Creative values

The Smith Alumnae Quarterly online has an interview with the ethics columnist at the NY Times, Randy Cohen. Cohen said he used to write for David Letterman, who gauged the content for his show by the values he grew up with: “He didn’t want to do anything that would embarrass his mother.”

Alicia from Twilight Café recently commented here on choosing what we can safely post based on what family members might read. I think it’s common for writers and bloggers to struggle with the dilemma of where to draw the line in expressing ourselves freely yet protecting others and ourselves from embarrassment. Where does speaking our truth and saying what needs to be said bump up against our personal relationships? I remember reading an interview with a writer who wrote a book detailing her dating relationships. While writing it she got involved with a man she later married and he basically supported what she was doing. Of course you also hear horror stories of writer couples who fling venom at each other in print. I guess you have to set your own gauge that you can live with, maybe by the values you grew up with as Letterman does.

I wonder if people who grow up in families of creatives – artists, writers – use a different standard. Does Angelina Jolie have to worry about how her father, Jon Voigt, would feel about her sex scenes in a movie? Well, he’s done his own. Actors express themselves by baring body and soul all the time up on the big screen. Not everyone has the luxury of a family that nourishes or even understands your creative expression; then you have to forge your own path based on what feels right in your heart.

The article about Cohen says that “he works under a ‘constellation of values’ that includes honesty, kindness, compassion, and fairness. ‘I go by a code of ethics that increases the supply of human happiness.’” While we’re in the season of contemplation – the darkest part of winter and the turn of the year – I want to think about my own code. But I imagine it will continue to be honed with each circumstance, in every piece of writing.

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