Writing with Marco Polo energy

And writing about Fascism on the cusp of an American election

Nadia Shahbaz

Nov 03, 2024

Hello friends. It’s been a while.

I’m coming to you from deep inside the writing cave. What it’s looking like in some of my better moments…

Research. In the centre w/ the charming white v-neck, my grandfather.

Underlining Penelope Lively’s novel Moon Tiger.

But truly, how’s everybody doing? Any one else sensing the fever pitch? Elections screaming out, bombs too, and changes rolling quickly or not quickly enough? Right now, the leaves are talking to me. They’re all fired up out here on the East coast.

In a few weeks, these colours will die away, and later, miraculously, come back again. And then do it all over again. Death and resurrection. Or just the pattern of transformation. Something must die away in order for new life to come in.

That’s the stuff of storytelling. What fiction is built on—the before and after, the change quotient. What dies spiritually? What grows in the wake of that death? It’s subtle, usually, but always a feeling that spikes in and out of the reader as they hook into a story.

In the end, the reader/movie watcher connects with how a character experiences change.

We are a species hooked on change. We need it, I expect.

In a conference I attended last month, the writer Sarah Selecky said….

The situation in a story leads us all through a change as we read it. The reader is no longer the same person as they finish the story. Nor is the writer…The story changes you as you receive it and as you write it.
It’s about experiencing a burst of insight—that’s change. The world needs the questions artists ask.
It ripples outward whether or not it is given monetary value.

Change happens in the quiet cave

In my writing cave, I have a sense of what my characters want and what obstacles will stand in their way. These ideas are loud and pronounced.

But then, as the writing happens, the ideas grow more daring. They begin to challenge my own ideas of world/self/community. There’s paradox, there’s ugliness, there’s no simple hero, there’s an arrow to self-compassion, and there’s a well of making peace with it all.

As a writer, I am constantly using language to awaken to these deep insights.

Pursue breakthroughs over progress. -A friend & writing teacher

Art has a purpose which can be stated thus: it is meant to teach us how to be wise, self-aware, kind and reconciled to the darkest aspects of reality. - Alain de Botton

But it takes times. So much time. So much patience and faith and community and discipline. Pursuing the change quotient can get very heavy.

At some point, in the depths of an enduring writing/artistic practice, one realizes feeling safe and faithful in this process IS the work.

Sarah Selecky again…

Our practice reminds us that we are safe, through all the reckless creative moves, stumbles, and pitfalls.
We can stretch ourselves, use our tools in new ways, read weirdly and widely, and try new things, because we trust that craft is the container that holds the magic.
The magic itself is not our responsibility.
Provide the structure, show up with presence and put true words onto the page— those are our responsibilities.
Knowing our craft is how we respect the magic.

It’s the writing cave that tells me to keep treading into the unknown, torch in hand. Stay all ears, all eyes open. All senses heightened. Whose got my back? The craft and discipline of writing. Yell “Marco” out into the void and listen for “Pollo” to come back at me. Listen deeply. Stop shouting Marco, Marco, Marco. Listen for Pollo. Listen.

The writing cave anchors the writer. In the writing cave, the conditions for listening are stabilized. Thank you writing cave :)

There’s one small thought (or maybe not so small thought) I’d like to share about my 10-year journey researching & writing about my family’s experience living under a fascist dictatorship in Italy….and the American election next week.

Among the many books I’ve read on Mussolini & Fascism, the most moving experience I’ve had was visiting a museum in Sicily. I think it made it more real for me. Here’s one of the many photos I took at the museum.

I do have political beliefs, and I do certainly want to sound like I know everything, but I don’t. All I know for sure is that it’s been very painful and surprising to read about the rise of Fascism in Italy, while knowing how it effected my family, and in paradoxical ways. Somewhere in there I learned about a very natural human longing for an authority figure to “save us.” How deeply we’re webbed into that. It’s what are institutions are built on. We need a leader figure. We need someone to believe in. Particularly when we’re despairing.

During the course of my research, a historian presented this announcement in the Corriere della Sera newspaper, dated November 3, 1936:

When do you write a letter to Mussolini? Not always but at occasions during difficult times in your life, when you’re looking around and don’t know who to turn to anymore, you remember “he” is there, who but him can help you. The Duce knows that when you write to him it is out of genuine sorrow or real need. He is a confident of everyone as far as he can. He will help everyone. And where is Il Duce? He is anywhere, he’s even, have you not felt it, in that gloomy little room downstairs where you poor thing are writing of your sufferings. Have you not felt that he was listening to you?

It’s been haunting me ever since I came across it.

In the writing cave, it keeps coming up.

I know members of my family wrote letters to Mussolini believing he’d save their life in some way. I think I would believe in “him” too if it meant thinking he’s the one who has the power to change my life when I’m losing hope. Particularly when there’s been a series of events that have injected a feeling of divinity and providence around his power.

You see, it was also exactly 100 years ago that Mussolini was nearly assassinated. The bullet grazed him, as it did for Trump. Exactly 100 years ago. And, like Trump, Mussolini wore a bandage to show everyone, God saved him for YOU.

What would have happened if the bullet killed Mussolini back in 1924? We don’t really know. But we do know that Hitler was a student of Mussolini, and in 1924, Hitler was studying Mussolini very closely.

I’d like to add the female dimension to the story if I may…you likely don’t know that the person who nearly killed Mussolini was a woman.

And you know what Mussolini did when he learned it was a woman?

He laughed.

Thanks for reading. And if you’ve been writing or making art this week, Eddie Rabbitt (and his chest hair) wants to say….Keep on treading the horizon. Your “yes” to making something new, reflective and tender is contagious. We need it.