What is she Taut-ting about?
"the saying of the same thing twice in different words, generally considered to be a fault of style"
Tautology by definition is a noun.
You probably already know this if you’re on Substack, but if I am being honest, I didn’t. I came across the beautiful word “tautology” in the gorgeous novel, “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin. (Side note, if you have read this and want to #chat about it let me know, I finished it last night and have so many thoughts!)
In the book Gabrielle uses tautology as an insult from one character to another indicating redundancy. When I did my dorky deep dive into the word, I found myself relating to it. With it came the thought, “See this is what is wrong with your writing. You do this all the time.” Years of edits to poems reducing my overuse of adjectives and repetitive imagery. “You use too many words”. I let the little shame spiral me out of my Substack launching bravery once again. I returned to my Kindle, bashful in my false conceit as calling myself a “writer” and a “poet” when I didn’t even know the definition of “tautology” without my dictionary app.
I felt like I had let myself down but not studying more, or by having my memory of Honors English and Latin II stamped out by too many Love Island episodes. Had I lost something? I didn’t know. I did know; I had always loved words.
The daughter of a playwright and a poet, I was born to yap. If speaking, singing, reading (and shouting) words wasn’t enough, I also kept journals. I would write poem after poem in my Limited Too blue fuzzy diary. Expressing my love for the smartest boy in the second grade, for the Kentucky fireflies in the summer, for faith and God as only a seven year old can understand them.
Young Author competitions at my grade school were my ultimate THESIS, reading the passage from The Giver out loud in class my SUPERBOWL.
Anything that had to do with writing, reading, singing, or acting was something I loved and was naturally good at. There were two immediate faults to my gifts however or one could say “hinderances” to my BookWorm WordNerd dreams; I was terrible speller and had almost unreadable handwriting. ( Note that I said “was” and “had” here but both are still actively true, unfortunately.)
Neither obstacle stopped me from expressing myself through words. The love of storytelling eventually lead me to pursue my Bachelors of Fine Arts degree in Acting, a wise pivot from being a Classicist for a Leo Rising Leo Sun. Throughout my ten years as a professional actor in New York City, I would bump into opportunities to write.
I would trail poems across the country in every theatre I worked in. I wrote and published a collection of poetry after one particularly life changing season at sea (Thank you Artist’s Way) and I would participate in spoken word events and writing seminars between contracts. Through it all, I still felt like a fraud. My spelling and grammar, rusty. Broken down by too many years of writing Instagram captions or ranty emoji filled texts. No real writers would want to see my work or relate to it. (My sunflower tinted glasses tend to lean a bit sunny for most misanthropes anyway.)
So I kept my self expression to other people’s words. Playwrights are very good at this anyhow with it being THEIR JOB and many of their words become tied to my soul or even literally tattooed on my body. But even with the weekly memorizing of scenes and taping of song cuts I love, I found something missing. Im not sure in this season of life exactly what. Many of the things I strived for in my poems through allegory and symbolism are now achieved; a healthy loving partner, a beautiful apartment in New York, great agents and theatrical opportunities, even a French Bulldog straight off the Morning Pages’ dream board. So what is it?
Last night I turned to my partner, Jakob, and asked “Is it faith? Have I lost faith? Is it God?”
I have read that we try to fill the “God sized hole in our hearts” with other things; shopping (yikes oops yup), Instagram, dating, working, Netflix, etc. I wondered if I had been feeling this. Jakob said “But what about through people. God is other people, so by loving them, you haven’t lost anything.” Before trauma dumping my childhood of Catholic doctrine on him I instead allowed space for a teaching I learned later down the road to ring much more true, ‘God is Love.” So Jakob was right. Perhaps the fretting I felt in my core wasn’t that easy-to- find- “shame” of “not doing enough” in terms of faith, but more a longing to connect with people, with Love themselves.
So I finished the novel I was reading last night. A book very much about love, about work, about doing what you love. And today I decided to write.
Which brings us all the way back around to starting Trendy Tautologist.
I have created a home for mismatched musings. They won’t all fit into one clear themed book, which is why I hesitated to share them in the past. But they will touch on theatre, on art, love, loss, Norway, and more then a few will mention someone’s freckles. Sometimes they will talk about God, but I hope that welcomes you, because I have learned there is so much more to Love then rules. Often they will mention sunflowers.
If you want to stop by and read them, I would be delighted to have you here.