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A Coat
by William Butler Yeats
I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world’s eyes
As though they’d wrought it.
Song, let them take it
For there’s more enterprise
In walking naked.
This poem and I have been friends for somewhere around 40 years. I could say more precisely, but that would require effort. I was at college, and found it in a Yeats anthology I’d purchased for a graduate seminar (Blake and Yeats) at the local state university in Springfield, MO.
That’s all I’ll say for now. But I figured I should say something, since I cited it, some might not know it, and everyone should.
That’s all, but these four things:
- This is indeed the allusion in “just me” and the blog’s “rebranding” (god damn, that sounds pretentious). Arguably, explicating and uncovering what it means to be naked–and in fact, the many ways this poem means for me–is the task I’ve set myself to.
- It’s often in my head and I apply it variously.
- It’s for sure part of the canon (my canon), an essential part.
- It expresses one or two (or more?) of the core values.
So, yeah, it’s pretty fucking important, neither incidental nor off-hand. It’s also good poetry. Read it a few times. Don’t be a godsdamned philistine. Soak it in. Figure it out (or not; I almost hate that I said that, but I’ll leave it with the amendment that maybe you should more sit with it than “figure it out”). Of course I’ll say more.
If you know me, you know I have things to say.
You may not know how little I say of what I think to say, let alone of what I think generally.
I was an Evangelical Christian.
- Right there in the motherfucking name. Evangelicals evangelize.
- Christians, one is told, glorify their goddamned Christian god.
- Even if not explicitly in the act of evangelizing or glorifying, a Christian should be a “witness” in word and deed.
- A Christian should speak the truth in alignment with his Christian god’s revelation.
- A Christian should live in harmony with his brothers and sisters in the Lord.
- A Christian certainly shouldn’t say or do things that might lead others astray, or cause them doubt or distress.
It’s not that I never did the things I was meant to do. I certainly tried. I tortured myself incessantly with the trying. I tried, I was tried and found guilty, weighed and found wanting. Hand to my heart, nothing would have made me happier than to believe I was any good at any of the things I was meant to do. The only things I did consider myself suited for are those donts declared in the last bullet.
I’ll return to each of those bullets other days, and unpack them, but for now, let it suffice that my sincerest prayer to be a good Evangelical Christian perhaps most of all kept me tied in knots never quite sure that I wasn’t a disgrace to the god who had delivered me (I hoped) from hell. Ironically, sometimes my anxiety to not say the wrong thing resulted in my saying too many things, contextualizing and clarifying ultimately only to confuse and confound.
Fuck that shit.
This is just me . . .
- naked (mostly metaphorically)
- unadulterated (to the best of my ability)
This is not me . . .
- declaring anyone else’s “gospel”
- proselytizing anyone’s (even my own) religion
- representing anything or anyone, other than myself
- aligning per se and in particular–with occasional exceptions–with any religion, creed, philosophy, brand or business
- taking responsibility for any motherfucking thing or any other person, aside from being accountable to my own values and owning my own shit, as any reasonable and relatively mature human should
- answering to anyone else’s goddamned rules
It is not my primary intent to convert or convince you.
As such, I have few fucks to give whether you think I’m doing the thing you’re concerned with in the way you consider correct and proper. I am not, for notable instance, a “good” Christian. I am not–to be clear–any kind of Christian. I don’t want to be. I do mean to be a good human. That’d be great. And notwithstanding my disavowing persuasion, I wouldn’t hate it if we had that in common. Also, I do hope my words are meaningful; but I’m not going to labor over it at the cost of getting them honestly and transparently out of my goddamned head and onto the goddamned screen.
I’m doing this for me and for anyone who cares about me in whatever way they might (though, alas, not with any enduring commitment to anyone else being happy with what they see). It’s okay if no one else cares. Enough already.
Joel 
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