Six degrees of memoir

Six words.

Choose them carefully because that’s all you have to tell your life story.

Should be easy, right? Anyone can complete a story that’s only six words long.

But can it encapsulate an entire life? Can it fully relate the defining moment in someone’s life? With only six words, you have to be precisely concise.

Or is it even possible to pin down a life in six words, several characters?

That was the conundrum I faced with “My Six-Word Memoir,” a calling for and exhibition of this unique artistic narrative at the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island.

A dear friend connected with the organization encouraged me to participate in the project, an offshoot of Larry Smith’s Six-Word Memoir challenge. The Jewish Alliance challenged the “community to rethink the notion of writer and memoir, and offer a simple platform to share the short, sharp story of your life.”

 The opening night of the exhibit, my friend and I circulated amongst onlookers and other writers. Some writers gave themselves away with the click of a camera by their memoir. Others pointed theirs out sheepishly when I commented on them. One of the organizers admitted “[her] six words are always changing,” which segued nicely into a conversation with another participant about the difficulty of choosing just one story. We discussed the distinction between a story and the story. Would bits and pieces of our lives represent it as fully or richly as an agonizingly selected six-word summary? Or more so? Someone had asked her whether her memoir was too simple. She’d countered with, “But is it?”

Perspective is everything.

What seemed like a simple exercise in writing opened up many philosophical and existential conversations – personally, as I sat at my keyboard, and collectively, once I joined the audience at the art gallery. I realized that what I put on my “canvas” was not what others brought to it from their own experiences. And what I read in theirs wasn’t necessarily what they intended. Another case of artist vs. art critic. Writer vs. reader response. Intent vs. interpretation.

Who can say that any one of the versions is wrong? Who can say that any one of us is finished writing the story of his or her life? It is the meditation and conversation that comes with the memoir that truly defines us.

A special thank you to the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island for offering this project and showcasing it in such a palatable way in gallery (401).

The exhibit will be on view in gallery (401) through April 11.

JENNIFER BUTLER BASILE is an author and educator living in southern Rhode Island. When she isn’t revising her young adult novel, she is exploring personal and mental health issues on her blog, Chopping Potatoes. http://choppingpotatoes.wordpress.com/