Fame is a hall of mirrors. Authentic talent, subjected to such reproduction, often manifests itself before an audience as a shadow of a shadow, a thousand iterations and reflections away from the source. If you happen to be the subject at the center of this abyss, how do you maintain grasp of who you are? It would be all too easy to mistake one of the many manifestations of yourself for yourself, after all. Who hasn’t stared into the mirror at three a.m. and wondered who was staring back at them? We all struggle with being ourselves. In a world where we perform ourselves on the Internet for all the world to see, where vacations are often pre-packaged photoshoots, Instagram-ready, where one’s appearance in a place is easily repurposed for the ether of cyberspace, where life’s ceremonies are meticulously documented, packaged, and posted, where life itself isn’t real until it has been documented—one question remains: who am I? This is the central question Alicia Keys asks herself in her interesting memoir, More Myself: A Journey (written with Michelle Buford). While the memoir is written through the lens of fame, it raises some interesting questions to which we all can relate.
It is easy to forget that the very concept of a unique and individual self, distinct and whole, didn’t really exist until the 18th century. The self as myth feels like a uniquely American project. Chaucer’s pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales are types, not individuals and Shakespeare’s kings enter stage left with the royal “we” behind them. The myth of the self and the legend of rugged individuality is such a largely American enterprise, that I can’t think about it without referencing Walt Whitman’s paradoxical search for self when he wrote: “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.”
Nothing encapsulates the American fascination with the unique individual self quite like the celebrity memoir. Here, the celebrity, in this case, Keys, is able to (through the lens of fame) at once assert her uniqueness while acknowledging her contribution to the culture at large. But when your uniqueness as an individual informs the culture at large, your I can very quickly become someone else.
About the tennis player Michael Joyce, David Foster Wallace wrote: “You are invited to imagine what it would be like to be among the hundred best in the world at something. At anything. I have tried to imagine; it’s hard.” Alicia Keys doesn’t leave us to imagining. Her memoir is a window through which we can enter her world, for just a little while. There are lessons there.
A culture that worships fame (which requires mass appeal) even as it requires rugged individualism, presents its celebrities with a serious conundrum. How do you at once appeal to the masses, while also remaining true to yourself? I hold that this conundrum is not only presented to celebrities like Alicia Keys, but is offered to all of us, given that each of us is now the center of our own little fame universe on Facebook and Instagram. We curate our uniqueness while appealing to the masses to amass likes.
When your “self” is a product (and I hold that it doesn’t matter whether the product is a Grammy-award-winning album, or your curated Facebook page), what are you? And while celebrities are the most commodified among us, any one of us who uses social media is also a product. What changes do we make in our daily lives and self-presentation to make that product more palatable? And what happens to us internally (psychologically), in a world where the curated life is often privileged over life itself? In More Myself we get an answer: “It’s hard to pinpoint the precise moment when we internalize others’ assessments; it’s usually not a single experience but rather a series of moments that bruise the spirit and lead us to distrust ourselves and those around us.” The process by which we externalize our views of ourselves, by which we give in to the easy product that amasses likes over the difficult and authentic, is subtle–it erases the soul so slowly, you don’t see it until you wake up one day, wondering who you are.
But who are these others? Who are the “those around us” who are trustworthy (or untrustworthy)? In a life constantly framed by social media, where the anonymous masses become the audience, where does the self truly arise? In the dark quiet room of the soul, which voice is speaking, when I say, I am here? Is it really me, or is it the likes, the newsreel, the others? And how do we remain true to that inner, quiet voice amongst all the noise?
In this miasma of performance, we find Alicia Keys in More Myself. What shocked me most about Keys’s memoir was how relatable it was. None of us are going to get invited to Prince’s house, and while I dream that one day I’ll write the book that will get me invited to visit Oprah in Maui, I acknowledge that such invitations are sent on Hermetic wings and are designated only for the initiated. And yet, even as Alicia passes through this kaleidoscope of initiation into fame’s rarified dream world, she (mostly, at least in the first 100 or so pages) remains entirely sympathetic.
There’s the still-life of the one-bedroom apartment Keys shared with her mother in Hell’s Kitchen when she was growing up. There’s the vignette of the hard-working mother. There’s Keys herself in the “oversize sweaters, baggy pants, Timberland boots…” because in her neighborhood, “wearing anything formfitting could get you mistaken for a hooker.” I found myself nodding and underlining passages where she described trying to hide her body so that it wouldn’t be noticed by the cat-calling men in the street. As a woman in America you have two choices: to choose to be noticed or to erase yourself. I chose to erase myself and could relate to Keys’s choice. And then there’s the description of the years of hard work at music, the performances in the parks, rec centers, schools and cafés— how hard Keys worked from the start—her insatiable hunger to put herself out there any way she could. Her relentless commitment.
It could be a story about any city girl. But then, her story becomes the fairy tale. She gets the record deal. And the story is all the more beautiful because it doesn’t mean overnight success for her. “A contract with a label is an open doorway. And what no one tells you is that once you step through that door, you’re mostly on your own.” After failing to produce a record with the producers, she writes: “I always made the most progress at home, in the makeshift studio Kerry [her boyfriend at the time] and I had created…the two of us would be up until sunrise, vibing and jamming and just enjoying the music.” She chooses play instead of work, creating “for the love of the process.” And, along with the play, she was diligent and disciplined, working late into the night. She remained authentic even after she got the deal. Some of us don’t get the deal, and still can’t stay authentic.
Keys writes about striving to maintain her artistic integrity throughout the process. There’s a difference between what can be sold and what is real and true. When Columbia calls her record a “demo,” she leaves the label, choosing to own her vision for her first record instead of succumbing to the label’s idea of what she should be. “If I betrayed that girl—if I sold myself out by succumbing to the label’s vision of who I should be—I might have been an extraordinary success. But I would’ve also been utterly miserable. I would’ve been up there on some stage, singing songs I didn’t truly believe in.”
The book is worth reading for the first 100 pages alone. Keys’s commitment to her creative integrity and her descriptions of grit and determination are inspiring. She had me asking: when was the last time I stayed up all night working on something that mattered to me? Could I create a book that was entirely true, created from a wholly real place? Would I have the courage to walk away from a book deal if the publisher wanted me to change that book? I don’t know.
To commit to a creative project is to commit oneself to an uncertain outcome. And yet, there’s solace in More Myself for those on the journey: “Nothing but uncertainty is certain. Circumstances come together, only to fall apart moments or months later.” Keys’s refrain in these early pages is a reminder of the importance of patience. It takes her years from the signing of her record deal to the date of her record release. And even after her release, the plan was for her to be discovered “one performance at a time.”
Patience. Could I be that patient? Have I been willing to take it one poem at a time, one article at a time? Have I been patient?
Some of us just make it bigger, though. Sometimes “one performance at a time” happens to be a performance on Oprah. But Keys has earned it by then–after the years in the apartment studio, the rec center performances, the park performances, the sleepless nights, the relentless commitment to vision and integrity. When Keys performs on Oprah, the moment is perfectly captured for the true glory it is—the triumph after so much work. No other performance or accolade Keys writes about later resonates as strongly as her description of her transcendent moment on Oprah when she performed “Fallin'” for the first time for a national audience (no, not even her Times Square performance with Jay-Z): “the universe took over. Something supernatural happens when you give in to the energy of a song.” But it’s not supernatural; it’s six years of hard work on the album; it’s the years of training and performing before all that.
The rest of the book doesn’t really hold me after that (with a few notable exceptions, particularly some intimate glimpses into her life as a parent). The rest of the book is just fame and its fruits—the money, the tours, the expensive vacations to Egypt where she reconnects with her spirit and heritage (which really could have been its own book), the time she spends time with gurus, the collaboration with JAY-Z, the friendship with Michelle Obama—it is all well and good—I’m happy for Keys; she deserves it all—but all of that is just the theatre of fame writ large. The more fascinating writing is found in the story that got her there.
Ultimately, we can all be ourselves. It’s a story of hard work, authentic striving, creative honesty in the midst of challenge, and the process of learning how to be a self in the world. It involves listening to the pull of passion that tells you when you are on the right path. Keys puts it perfectly: “When you’ve chosen the right path for yourself, you usually know it immediately. The choice just sits right in your spirit. You’re not second-guessing your decision or thinking about turning back.” May we all learn how to be ourselves.
About the Writer
Janice Greenwood is a writer, surfer, and poet. She holds an M.F.A. in poetry and creative writing from Columbia University.