Collective Consciousness
A couple of years ago, a friend asked me about Fatherland, my then-unfinished manuscript. “What stage is the book at?” she asked. “What’s next?”
“I have to be honest,” I told her. “It feels like writing it’s the easy part. What I’m worried about is how to get it published. I know it’s a unique book, but it’s gonna be really hard to find an agent.”
“What about self-publishing?” she asked. “What would that feel like?”
My response came so quickly it surprised even myself: “Suicide,” I said.
The things we say in haste have a way of circling back to us. I spoke without thinking that day, but the weight of that word has lingered with me ever since. What part of me so needed the approval of an agent or a publisher that forgoing it seemed like it would kill me?
A few weeks ago, another conversation served as that first one’s bookend. As I sat down to dinner with Beth, one of my writing partners, she asked: “So…where’s the book project at?”
“Honestly, it’s hard to tell,” I said. “I don’t really think this is going to be an agented book; it doesn’t fit into any one box.”
If I noticed the mischievous glint in Beth’s eyes, I must have mistaken it for something else. Because I certainly wasn’t prepared for what she said next:
“We should start a publishing collective!”
For a long moment, I was silent. Some part of me wanted to push back, to tell her why it wasn’t possible, that it was too much work, that surely if I kept knocking on the right doors, someone would eventually answer. But I didn’t say those things because I didn’t really believe them. The fact is that I’ve never done anything the “right” way. Something—whether it was the experience of early childhood trauma or just the sense I was wired a little differently than everyone else—told me that following the beaten path wouldn’t really get me anywhere. And so over the years, I’d pretty much stopped trying.
This hurt me and helped me, in varying ways. But when I think back to the truly meaningful experiences of my life—starting bands, joining the D.C. punk scene—they didn’t really fit a standard model. And they were often collective in nature.
Beth sat patiently, the gleam in her eyes undiminished, waiting for a response. “Hm,” I finally said. “That’s…interesting. Maybe there’s something to that. But I don’t know.”
I let the idea marinate over dinner, and when we parted, we agreed to schedule a meeting to explore the concept more deeply.
In the weeks leading up to the meeting, I dug deep into the roots of my hesitation. And one of my favorite tools is called the enneagram. A deceptively simple nine-number system, it’s a powerful way to categorize and understand one’s character and worldview. Each number corresponds with a basic personality type and its attributes: What drives it, what frightens it, what characteristics it tends towards when it’s healthy and which ones it devolves into when threatened (1).
At their worst, these kinds of personality tests are about as useful as the “Year of the _____” placemats in the Chinese restaurants of my youth. But when it’s used as a tool for growth, the enneagram is a lot like psychedelics: It’s a way to see the things your mind doesn’t want you to.
One of the things that makes the enneagram so useful is the concept of the “invited type.” It’s the number that a grounded, integrated, and curious person will gravitate towards, moving out of the safety of the “home type” and into something more exploratory and expansive. So…what was I being asked to step into?
I’m a four (“The Romantic”) and my basic fear—my “wound,” if you want to call it that—is that I don’t matter. Sometimes, in my darkest moments, that I may not even exist. Really, what I’d hoped for my manuscript was that it would finally allow me to feel seen. Never mind all the times I have felt seen—as a musician, a partner, a friend—and yet somehow I haven’t miraculously been “cured.”
My invited type is a one: “The Reformer.” That’s the type who acts from a place of authority and ethical groundedness, unafraid to law down the law and stand in his or her knowing. (Fans of D.C. punk: Know any ones?)
When I touch on my “oneness,” it allows me to extend from self-protection into something playful, expansive, even wise. Tapping into it now, I saw what the enneagram was trying to show me: That the stubborn and defended part of me—the part that never takes the well-travelled road, the one that sabotages my attempts to join the world—wasn’t my enemy. It was trying to protect me from harm.
Why shouldn’t it? When I was young, the world felt random, even punishing. Whether it was the sudden death of my mother or the unexplored trauma woven through my family’s backstory, reaching outside my self-protective bubble felt like an existential threat. And so I unknowingly reenacted the response of the Survivors who raised me, believing it was my lot to remain hidden and unseen. Every time I tried to leave, an imaginary gatechecker—I picture a tall and imposing man in a military overcoat and boots—barred my path, preventing me from entering my own life (2).
I know I’ve outgrown these shields, but habits born of self-protection die hard. What I saw now—regardless of how harebrained Beth’s idea was, how ludicrous it was to start a small press when all I wanted was for my book to get published—was that my friend’s offer was a door opening. And that for me to walk through it, some part of me—the one that equated self-publishing with suicide—would have to die.
When the day of the meeting arrived, I felt energized but calm. I wasn’t hurrying (3). My skepticism hadn’t completely evaporated, but neither was it running the show. We’d even picked up a couple of collaborators: Writers and musicians whose work inspires us, even as—or maybe because—it doesn’t fit in a neat box. I felt open and receptive to whatever was going to arrive. And pretty soon, it did.
“So, what’s the theme?” asked Fran as we sat down. “I mean, besides the fact that we all have manuscripts we want to publish.”
“Hm…they’re all kind of exploratory,” said Beth “Maybe speculative or slightly magical?”
“How about: Stuff we like from people we admire?” I offered.
Everyone liked that, and pretty soon, the sparks were flying. Ben had just sold the software company he’d spent years building. “I’ve always loved publishing,” he said. “And I’ve played just about every role in a startup.”
“I’m a great project manager,” said Beth. “And I’ve organized music events, so I know how to wrangle a lot of moving parts.”
“I love working with physical products like books,” said Fran. “You want to talk about kerning? I could talk about kerning all day!”
Soon notebooks and pens were out, talk of distribution and marketing and production. A thought flashed through my mind, about how a few days previously, an acquaintance had offered to forward my book proposal to his agent. Nearly two years after starting the query process, it was only now that I’d grasped how to do it. Was that a sign that I couldn’t give it up now? Or a sign that I had to give it up now?
I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know this: Feeling the energy and enthusiasm swirling around me, the sum of our talents so much greater than any one of us, I felt a blessed stillness. I still don’t know what part of me needed to die for me to arrive in this place. But if I had to guess, I’d say it was the part that believed I could never enter the fold, that I’d never be permitted to feel the abundance and joy of collaboration. That I would never make it past the gatechecker and into my life.
Whatever it is, I’d like to thank it for its service, and then gently set it free.
(1) If you’re curious about your number, search "enneagram test" to pull up any number of free online quizzes. Each should take about five minutes to complete.
(2) Want an instant and visceral taste of what this dynamic feels like? Read this short essay by Franz Kafka.
(3) I got this from Jo Kent Katz, a healer who works with and writes about Jewish and ancestral trauma. In a 2021 article in Moment Magazine, she writes convincingly about characteristics I once took to be universal—moving quickly and deflecting with humor, for instance—as specifically Jewish responses to ancestral trauma. You can read the article here, and find more of her work here.