be? What else could they be doing? Since you somehow managed to lure us here to speak with us tonight, I am delighted to welcome you all on behalf of the Procedure Academy. I've seen some posts in the comments on social media that suggest some of you have actually come. from all around, well done for getting a magic ticket and making such an inspired decision, we are here to talk about the smallest matters in

life

and

love

, if they feel like too big things to deal with in just one about an hour I don't think we could have a better guide in Elizabeth Gilbert it's so hard to know how to present her she's so many things she's so many different things to so many different people I'm sure some of you have probably done it I decided over the course of the last few She's been your best friend or closest advisor for years without probably telling her yet, but I'm going to let her describe her

life

, how she lives it fully, embracing all the ups and downs, and I know it.

There have been several of both in recent years, she will be able to describe them much better than I can and suffice it to say that she is obviously one of the most

love

d and appreciated writers of our generation and I am going to put Tonight, we are all part of the same generation, for If anything, she has brought us so many wonderful novels and non-fiction works over the years and I have a feeling you may all have heard of one Eat Pray Love who obviously came into the world in 2006. hidden from view Don, you may already know then that it sold 15 million copies and stayed for four years, which is extraordinary on the New York Times bestseller list and that it was translated into 46 different languages ​​and, like much of the writings of Elizabeth, I think many of us really found ourselves between those pages and she has done brilliant things for us since we have had a great magic that is itself the acclaimed signature of all things and the book of which we are here of the that we will also talk about tonight is his last you.

She may have already read it, a wonderful, funny, happy, joyful novel that is City of Girls and couldn't be more timely. I think we all really need it and the quote on the front, which I think sums up so much of the theme of the book, but I also think Elizabeth Gilbert's philosophy of life is that life is fleeting and dangerous and there's no point in denying yourself the pleasure. or be something other than what you are, so we say, commenting anyway, that that's enough from me and I'm going to be in conversation as a visitor for about 50 minutes or so and then we'll have time for questions.

There are many of you. I'm sure many of you have questions. Please try to keep them as concise as possible and then we can respond. and as many as possible, so thank you very much again and thank you very much hello London, what is London like for you as a descriptor of places? Well, this is um. In fact, I was talking to someone today about how guilty I feel about apologizing. to anyone here who is offended by how much I like London more than Paris and I'm sorry, you know, I just like it there so it's always a city I imagine myself living in and I have great friends here and I just love it um, sorry person, why is that such a lame way to praise something that seems better, but it's more like why would you need to drink some?

Why take poor innocent Paris to praise London? We just say: I like London. just leave it at that, we are going through a bit of a difficult time limit, so praise is very good, so are we, yes, but we are not going to get into politics. I just want, I want. Ask. I said you were many things to many people. You're obviously a writer, but it's very hard to imagine ever having to introduce yourself. I think probably when you meet people they know who you are. I'm usually here tonight with straight men with their wives. or girlfriends, we may have to introduce myself to them, but otherwise I think everyone knows, so I'm here if we knew someone who, for example, lived off the grid for the last 25 years or in a closet dark and you had to do it. introduce yourself and say who you were what would that be what would that be like I would say I always want to say that's what I say on the plane when people say you know what you're doing and they don't know who I am I say I'm a writer and then they say: Have you written anything What have you heard about?

And then I say I wrote a book called Eat Pray Love and then I'll wait and there's only two reactions and it's oh, that's it. nice or yeah, I would say he was right, but I think I'm, I think I'm a storyteller and I think I'm a seeker. I think those are probably my two most important jobs, that's how I spend my time, though honestly my main job. What most hours of my day are spent doing, and I'm not even kidding, is actually just managing my mental health because, like many of us, I wake up in the morning and my first conscious thought is like, oh, ya.

You know, how do you know this every day for my entire life and that's why a large part of my day, my weeks, my month and my years have been dedicated to trying to figure out how to take that panicked exclamation point that I I wake up and I just figure it out the best I can, so that's my real job. Everything else I do is just a hobby. So, did you always want to be a writer? If you wanted to be a writer as soon as it occurred to me, yeah, yeah, sure, and I mean it's a little ridiculous, but my sister, my older sister, Katherine Gilbert Murdock, who just won the Newbery Medal for Young Adult Literature . the way he's a great great writer she and I grew up on a small family Christmas tree farm in New England my parents were as weird and libertarian off the grid as you can be off the grid an hour away New York City, but in a sense, we didn't have television or radio and we didn't have neighbors our age and my parents weren't from school, it was their responsibility to keep their kids entertained and so we had to entertain ourselves and books were very , very appreciated and my sister pointed out to me that from very early on she realized that the only thing we could do was not have my parents interrupt us and put us to work doing things like that.

Farm work was, if we were reading, that was the only thing that was respected more than physical work, so we both discovered that reading a lot would mean that you didn't have to move the woodpile, or milk the goats, or do anything. of that kind of thing, so I think, and then Katherine just created these worlds that we lived in because we had no input from the outside world, so she would create these incredible universes, she would embroider everything that she was reading. Even at this time I was preliterate, but she would be reading a book about some silly 1930s children's book about the caveman twins and she would take it, embroider it with a children's biography about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and then we would live for a week. in a story that we were cave twins that had a dinosaur that had polio, you know or you like all these weird things that she put together and that's all we did, that's all we did and we wrote plays and we created books .

I still have these books that we made when we were children, that we tied with thread and wrote the stories and drew the pictures. I understand this. We drew photos of our authors on the back and then wrote quotes from the New York Times that we didn't know. what the New York Times was, but we would grab books off my parents' bookshelf and see that something called the New York Times had put a quote in there, so we were really experiencing that from a very young age, so I can't imagine it. that once could have been anything else and now, when you come to write, do you have a set routine?

I read that you are going somewhere where you can eat and sleep and you will do it so you can dream your stories, yes I have a, I am a very social person, it is personally the reason why I think social media has been such a natural pond For me the one to jump on is because I want to talk to you anyway, like if we didn't have social media I would sit next to you on a bus and talk to you I want, I want I always have a desperate hunger for connection and that's why I feel like somehow So I don't have the typical personality of a writer.

I think that many people become writers so that they never have to deal with human beings again but the truth is I always say that I have the soul of a very serious literary author but I have the personality of an aerobics instructor come on guys you know so I have to do it but I have to put the aerobics instructor away to write, so my process is usually like this book, maybe four years of research, trying to learn everything I could because it's set in New York City in the 1940s, it's about the theater world, it's about showgirls.

It's about musicals, it's about World War II in New York, so I almost had to learn that world like learning a foreign language and you want to become really proficient in that language so that when you sit down to write, it comes out perfectly. very natural. so it's all a matter of research, but when the time comes to write I don't have to be with anyone except a dog, it's the only company allowed and I just went to the countryside and you go to sleep at 8 at night. get up at 4:30 in the morning right nap eat something repeat repeat repeat repeat and until it's done I do it in 1 1 I go as fast as I can because I've learned and this is a trick this is weird because we get very picky when we write and we find that it is very valuable and we want to treat it like a Fabergé egg, but my experience and I will give it to anyone who is writing, do it faster, it's better, the faster you write, the better You know, I'm a drunk person who can run without falling, but can't walk without falling and can't stand without one foot, you know, but drunk people have to be moving to not fall.

The same goes for writing if you stop. or slow down you'll fall and you'll draw it's amazing and I actually took a circus class once when I was in college because I went to NYU where they give you credit for that but I took a circus class and In the same way, you can run on a tightrope easier than walk on one and it's very difficult to stand on one, so really what it takes is momentum and I really like the mental trick I do to see how fast I can write it and and it's and I don't look back and I don't allow myself to look back and it's what it's almost.

My friend Martha Beck said that watching me write this book was like watching someone swim the English Channel in one breath, but it's actually better this way. It's very strange, but also remember that there are four years of preparation for swimming the Channel, but when you do it, just run, you know, go faster, deliberate about it is or should be, you know, it's this adjective or that. kill yourself, you'll die in it, you'll be like those dinosaurs in the tar, you just have to move fast, fast, fast, actually, that's one of the things that I think I highlighted most of all in big magic is the idea that the Perfectionism is really something we should try and let go of when we're trying to be creative, letting go of perfectionism is that, yeah, except to do that you have to call it by its real name and because I think a lot of perfectionists, including me, use that word because we pretend it's a flaw, it's what you say in a job interview, right, if that's my biggest thing, I'm too much of a perfectionist, I care too much, you know, actually, you secretly think it's a virtue, so that the trick is to actually expose it to remove its false mask and expose perfectionism and call it by its real name which is fear and that's it is fear is fear that you're not good enough is fear that you're not worthy is fear of to be revealed discovered exposed betrayed criticized everything and that's why you're trying to mask that absolute terror by never taking a wrong step and I feel like when I call my perfectionism fear it's easier to make it go away Because that's not so sexy and it doesn't sound so elegant.

I always say that perfectionism is just fear and high heels and a mink coat pretending to be fancy like that, you know, or like some kind of mustache and you know, but it's a disguise. it's just terror it's just terror that's the terror that's the lie perfectionism is the lie that says that there is a kind of rent that you have to pay to be here on this earth and that you have to master it so that you are allowed to be here when you are not there's one already it's like you're auditioning for a role you already have like you're not here yet you don't have to be perfect to be here or even good you just don't You don't really have to do anything you can just be that fear is what makes us prevents us from being creative do you think that creativity is innate within all of us is just a fear that would prevent us from expressing it yes and I also believewhich is a misunderstanding I think a lot of what stops people from being creative is that they think it doesn't belong to them How many times have you heard or said I don't have a creative bone in my body I wish I did I wish I was creative I don't have a creative bone in my body in my body is that some crazy man who was absolutely crazy is the hallmark of all this species there is barely an inch for better or worse of this world that has not been altered by human creativity is what we do we take nothing and turn it into something else and then we take that and we turn it into something else and everyone does it It's just that I mean there's never been a "you know you can't link", jumping a stack of Legos in front of a three year old and having him say : "Yeah, I don't have a creative bone in my body." You don't put crayons in front of a kid and they say you know I'm not the artist, maybe you know they're like that, they just do it until someone tells them they're not supposed to write and it's just a notch and the best evidence of That's what children do and what our ancestors did.

I always think about my grandparents who were dairy farmers in the Depression era in northern Minnesota, so these are people who I mean their Scandinavian Lutherans in Minnesota and the depression that you can't be less frivolous than that, you know , that's like that's like the most scraped of pleasure and joy of beauty you can get is being northern Minnesota dairy farmers in 1931 with Lutheran values ​​and a Swedish accent, I mean, that's really bleak and they didn't believe in pleasure and they did not believe in it and they did not like to seek it. Beauty, they worked and they fought and you know, they were constantly afraid of losing the farm, which they eventually lost, and they were constantly trying to figure out how they were going to survive for the next day.

It was a really brutal struggle and yet both of my grandparents had things that they made with their hands that were so beautiful that my grandmother made quilts and my definition of creativity and art is making something that is much more beautiful than necessary, so My grandmother needed to make quilts because she had eight children. and they were cold and they couldn't afford to buy material and they had to use old scraps so it makes sense to make a patchwork quilt it didn't need to look like this quilt looked it didn't need to be excessively these quilts are excessively beautiful.

I have one in my house hanging on the wall because it's so beautiful and these are people who would have said artists like what that word means, but they did it instinctively because there is a human desire that makes us want. Do it even in the most strict, harsh and beauty-deprived circumstances, there is something in us that is part of the seal of our nature, so if you say you are not creative, I encourage you to look at your ancestors. and you look at the things they made even if they were poor, especially if they were poor and then you look at the kids and you see what they're doing and you try to figure out what's broken and you buy something that they taught you that says you're No, it's frivolous to do. this or you're not supposed to do this or you're not invited to do this or you didn't get the proper education, do it or don't, you don't have enough money to do it or you don't You don't have enough talent, whatever those things are, they're just lies. , lies, lies, lies, before we get to your beautiful creation, just one more question, a little more general, which is also of great magic.

You seem to suggest that this idea that you have to suffer for your art. It is a suffering and it is something that creates anguish that we have thought about throughout history, that is another myth that you want to dispel, yes, my reaction to that is that and it has always been, hate, it's like maybe it's cultural. myth that I hate the most there are many of them there are many really stupid ones about women too but I really hate that this romanticized literally capital are romanticized by the German romantics of the 19th century this romanticized idea that you are not a serious artist unless it makes you bleed unless it's painful unless you give up everything for it and there are so many examples of that it's very masculine it's incredibly masculine it's incredibly northern European it's incredibly Calvinist it has a lot to do with a kind of death cult that Much of this Culture is based on the destruction of life, which is the exact opposite of what creativity is.

It's amazing that they did that, but they managed to take something that is life-affirming, healing, generative, generous and beautiful, and turn it. in a death cult, but that's what the Germanic men of the 19th century knew with all that they are, let's make it something about death and it's not about life and I and I in my relationship with creativity only we have done. she has been one to feed me, that's what she does, she feeds us, my grandmother didn't make those beautiful quilts because she had a lot of free time or was trying to make money or become famous, she did it because she was fed and nourished. and transported by this, I imagine how exhausted she was, she got up at 4 in the morning to start feeding the laborers who lived on her farm so that they could get up at five in the morning and work until dark and then she worked after they worked and then he made these beautiful things that were so much more beautiful than they needed to be, there's no reason he would have done it other than he saved her, he helped her, and he made her feel something. that her life was more than the endless list of all her responsibilities of trying to survive, that's what creativity is supposed to be and that's a more feminine version, it's a more generous and affirming version, but I actually think that this is how most humans created art for most of history and life affirming is certainly what City of Girls is and it reminds me of the literary version of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun and There's Singing Throughout process as someone said.

It was the 1930s version of girls gone crazy and there's obviously morals behind it, but what were you trying to do with it? What were you trying to say? What message did you want to convey? Well, there's a story I wanted to tell. For a long time I wanted to write a book about promiscuous women whose lives are not ruined by their sometimes very bad decisions. I don't know where I got the idea to write that book. Such a crazy whim that I had one day to write but I wanted to write. I have wanted to for years. write a book that contradicts another myth that I hate, which is the cultural romanticization again the romanticization of the death cult of the ruined woman that is so ingrained in our cultural narrative and in our stories and it's a great story, I mean, it's a great opera to tell the story of a woman who is ruined by desire and who makes a bad move, falls in love with the wrong person, trusts someone she shouldn't trust, gives herself in, you know? she gives herself over to passion and that's it, you know, it's like my synopsis of all those novels, operas and poems is like a good girl on the right track feels desire, an orgasm under the wheels of the train, you know? could be that and the punishment the wages of pleasure you know what it is again this this is an absolute cultural distrust of pleasure this distrust and fear of pleasure is so brutal and the punishment is so extreme and I think the reality of the lives of the women not at this moment, but throughout history, is that women are able to survive their own consequences and survive there, there are a little bit of notions about the consequences, the consequences, you know and really, because, honestly, if Raise your hand, that's right.

It wasn't possible for women to survive their terrible and stupid mistakes around sex and love. Would anyone in this room still be alive? You know, we're all still here, you know, we're all still here, we're all still here and no. alone here, but maybe it's more interesting, stronger, more in a strange way, powerful and that's the story I wanted to tell and I didn't also want to tell some kind of falsely cheerful sex positive story where there are no consequences and no pain and that's Part of my character Vivian's maturation process is that she has to extend her savagery so far out into the world to the point where it causes pain and creates problems she can't fix and many of the books about shame. and about what you do with that, but ultimately she's not a broken woman, she's an experienced woman who, at 90, is looking back on her very interesting sensual life with a lot of affection for herself, which I think it's an incredible achievement if you can be a woman in this culture who has affection for herself, that's quite remarkable because, yes, you see, there's a lot against you, but you, but you chose that in the 1940s, did you? why did you choose?

So the 1940s in New York was a really interesting time. Well, first of all, I always wanted to write a love story in New York City because it's, um, it's New York City, it's one of the great loves of my life and it's the city that is my name. great mother because it is the place that always welcomes me when I go to another place, as if I went and tried to be normal in a respectable place and I fail and I return to New York, it is like returning, it has always been like that. He's so generous to me and I love it, so I wanted to write a book about someone who has the same feeling of love for New York as I do and I feel like the 1940s was an incredibly glamorous time and I wanted to set it in theater because there's always been a lot of promiscuity in the theater, it's the world that has its own rules and always has, so I thought I could get away with it if the girls were as wild as they are, but it's also a really interesting time. for women's history because she was in New York and she may have stayed here, but in New York all the men were gone and the women completely ran the city, they had jobs and they made a lot of money.

A lot of women who would never have had jobs got jobs in the munitions plants and the Brooklyn Navy Yard during the war and did all kinds of very interesting things and started banks and saved money and put it away and bought real estate. after the war and creating this whole new type of woman and there were all these rules and customs before the war that were dissolved during the war because their rules said that if you're a respectable girl you can't walk around town at night without being on the arm of a gentleman, well, there wasn't any man you know, so that rule had to die.

You can't eat in a restaurant if you're a respectable woman because people will assume you're a prostitute, well, prostitute for whoever likes it, there are no types, there are no types. I'll sit in this restaurant if I want and there's a line in the book later in life where Vivian with her circle of friends says one thing that she learned over time. is that when women are alone without men around they don't have to be this or that, they can just be and that's what happened in New York, is that since there were no men around during the war, all these women could just be and be. became a really interesting generation and then, of course, the men came back and all the rules came back and all the women lost their jobs and then skirts got really big again and, you know, everything went back to like tight waists and boobs later. that, but there was a period during the war when it was like trousers and flat shoes and no one did anything with their hair and everyone worked and rode bikes and made money and I say that's great, that's my life.

You know, there was a little moment in the middle of the century when that was what life was like for a lot of women and I thought it would be a great place to set it. Do you think I mean it's the 1940s? A lot of time has passed since then, but obviously when a book comes out you can't separate it from the context and do you feel like it's a counter reaction to where we are today in the sense that for the movement there are rules and regulations again? and a slightly cleaner view of how relationships between men and women should work.

I will say a couple of things, one of them, let me start by saying that I am also a violent supporter of myself. I think it's a very necessary and necessary expression of female rage. Also, like all expressions of anger, it comes out in many directions that are particularly neat and that's okay because it's finding its voice and it will and it's okay and it's good and it's better than not having it and the conversation about consent. This is obviously incredibly important. This is just not a but, but and I don't think this is a counterattack, this is just me saying that while this is happening, let's not forget that consent, well, absolutely vital, is not the only word that exists.

In the arsenal of the story of female sexual desire there are also things like lust and desire, an agency, a will, a hunger, a passion, and the idea of ​​a woman standing in her own full desire, looking at the landscape, seeing something. what he wants and being like. I'm going to look for that, which is something that women do too and there's also the fact that women behave very badly around sex and we can't have full and equal conversations about sex. pretend that it doesn't happen, it absolutely happens, there is also desire, which not only women themselves cannot control, there is an amazing book, the best book of the year will be published in a few weeks that Lisa calls three women today, oh, and you will hear a lot about that, it's a booknon-fiction written by an American journalist who spent almost 10 years following these three women who were having affairs and is about how to discover the noble female sex.

It may be desire and what women are willing to risk when they are overcome by passion and the crazy things we do when we are in that state and I think it's also a very important book right now, so none of this is... . take into combat to discuss to discuss to debate is just let's make sure that in this buffet of conversation we also keep in mind that female sexual desire is an ancient primitive darkness and I don't mean sinful, I mean a primitive muscle, discover a. noble strength and efforts to sanitize have always been futile, no matter where they come from, but that doesn't mean we can't have conversations about justice and the workplace and about that, you know, the safety of female bodies, for of course it's not the end of both things thank you and there is no water in this cup the emperor has no clothes and well, you better be adding firewood, it's also a lot, isn't it about female friendship and, again, something no?

A lot has been written about that in literature in history and we're going through a moment here and I think obviously in the US, where books and things about female friendship are coming back, we have a flea bag, I'm sure. that there are a lot of fans of that if you've seen it I am and Dolly Alderson all I love female friendship is her back and something that seems to really appear in this book is very important to you thank you for noticing it because of course it is A book with a lot of sex is about female desire, but my hope is that on the last page of this book, where your heart really connects with this book is not the idea of ​​female friendship, but that's what it's about. , ultimately, this book. a woman who learns to be friends with other women and it is very important for me in my life that the fundamental relationships in my life are my female friends, some of whom I will now turn 50 in two weeks, three weeks, something like that will be done pause for a second so I'm waiting for everyone to say no they couldn't so I should try again oh no I am I know I know I'm very helpful um you guys are slow.

In the same way, my friend Cheryl and I were talking about how every time we told people our age, we did this waiting thing, we waited and then they never said anything, we were like, no, you're supposed to say no. look at your age um but they don't look anyway buddy, I appreciate it, that's how you all do it um, but one of the things I'm going to do this year, do you think I'm going to do this year to celebrate turning 50? I am taking each of my oldest and dearest friends on a trip that is particular to what she would love to do, so I went.

I took my best friend from fourth grade since I was nine to Mexico in January and then I went to Hawaii and March with another old friend of mine and a friend of mine from 20 years ago whose birthday is today I was just celebrating the weather and the Instagrams came to meet here tomorrow and we will travel together and in September I will be there. go with another and it's about a lot of things, I think we can become so obsessed with our romantic partners and I think we can be so sure that that's the most important thing, that all your focus should be on that and yet I think that in this field of these women that I love and you know, with my friend Jenny we've been friends for 40 years 40 years I'll never have a 40 year marriage I'm too old to even try right now like I'll never have that, you know, and I will never have that depth of intimacy with anyone who knows me that deeply, and a lot of this book is about celebrating that, as well as the desire for sex and intimacy and so on.

Vivien, there are a lot of things that are not there about you in Vivian, I mean not least the line I think you said about when you sit down if once I mastered it I discovered that eating alone by the window in a quiet restaurant is one of life's greatest pleasures, she says, yeah, I think that's one of the many obviously revealing lines, but you also talk about shame and I think that line at some point in a woman's life she just gets tired of being ashamed all the time. time and she uh, she looks back on her life after that, she's free to become who she really is, you feel, you feel in that moment and when you look back at the author who wrote Eat Pray Love, yeah, it's that Shame on that in that book, oh.

Oh my god, that's so embarrassing III Seamus. Sorry, I interrupted you. Did you wait? Oh, sorry, I mean, it's about maybe you like shame, no, no, I was just going to say it's women who wrote Eat Pray Love, she looks embarrassed. to break convention, she leaves for a year but she always comes back and potentially now you've decided to ruin conventions forever. I die. I do not do well. You know, I keep trying but I don't succeed. Not really. try I'm still trying now I don't know I just like to keep thinking I'm supposed to be one thing and I'm not I'm just not supposed to be anything other than what I am I'm not really and and The shame is that God It's a killer, it's so brutal, it's so and it's a shame-based, scarcity-based culture that we live in anyway and for women it's especially brutal and God, you're not allowed to make a mistake and if you do.

You know the only respectable thing you can do is just lacerate yourself for the rest of the time and it's so cruel and it's so bad, it's so terribly bad because that's how you know every woman I know and probably every man or woman here. . If you're in this room, I'm guessing you're someone who really wants, wants, and actively wants to practice universal human compassion, but what you really care about is that you've heard of that idea and that you would love to embody it. that you would love to love the world, that you would love to be in a state of love and that is probably an active part of your consciousness and then each of you probably spends the day with a razor to your neck about what piece of human garbage you you are and how the biggest monster in your story and it's the dichotomy between that, you know, the paradox, of course, is that universal human compassion that doesn't include the self as non-universal, there's a big hole in the universal human compassion that you have to close. you in that too or else you're not doing it right, you know, if you want to do it right, this is how you have to do it, you have to be like I'm just one of us, I'm just one of us. one of the people who also suffers from the dilemma of being human and needs compassion.

One of the things that's been a big shame for me, Buster, and I don't know if I can convey this, but let me see, I think I'm trying. but so pass me pass me that glass okay, that was great now pass me your shame is imaginary you see the difference like that a thing is here in the material world it is a phenomenon it exists I'm sorry I see you you exist give me your hand here we are you are real you are hot you are I'm alive I'm here I'm hot this is real this is happening you can't give me your shame because it's not one thing it's something else we invented it do you understand this is imagine it's literally imaginary it's literally imaginary if I went to the forest and stared at a rock in the forest and I always tell him you should be ashamed of yourself you should be ashamed of yourself I blame you your fault is another give me your fault blame me what does it do to me unless I decide to agree with the dream true we are having a kind of dream that we were I agree that it's my fault you should be ashamed it's all this dream that wasn't like that if I stand in front of a rock and say I blame you you should be ashamed of yourself the rock is real I'm real my voice is real it does it it's like a vibration and the air, the birds will spin and be like what you know, something like that will happen on the physical level, but the rock won't do anything to it, you know, I'm a It's actually a very good thing to do when you're embarrassed and I've done this.

I swear this is whatever. How to go to the Academy. I will give it to you. Sit in front of a tree and ask the tree how you should handle your shame. Ask. for advice, how do you think I should overcome my shame? You just wait for the response and it's like, what are you talking about? This is imaginary, it's this dream that we've agreed on, this is a complete human invention, so when I imagined that I could go to the rock and I could rip off the moss and that would shock it and I could hammer it and that would shock it, but I I say it's your fault, I blame you, you failed, you failed, it's your fault, nothing, it's nothing. there's literally nothing happening, so in some ways that idea woke me up a little bit to the dream of that, where I think there's an idea of ​​awakening that spiritual awakening that to wake up you have to wake up from the Waking Dream, you know that's the next level , so there's the dream and then there's this dream that we're in and then there's an awakening from the past where you're like, oh, a lot of this is just imaginary and shame is an act of imagination that you are, you can actually decide see what is simply the work that we are in when you are writing when you are writing this novel when you have these messages that you want to convey do you have your reader? in your sights, do you know who your reader is when you write on Instagram, darlings, yes, who are you talking to and when he writes is it for them or for you more or a balance of both is for me is for me because I like to do it, It's fun and I enjoy it and I did it long, long before you guys were interested and thank God you are now, but I would do it even if you weren't and I don't, because that's what makes my life.

Really great, you are, but mostly it's for me, but then when I sit down to write with each book, I have a different real person in mind than the one I'm writing to, so Pray Love was written as a letter entirely addressed to a woman named Darcy. Steinke, who just wrote the other best book of the year, which is called Flash Count Diary, which is about menopause and which is getting reviews everywhere. It's amazing, but she's been a friend of mine for 20 years and when I went on a trip to eat, Pray Love, she had just gone through her own divorce, her own depression, she was on her own spiritual journey, we were on the same kind of journey. mental space, the only difference was that she had a three-year-old son, so there was no possible way she could do what I did. and that's why I had her on my mind the whole time I was traveling and part of my impetus when she was traveling as my real encouragement to go and do and try hard was thinking that Darcy can't. do this like Darcy can't do this you have to do this like you have to go introduce yourself to this person you have to get on this train and go to the city alone because Darcy can't The feeling I get is not only that, but, like all my female ancestors from way back, I always say that, like my grandmother, who had those eight, eight children and probably eight miscarriages, who was a farmer's wife and who fought and who had children and who fought and who was in the Nagre culture and who fought her life was precise and exactly like the life of every woman in history from there to Eve, it was just that it was just women having babies women trying to raise babies and women trying to feed the babies women trying to grow food women trying to survive women right?

It was just that and then something happened came birth control my mom had two kids and a very different life than hers My mom and I don't have any and I'm like a new species of woman and what I feel sometimes is this edible energy of all their spirits saying, "Do it the way you do it," because they couldn't do anything and every single time I walk up to my tiny little 600 square foot one bedroom apartment in New York City that I own and in which no one else lives but me, where everything in it are things that I love and turn into them.

I turn off the key and look into that space I hear all my ancestors say yes, yes, holy, you have your own house, you have your own room, you have your own bathroom and you know that, like it's small, it's that big, my apartment, but it's how I feel that and I felt that, so I wrote every word of Eat Pray Love for Darcy because it made me able to choose what goes in the melody of the book, it's always advice I give to people who write it . just always make sure you're writing to someone and not a demographic because it's not anyone you know, so when I ask people who write something who it's for and they say, oh, it's for women in their 40s. 60 who are in their second marriages and who are, you know, worried about environmental collapse.

I think he's nobody, he's nobody. I can't feel who that is in my heart, so all my books have been written, so the last one and this one. I wrote to my dear friend Cheryl, who is a big reader and who is also in theater, and I wrote it to delight her and I wrote the signature of all things for my fourth grade teacher, who is the first feminist I ever met. my life. I lifeI walked into the class of 1978 and she had short bright red hair and flashy clothes and she was young and cool and she had written on the bulletin board Mrs.

Miss Miz and we surrounded Mrs. Carpenter and thought what and she just sat there with a group of nine year olds and explained to themthe whole history of these words and why it would be called MS and I just remember sitting there and saying, This is going to be a really good year and it was amazing and she was a great gardener and she loved novels and she read Hemingway to us when she taught us. Latin and I just believed that we were infinitely educated and that's why I wrote all the signatures of all the things directly for your pleasure and delight, so I think it's a wonderful way to create because it also means that you're not alone in the room, you can be with the person you're talking to and that.

It can make you feel less alone in your creativity. Oh, there are so many places I want to go, but since I'm going to move on, we talked about suffering and creativity and I know you don't think it's a myth that you need. suffer for your art at the same time eat Pray Love was born from a very difficult time in your life and I know that this came after or maybe you can tell us about the context and where it emerged in a way really difficult and unimaginably difficult times and yet, you were able to produce this wonderful and really fun thing, so like I said, a free spirit work from a really difficult dark time, tell us about that, yeah, well, first a word about suffering, um, it's real, it's the first noble truth of Buddhism.

It exists and it is universal and it knows where you live, that is why I do not love the cult of suffering, the cult of suffering that builds an altar to it and romanticizes and glorifies it, there is no need to do it when it is your turn. To suffer you will know because he will come and knock on your door and he always knows where you live and once it is your turn you will know because you will be suffering, so you don't need to go looking for him to feel that your life is more important than this, that's right , so I do not want to deny the existence of suffering and one of the knocks that came to my door due to suffering was in 2016 when the most important person in my life, my dear best friend, who for years had not even been able to find a word to call the relationship we had best friend was very and she just didn't begin to explain what she was she was the only thing I could call her was my person and then she would say a husband and I have a person and Ray has my person she is my she is my first phone call in every emergency she is my first phone call and every celebration when I'm at the end of my tether and I'm terrified and overwhelmed it's weird who I call you know she provided all of that she was my counselor she was my guide she's my hero she was she is Raya she was epic she was extraordinary and then she was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic and liver cancer in 2016 and death has many uses, one of hers, which is death, dying and suffering, is a very clear light that shines, that can shine suddenly, there is a clarity. that can happen around death and the clarity of that moment, a couple of weeks after she found out that this was what was happening, it was like this giant spotlight came in and shined into my life, it was so obvious. that, oh there's a word for what Riya is she's the love of my life I just hadn't quite pieced it together that's what she is this is this is who I love and and seeing that and seeing what I saw in the next moment there was a future that was so horrible Lee, it was just so unacceptable and the future I saw was that I knew I would take care of Riya.

I knew that I would be the one to take care of her and I knew that I would be with her at the time of her death and I was, but in this vision that I had I saw that I saw her die and leave this earth without ever knowing what she was to me and It was just that my soul was dismayed. in that vision and I saw myself going to her funeral and people coming up to me and saying, "I'm so sorry your friend died" and maybe like "yes" and I go home after that and nothing would happen again. function.

I just liked everything I saw afterward. that would just be this word of post-apocalyptic landscape like nothing was going to work and that couldn't be allowed to happen and so it was an instant turnaround, an instant turnaround of a very happy marriage, a very loving marriage and, instantly, and it was very clear to everyone involved it was very quick and it was very bloodless it was just obvious it was just obvious that this is what had to happen so I went to take care of her for the 18 months that she was dying and Before that I had been researching this book and I was about to start writing it and then she got sick and I put it away and never thought I'd read it again.

I just thought who cares about showgirls in New York City in the 1940s I only cared about Raya and, but, so I didn't work on it at all, she was fine, she was dying, but again it was this this clarity and I think I'm so confident these days in that. kind of clarity, this clarity that came just a few weeks after her death, which I always say like instructions from the mother ship or the magnet in the sky, I don't know, was the best thing you can do for your life right now. is to write exactly that book that you were going to write before she got sick, the most joyful, the life-affirming, say sexy, sensual, gay in spirit, you know, a book that is drunk like a champagne cocktail and so on.

It's how you're going to move forward in this. pain and that's what will restore you because there had been such darkness and now we have to bring some light into this room and it was exactly the best thing I could have done for myself at that moment, it was so much of this book is about bodies. , about bodies enjoying and enjoying and sensuality, and I think that having been with a dying body, there is so much pain and so much suffering in the pain and suffering that I experienced there. It was something that was almost like a pagan rite of ritual rebirth to write this and not write a book about Raya, she's not in this book, you know, it's not about her, one day I'll create something about her, but that's the way it is.

Wasn't it necessary for it to be exactly the opposite? It was about being okay, look, rotate the earth and bring the light back now because the season of darkness has been very dark when you announced that your relationship with Raya had changed, I think it was on Instagram and I heard you say I think it was in another interview that you didn't even think to point out that it was with a woman it didn't matter love the curtain Sophia love is love not even a stream, you know, what's so funny is that at the end of that post and the reason why I announced it was to make my life easier and also because I believe that transparency is easier, so I believe that transparency is always easier and I just discovered that it is much simpler to constantly tell the truth about what is happening than to keep some kind of story and I wanted to be free.

I knew I had such a short period of time with her and I wanted to be free, really free, for wherever in the world I went, to be with her absolutely in any way that we needed to be physically holding each other and holding each other and not be like Liz Gilbert, What is supposed to be. Married to Javier Bardem, what is she doing with that? You know, um, so I just needed to clear that up and I'd rather tell you, but I mean anyone. I'd rather tell you what's going on than have people. wander or guess or speculate and I also feel like there really is something I can offer about my life that will make your life feel less strange to you.

It seemed like such a no-brainer and I knew people were really invested in my marriage and the Eat Pray Love story. I also knew you guys would be fine. I have a lot of faith in you. I need everyone to be okay. like um you may have invested in my marriage, you couldn't have invested more in it than me. I'm fine, you'll be fine, we'll all be fine, you know, like I knew everyone would be fine and so I didn't want anyone to like me by keeping up some kind of appearance for people, it's crazy to live your life that way, but at the end of that post, when I made the announcement, I said, you know, I have a request and it is please don't bombard us with cures like just don't do it or horror stories because when you're with someone or when you have cancer ulsan everyone has a story they want to tell you .

They're either a cancer miracle or your cancer nightmare and there's so much to go through there's so much and there's so many different possible ways that you can take treatments and I just didn't do it. I thought, let's do this, let Raya do this, she is. She will find out her own way for this and she will know that it will be very much her own way and she will just be respectful and please, don't you know? Don't do that and someone way down in the Facebook comment said when you said Started that sentence. I have a request, please, didn't she say?

I just assumed you're going to say, please don't judge me, and it was like it never occurred to me to say that, never judge me for what never happened, just why, um. Judge no, it just seemed crazy and the reaction was incredibly warm, believably warm, loving and generous, and still is, you know, this is an ongoing conversation that I've been having on social media about this whole process of loss and pain. I didn't write much about it, well, I was dying because I actually dated her, you know? But since she died, there have been a number of things that I wanted to share and the sense of community in Grace's sense, I know many of you in this room have been a part of this.

It has been exquisitely beautiful. What did she teach you about grief and death? I think she did teach them a lot. They said she wanted to be Florence Nightingale. and you had a way that you imagined it would be and it was very different from that, yes, rheya was very humble, rheya was the most powerful person i have ever met in my life and i was like, i'm going to take care of her like she was a little one, beautiful, beautiful broken bird and she said, no, you're not and I came in with all kinds of ideas about how to create the transition to the softer, gentler, more enlightened, more peaceful light, and you know, she was basically like Keith Richards, that was Raya, so no, it wasn't really like that, so I had to be very humble about a lot of things and I had to be very humble about the reality of how brutal it is. be a caregiver and I thought I would be really good at it and I thought all you have to do to be good at this is to really love the person and then that's enough and it's not really because it will be necessary You were depressed and when people He said things like "you have to take care of yourself", I thought no, I don't, why would I take care of myself?

I have to take care of this person I love and then I was absolutely devastated. that and I became someone who had to be taken care of because I collapsed, you will. I was humbled by the reality that there is no right way to do this. Know? I really thought there might be a correct way to do that. make make worry make love make love make death it was so messy it was so chaotic it was so brutal andraia was a drug addict i mean she wasn't when i met her she had been clean for 19 years but the moment they gave her morphine i want I mean, she was an addict like a speedball heroin addict for years and those substances do different things for addicts than they do for the rest of us, and so on in the middle of this incredible love story.

Suddenly, there was this incredible burgeoning renaissance of mass drug addiction that happened at the center of all of this and I was like: Oh my God! I don't even know how to do this. This is something else. How it is handeled? someone who is becoming a drug addict while they are dying, what possible threat can you give them to make them use less drugs? You know it's like you have no currency, you know she was madness and she was simply part of Ray's expression of rage and autonomy. and the fury was going to do that and there was a six month period in the middle of his death where he just embarked on this madness and it was like this other element of brutality and then there was the humility of discovering that there were other people who were also better than me to take care of her and I was so convinced that because I loved her more, I would be her best caretaker, but his ex-girlfriend and his ex-wife, God bless them. showed up at the end of her life knowing how tough Raya was to help her and to help me and there was a massive surrender I had to make to realize that Stacy is actually better at this than I am, you know when there are times when Raya she wanted to be with other people, they decided with me because they didn't need her as much as I did, they didn't love her as desperately as I loved her, I could just watch a football game and I didn't have to. being in it all the time, you know, and in that moment, there were all these things, so none of them were anything like what I had thought and yet it was really the most beautiful experience of my life, no There's a minute of that I would have changed It's the closest thing to the bones living truly living in the presence and in the chaotic madness of this world that I've ever experienced was being with her during that and I and the reason why my life afterwards as Father is not like that. look like that post-apocalyptic landscape that I had imagined is because we did that because we did that together we had that trip together we had that time together we had that love story we had that Horror Story and we totally did it and that's why I'm as fine as I am, which is not to say that I am not suffering, it is just to say that life does not feel, it feels very still in a vitality and a kind of 3D due to having experienced that degree. of love, you know, I think you might read this thing you posted on yourIt's not really like I walk around not knowing what longing feels like.

I just never had that longing, you know, so I was just obedient to my longings and instead of what other people have told me to do in the first place. like you have a great future ahead of you, but second of all, this is all how they understand you because they will say, oh, everything is great, now you will die alone and your cats will eat you, so there have been some very fascinating studies done there. in American nursing homes on older women to determine whether or not it is true that women who do not have children or families are unhappier in old age than women who do, and this is what they have. determined that's a non-starter in terms of a measurement, they can't find any statistical correlation between happiness and old age, happiness and health and old age of older women and whether or not they have children, here are the things that really They determine whether you will be happy when you are an old woman and what they are worried about is your health, but what makes old women unhappy is their poor health, their poor financial security and their security, so with nervous teeth, wear the seat belt. security, save money and you'll have a bigger life than the absolute hello, this is a much easier way to do it by showing up, yeah, great to see you again, nice to show you last year too.

My question is about something you said on Sheri and Nancy's podcast, that I've heard other people say that you can't truly love another person until you truly love yourself and it's something that I've struggled with because I'm incredibly kind and generous and generous to my friends and to everyone, but I'm horrible. to myself like without even realizing it and so I feel like I can give a lot of love now and even though I'm not giving myself a lot of love and way to myself, yeah, how does that phrase fit and if I'm wrong and you?

You're right and it's just that you know that we all are in our entire life it's a journey towards loving ourselves unconditionally and that's why when we're in relationships with other people you know that they can fail, they can be no good or they can be ourselves. We have problems it is because all of us, some more advanced than others, at the point where we do not love ourselves, we give ourselves the love we really need. I'm like wishing later and I said honestly no, I'm thinking I'm not the only person. That said, I know, I know, I know it's like a trope, it's a thing and in fact, as you say, and I say it's true, where and what I meant when I said that and I don't think I know.

It's true because I think a lot of people I know who are very grown up, like some of my dearest friends, actually have terrorists living inside their minds that are so mean to them and are so good and kind, yeah, it's funny, They absolutely have the capacity to love and to have really generative and beautiful relationships, so I think maybe that's just not true and maybe it's even cruel to say that because it just gives you something else to think about that you're doing. it's wrong and that's not nice and I never like to add anything to the pile of things, especially things that women think they're doing wrong, so I'm glad you brought it up. and I think maybe I won't say that anymore, thanks from me.

I think you know. I think in my own case you know that self-love is a very, very high aspiration and and and I don't even do it. I use the word self-love because I think it's a bit degraded and meme-like and I'm not sure any of us really know what it means and I'm settling for just friendship being the word I use in a way. of a kind of essential friendship between oneself and oneself. I think that's a good place to start. Self-love seems like it might be out of reach for many of us and when that doesn't work.

The word I use that will often bring me back to sanity and bring me back to dropping the knife at my throat is stewardship, so the way I see it, especially since women are stewards of as many precious things as women Women's. I've always been the steward of the vulnerable, beautiful, precious, fragile things in the world, so the way I've come to see it is, again, I don't know what's literally going on in the universe, but it seems like it was. given this one to take care of him I don't know why apparently they thought I might like him, they're like let's trust you with this one and I like to think they wouldn't have given me this if they didn't think I could take care of him very well, you know, or protect him so much as possible, so the sense is the administration of your own being right, for some reason I got this.

They gave me this body They gave me this mind They gave me these talents They gave me these traumas and these anxieties and then I think I think the task is can you take care of it? You know, would you be nice about it? give it to you or put it in your hands, which would be as kind to it as you would be kind to any fragile living being and in that sense, my sense of stewardship of the earth over me has gotten me out of some very bad situations in my life. that I could have stayed longer other than places where this being was thriving, so I think part of stewardship is putting this being in environments where it can thrive and thriving for me means being able to sleep well, being able to eat well. being and not so abrupt not having burdens not being really burdened with anxiety being you know just being a good good situation for it like a good environment for it and what I've discovered over the years is that I can actually strangely trust This point that when I put him in a circumstance that is not good for him, he will collapse and that is my dear friend, life, guiding me that this is not really where he is supposed to be because when I find myself back in the office of a doctor asking for antidepressants again I'm like wait a minute, wait a minute, where am I in my environment? that this is not this is not thriving is not thriving can't sleep can't can't can't eat is crying all the time is like this What they gave me to take care of is not working very well.

What are we going to have to change to take care of it? I think that's how I see self-love, it's just a reverence for life, which I think a woman is. We are good with women We are very good at reverence for life We deal with the vulnerable, beautiful and special things We just forget that we are one and that we are actually leaders, which is like whatever, there are others that you can take charge for a short time. periods of time or longer periods of time, but they come and go, even your own children will eventually leave and then who is the one that you are constantly in charge of?

You have to know that it has to be you, so I take back what I said. he said and I think that was a bad thing to say and I will contemplate it more, but I still think that it is worthy of cultivating an essential stance towards oneself, a friendly and friendly administration, let's call it that and then we can maybe aim for love, but I think it is friendly stewardship essential, not treating yourself like a mugger, it would be nice you know, so yes, thank you, honey, yes, I'm sorry, I know there are many more questions, but my little watch is just showing the zeros, but thank you all very much for coming and Elizabeth Gilbert, thank you very much, thank you very much.