Welcome. If you haven't got coffee or cookies, you should. They're not going to last forever. My name's Benjamin Perryman and I'm one of the shuluk. I can't hear me. Even with my lecture voice, you can't hear me at the back. I can use the mic, but then I can't wander around. Can you hear me at the back? No? Okay. Is that better? Okay. That's unfortunate. Yeah, tethered to the mic. I'm one of the shuluk fellows here at the shuluk school of law and I teach contract law here. And I'm also a doctoral candidate at Yale Law School where I'm studying happiness and constitutional law, which is the subject of my talk tonight. It's a pleasure to be here and I'm happy to see so many friendly faces in the audience. I'm going to talk tonight for about 45 minutes and then leave 45 minutes for questions afterward. You're here for the talk. I'm here for the questions, primarily. And so I hope to pique your interest enough to provoke some conversation after the talk. But before I proceed, I just want to give a disclaimer. My research is quite multidisciplinary. It touches on philosophy, economics, psychology, neuroscience. I'm not any of these things. There's a good chance that there's people in the audience that know way more about these topics than me and I would encourage you to interject or save your questions till the end to keep me honest or to push back if you think I've gone too far. But regardless of your background, it should be obvious as I go through my talk that I'm quite interested in your subjective perspective on happiness that I think that's very important. And so I would encourage you, though I'm not going to employ the Socratic Method, to share that in the conversation that follows. So my talk is going to proceed in three parts. The first part is a discussion about the purpose of law, quite abstract. The second part will be an explanation of what some have called the science of happiness. This is this emerging body of social science research out of the fields I just mentioned. And then the last part is going to be a discussion of how we might take this information from the science of happiness and apply it to constitutional cases. So my ultimate claim tonight and what I'll argue is that the fundamental purpose of law is to create the type of society that we want to live in. And from my perspective, that type of society is a happy society. It's a society where the needs and aspirations of all persons find recognition and protection in the law, especially those persons who are most marginalized. And if that's correct, then this emerging research on what makes humans happy or unhappy ought to be incorporated into legal decision-making. So part one, what is the purpose of law? This might seem like an easy question to answer. It's not. Much ink spilled on this question. But I just want to start with this guiding legal maxim around which I think there is wide support. That all law is created for the benefit of human beings. There's been some expansion of this idea recently to include other sentient beings, but I think it still holds that the purpose of law is for the benefit of human beings. It's created by human beings for human beings. How do we know then whether or not the law is actually achieving this benefit? So what I'd like to give is a very selective and one-slide rendition of 225 years of legal thought. Because this notion that happiness and law are linked or ought to be linked is not new. And if you go back in time to the late 18th century, you'll find thinkers that thought the two concepts were closely linked. The first person I'll go to is this fellow named Jeremy Bentham who's a bit of an odd duck. He was a lawyer and he's one of the most influential legal theorists of our time. But he didn't want to be a lawyer. He was dragged, kicking and screaming into the law by his father.  Throughout his career he was not a successful lawyer but he was a successful legal thinker. And his concern or his hate for law and lawyers was that we have a tendency to use words, symbols, and have the ability to move them around to suit our client's interests in ways that might not comport with justice but can be very convincing to the right ears. He called this the tyranny of words. And his concern was that a lot of words lawyers use are not actually for the benefit of all humans but are in fact for the benefit of their clients to the detriment of others. He developed this idea that we should have some type of metric to know when a law is for the benefit of the general public and when it is not and he keyed in on these notions of pleasure and pain that he says nature has placed humankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure and argued that we should evaluate laws and their benefit on their ability to maximize pleasure for the greatest number of people and minimize pain. Around the same time the Declaration of Independence in the US was signed and it said that all men are created equal, they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This led Jefferson to say from his perspective, the only orthodox object of the institution of government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to the general mass of those associated under it. And yet 225 years later this is not how we think of government nor how we generally think of law. But this idea that happiness is linked to law hasn't completely disappeared. And what I found interesting in reading Pierre Elliott Trudeau's memoirs is what he thought the purpose of constitutional law was. In talking about the Charter he said the subject of law must be the individual human being. The law must permit the individual to fulfill himself or herself to the utmost. That was what Pierre Trudeau thought the Charter was supposed to do. That's not where legal thought has gone. So I would submit that the two main objectives in Canadian law, if we were to look for some theory that ties Canadian cases together, it's two objectives, wealth maximization and human rights. And that some combination of these two objectives is what most Canadian lingo thinkers would tell you amounts to justice. The wealth maximization part takes off in conjunction with our move to capitalism, to global capitalism. It comes as part of this rejection of Bentham's work that we have no ability to actually measure what makes people happy until recently. And so we should be looking for something else to quantify the benefit. And that something else is wealth. At the same time in the post-World War II environment, both domestically and internationally, we see the spread of human rights. And while there may be some pushback to wealth maximization today, human rights are almost sacrosanct. Come in, there are seats back there, down here, grab a coffee, grab a cookie. I don't have a problem of either wealth maximization or human rights as goals of the legal system. I think they are both worthy goals. My complaint or my critique tonight is how law is interpreted and applied in the name of wealth and human rights. So one of these tensions that we always have is should we evaluate the law based on how it's written or how it's interpreted, applied and experienced? Some will say that you should evaluate law as it's written, that you need not be concerned with its interpretation and application, that we try to get the law as good as it can be and that we're not concerned necessarily with the interpretation or application process. I tend to fall into this second camp that you can't evaluate law without also asking what is the economic, political and social environment in which law operates? What might be a good law on paper can be a bad law in practice, both from the perspective of whether it actually achieves what it's intended to do and from the perspective of whether it has unintended consequences on certain elements of society. There's been this push recently within the legal industry at least to expand access to justice. It's a reality that most Canadians cannot afford and have no access to a lawyer unless you're exceptionally wealthy or exceptionally poor. But if you ask people what access to justice means to them, many people will respond that it's something more than getting into court. It's not just that you have a day in court to make your point. It's about whether or not the law creates this type of society in which we want to live. Part of the reason why it often doesn't, especially for certain marginal groups, is something that Roberto Unger, who's a Brazilian now-politician former Harvard law prof, calls rationalizing legal analysis. His argument is that law as it's practiced by lawyers and law as it's taught in law schools has one main purpose and that purpose is to rationalize the status quo. The very essence of law is to inhibit change and is to find principled reasons to explain what currently exists without questioning whether or not there's some ideological structure already present in the law. This rationalization is in part a product of the fact that we use precedent in the common law system so we're bound by previous rules. It's also a product of the position that lawyers and judges believe they should hold in society, which is not necessarily as change agents. I would suggest a product of the character traits of the folks that go into law, some of whom are quite creative, others of whom are less so. What this means is that when the law changes, if the law changes and often it doesn't, the pace of change is glacial and the amount the law is prepared to move is minuscule. I think the last aspect of how do we evaluate law is this question of from whose eyes should we evaluate law? If we're going to say that law should be evaluated based on how it's interpreted and applied and experienced from whose perspective. So we used to believe with a straight face that law was not made through anybody's eyes, that it was in fact merely the inevitable conclusion of reason. This is obviously false and we now accept that common law judges make law and that lawyers participate in the making of law. Lord Reed of the United Kingdom Supreme Court once said, there was a time when it was thought almost indecent to suggest that judges make law. They only declare it. Those with a taste for fairy tales seem to have thought that in some Aladdin's cave there is hidden the common law in all its splendor and that on a judge's appointment there descends on him or her knowledge of the magic words open sesame. Bad decisions are given when the judge has muddled the password and the wrong door is open but we do not believe in fairy tales anymore. So we must accept the fact that for better or worse judges do make law and tackle the question how do they approach their task and how should they approach that task. And so this raises the question of when a judge is applying a law and who's perspective are they considering a right? From their perspective? From the people who created the Constitution's perspective? From Parliament's perspective? From the majority of society's perspective? From elites within society's perspective? From a minority group's perspective? Or often as many law students will tell you from this mythical, reasonable person's perspective? But what is reasonable and what is the correct perspective can mean different things to different people? And this quote stems out of after the riots in Ferguson it's an op-ed by the deans of Harvard Law School and Yale Law School who argue that law establishes legitimacy through procedures that are open and fair. Legal procedures create accountability for those who wield power but the important part we ought to determine the law's legitimacy at least in part from the perspective of those who suffer its coercion. And this is where my research attempts to come in or where the thinking that I'm doing attempts to come in which is if a judge wants to consider law from the perspective of those who suffer its coercion where are they going to get information that can help them with that process? Hold on to that thought as we flip to happiness. What is happiness? How is it measured? We seem to know it when we see it. This image brings a lot of happiness to me. I associate it with happiness. It might not for you but how can we measure that in a meaningful way such that we could provide useful information to a judge on the perspective of another group or person that he or she has no reference or knowledge of. There's three main ways that happiness has been conceived. Hedonism, the work by Aristotle and this notion of informed desire theory. There's others I'm skipping through them. The hedonistic conception is this I feel good idea right now. I'm quite pleased. I'm not suffering pain. I've got a lot of my family and friendly faces in this room and I feel pretty good. I just had a cookie. And I like cookies and so I'm happy. The second conception of happiness is more complex. Under this conception happiness is not even a moment-by-moment state. It's more of an end goal. It's an objective for life. It's this idea that when I look back at the end of my life I want to look back and say that I flourished, that I maximized what I was capable of but crucially that I did it in a virtuous way. And what's interesting to contrast from the first two is that the second one has this notion of externally derived definition of what is acceptable behavior to produce happiness. Whereas the hedonism one is just what happens to make you happy in the moment. The flourishing one comes with a constraint and that is that there is certain behavior that you should not derive happiness from. So the object is to flourish and be happy when you look back at your life but to do so with virtue. And then the last conception is this idea of informed desire theory where armed with full information and rational decision making you make a decision of what you want and you get it either in the short term or the long term. I don't spend, to be honest, too much time thinking about these conceptions in my work. I actually think that most people have some combination of the three. Some people will be more heavily weighted towards hedonism depending on their age or personality. Other people will be more interested in informed desire while other people will be more concerned with virtue and flourishing in the eyes of others. What's been fascinating about this research is that some of those conceptions fall away when you begin to ask people themselves what makes them happy. So rather than providing the definition, just asking them. This initially merges in the field of economics. So following Bentham, this idea of how do you measure utility or utility often substituting for happiness and economics developed this concept of decision utility that we measure utility by watching what people purchase and then if you're willing to spend $5 for that cookie it must have given you $5 of utility. This has been the dominant approach to measuring utility until very recently. This idea that people will reveal their preferences by their purchasing decisions. One of the problems with this approach is that people are not always rational. So there's many situations where people will do things that don't actually make them feel good and yet they're still buying the gambling ticket even though they have an addiction to gambling. So the revealed preference will say, that person derives $5 of utility from that purchase of the gambling ticket. In reality they're addicted to gambling and this is not good for them either in the short term or in the long term. So in the 1970s we get some pushback against decision utility and some proponents who say, maybe we should just ask people how happy they are rather than trying to use dollars to capture what they're feeling. This spawns this field called behavioral economics at least in part. Or I should say it's an extension of behavioral economics and occurs at the same time that this subfield of positive psychology is emerging which says we should examine the human mind based on the traits of happy people rather than the traits of unhappy people in its most simple form. From this we've developed three ways or three methods for measuring experienced utility all involve asking people to tell you how happy are you right now. So the first, the most original was life satisfaction surveys and these say just what that question says taken all together how do you say things are these days very happy, pretty happy or not too happy. You have a variety of ways of phrasing this question you can say rank it on a zero to ten basis you can ask them multiple questions we've been doing this for about 60 years I obviously haven't been doing this for 60 years but it's been done for 60 years in a variety of countries and we now have a pretty rich body of information on these surveys The problem is that it asks people to look backwards and look forwards in assessing how happy are you these days and the psychological literature tells us that people are notoriously bad at looking back and looking forward what they're actually good at doing is telling you how happy or content they are in the current moment and to get at this this experience sampling method was developed originally this was very expensive so it wasn't used very often and this would be you hang a portable electronic device around your neck and you say how happy are you now what are you doing, how happy are you now what are you doing and you would do this all day long I'm annoyed with this device right now more and more information is being gleaned this way so anybody that has a Fitbit or running app on their phone or any other variety of electronic information where it says how was that run today Ben was it awful, okay, really good and where were you running and for how long and then it also knows my age and my weight and where I was from this we're getting a rich body of data both privately and publicly of what makes people happy in particular moments and the third was a way that tried to split the two which was to ask people to reflect in a journal at the end of the day on what made them happy and I think the key thing to note is that the science of happiness then attempts to verify so how do I know that you're as happy as you say you are you could be lying or you could be misled and so they look for verification in a variety of ways so they'll ask third parties there's good information to suggest that intimate partners will say that Ben is, I would say Ben's a 7 right now that often corresponds with what the actual respondent will say so that's one the second is that with the advent of neurological imaging which wasn't around so prior to very recently people either had to lose part of their brain deliberately or by accident for us to discover what was going on so they lost that part of the brain and then we could say oh that part of the brain governs this task now with MRIs we can literally capture images of somebody's brain when they're receiving a reward buying a lottery ticket losing something any task that you can do within the machine I can get an image of what's going on in your brain so we can verify whether or not people's responses are consistent with brain activity to some degree and then the third way that these responses are checked is through physiological indicators so things that we might widely agree are indicators of happiness things like how often is the person smiling or how much are they smiling and the bottom line is that this research is getting pretty good at capturing people's expressed or experienced utility it doesn't yet allow us to compare to say well Ben's very happy is consistent with your very happy it doesn't answer a question like that but what it does allow us to do is we could take everybody in this room I could have done this I could have given you a clicker how happy are you right now depending on what other information you are willing to give me I could then do a statistical analysis on your income, on your sex, on your age and look to see if there's factors that are generally associated with your experienced utility some of the questions that this subjective well-being research attempts to get at are what factors are generally correlated with increases in subjective well-being the answers shouldn't shock you an adequate income a healthy body, a loving family these are the types of factors that generally hold across Canada and indeed around the world other types of questions that we could ask what events positively or negatively impact subjective well-being what is the magnitude and duration of that impact so we could try to test a particular event say a catastrophic injury or winning the lottery and then say how happy are you now you just want a million dollars and then every month I'm going to come back to you and ask you how happy are you now and see what we'd expect is that that million dollars would make somebody happier but does that last forever or does that disappear over a certain amount of time the fourth question is this idea of are we born happy or sad or can we change that over time are we stuck at a baseline of happiness or are there things that we can do to change our perspective on happiness in ways that will last and not dissipate over time I'm not going to get into this too much but there's an ongoing debate with people in both camps it does seem that there's some evidence that there's lots of evidence on the neuroplasticity of the brain which is its ability to reorganize and change over time to create new pathways and to reorganize the way it works and there's some initial evidence coming out on for example people that meditate regularly are able to change their brains in ways that are lasting whether or not that corresponds to long-term changes to their subjective well-being remains to be seen and then the final question is really the one that interests me most which is are there counter-intuitive insights that can be gained from subjective well-being research things that a judge wouldn't say a reasonable person would be aware of so if you were attempting to apply the law from the perspective of somebody else or from this perspective of the reasonable person are there things that you would miss because the way you think people operate is not actually how they operate so to give some examples or to give one example most people who suffer a catastrophic injury something like a paralyzation will return in not that long of a time period to the level of happiness that they were at pre-accident whereas most of us would think that would be the end of my world if I were to experience something like that or we would wait that level of loss very highly what actually seems to occur is a much lower impact on their subjective well-being and it seems that we often overestimate the positive impact we're going to get from something like winning the lottery and we overestimate the negative impact that we will experience from suffering an event this then has useful purposes for other areas of the law for example if I've injured you and paralyzed you this idea of pain and suffering damages that in the US has been multi-millions of dollars in Canada it's much less does this notion or could we take this actual information on how long the negative impact lasts as a way to quantify how much pain and suffering somebody's experienced my area is constitutional law so I'm mostly interested in how this area of research could be applied to constitutional cases I just want to start with three other peoples perspectives people that suffer a coercion of the law the first one comes from Desmond Cole's essay the skin I'm in I've been interrogated by police more than 50 times all because I'm black which appeared in the April edition of Toronto Life and he talks throughout the essay about his encounters with the police in Ontario and his experience of that and he says as my encounters with the police became more frequent I began to see every uniformed officer as a threat the cops stopped me anywhere they saw me particularly at night once as I was walking through the laneway behind my neighborhood pizza parlor two officers crept up on me and their cruiser don't move I whispered to myself struggling to stay calm as they got out of their vehicle when they asked me for identification I told them that was in my pocket before daring to reach for my wallet if they thought I had a weapon I was convinced that I'd end up beaten or worse I stood in the glare of the headlights trying to imagine how I might call for help if they attacked me so this is one person's perspective on how they experience the law in this case another this quote comes from the most recent person to receive assisted dying in Ontario and he says physician assisted death is a right of human dignity and I'm thankful I no longer have to live under a cloud of stigma and shame that I feel as I slowly and painfully lose control he goes on to say that his only regret is that he had to wage a court battle in his final months to fight for this right to die and he says my hope is that our government will see fit to make permanent changes in the law so that no other family will have to do this ever again and the last quote comes from somebody who's experienced chronic homelessness she says homelessness doesn't feel very good you feel frustrated and everything is totally useless because you have nothing more useless you feel more useless you become and it becomes an ongoing circle and what I'd like to suggest to you tonight is that the law can and should respond to these types of subjective experience and if you accept that the question is then how can the law respond my answer is that I think that the body of subjective well-being research that stems from the science of happiness could be used to create what I'd call an evidence-based constitutional law that is it provides a way to take people's subjective experience and apply it in courts in a way that's not arbitrary in at least three ways and I can give you the bottom line conclusion which is there's glimmers of hope in some areas and no movement whatsoever in some areas so there's three ways that we might see this information coming into a court process so the first is what does a particular constitutional right mean and this came up in the most recent case of Carter in Canada where the Supreme Court of Canada found the prohibition on physician assisted suicide as unconstitutional the court was asked or the application was that this prohibition violated people's rights to life, liberty and security of the person so this raises the question of what does a particular constitutional right mean what does the right to life, liberty and security of the person mean in dissent the Chief Justice of British Columbia said that he accepted the argument the right to life protects more than physical existence in his view the life interest is intimately connected to the way a person values his or her lived experience the point at which the meaning of life is lost when life's positive attributes are so diminished as to render life valueless is an intensely personal decision which everyone has the right to make for him or herself this is this idea that it's how each of you determine your own happiness that should receive recognition and protection in the law this part at least is completely rejected by the Supreme Court of Canada but what they do say is that there is protection to be found in the liberty and security of the person prong of section 7 of the charter and they get there by saying that what underscores liberty and security of the person is this notion of dignity and autonomy to which if you were bent them you would say you've just replaced two words with two more words which is his whole point is you've used two words to replace two other words have you really moved the ball down the field at all I would say yes they have if you then look at how do we understand the contour of human dignity one way to understand dignity is by resorting to the science of happiness research and by saying can this research help us measure what impacts dignity can we use these processes to measure dignity can we measure the change in somebody's well-being when they're in a situation where they don't know how they're going to die versus when they have control over how they're going to die is this a question to which we can answer whether or not that has a positive impact I think it is one that we can so I think that there is space there to take this social science evidence and use it to help the court define what means in particular circumstances the second place where this might arise is how do you know that you've got the most appropriate constitutional standard or test or that it's set at the right level and here I have to say I am a little bit discouraged so if you were to look at the experience of carding or stopping frisk that has been going on in the US I think there's lots of evidence to suggest that repeat minor stresses result in a commutative negative impact on people's well-being that we wouldn't normally think might occur so if you were to say I would be annoyed if the police stopped me once or twice this week doesn't answer the question of what you would feel if you were stopped 50 times in one year but this science of happiness research could answer that question in a way that is not arbitrary so rather than having one person say I'm really bothered by this experience you could actually say this is a normal way that human beings respond and it has a significant harm only Ontario has implemented protection for carding we don't know how it's going to work yet we do know that the police are going to be required to provide explanations to the people that are stopped they're going to be required to tell them that they do not have to provide their IDs they don't have to participate with them and that they can walk away they're going to be required to maintain statistics on their stops based on sex, age, race and neighborhood and to report on those statistics but what's distressing I think to me so this is a good first step I would suggest but what's distressing is that the public safety minister has said quote this is about building safer communities and I don't think anybody can put a cost or price point on that very important fundamental value of our society my problem with that is that ignores this sentiment it ignores this expression of somebody else's how they conceive of their well-being and it ignores this negative impact it turns it into a safety question rather than a question of whether or not the law is actually recognizing and protecting this person and then the final area not to end on an unhappy note but I will is this idea of determining what is a reasonable limitation of a right in a free and democratic society so as you may or may not know section one of the charter allows the government to provide a justification for a breach of somebody's rights where they can show that it's a reasonable limitation of a right in a free and democratic society and that's usually a three part test where they have to show that their law is connected with its purpose that it limits your rights to the most minimal amount that it can and that it's not a grossly disproportionate in the circumstances so I think here is another place where we might be able to actually say look we have a way to measure the negative impact or the positive impact of this law you ought to take that into consideration at least for cases like homelessness and essentially every attempt to incorporate some response to poverty those have all failed and being ignored so we see movement in some areas such as the right to die where we're using notions of well being to define what dignity means and in other areas we're not quite prepared yet to recognize people subjected to experience so I think I'll stop there and happily answer questions or criticisms maybe I will use the sporadic method yep at the back well maybe I can fix things off but starting with your major press will you get the idea that this research is scientific what's I think I said it was a social science for one so your question is how reliable is this information saying is that it's not a science and the information since it's not a science I take it you're trying to ultimately look at a situation where the results of this kind of research somehow or other can be applied to the application of the law correct okay and I guess what I'm saying first of all it's not scientific and secondly it's too broad and it would be really dangerous if you tried to listen to interpreting the law and find it so in response I would say we don't use science very much in the law when we attempt to apply concepts like the reasonable person the question is is this better than what we currently do so if you're a judge on the bench and you're attempting to say this is what the reasonable person would think this is what the reasonable person would believe this is what the reasonable person would do now this is what the law is there's no science in that determination or my attempt is can we use social science to actually understand how the people that are most affected by the law think, feel, act respond and if that information is accurate I see no reason why it cannot at least be part of the adjudication process otherwise what you're left with is nine usually white, usually old judges saying this is what the law is there's no science in that process there's no reference to other groups of people who are the people that experience the coercion of law it's just what those nine think and so if you're satisfied with constructing a legal system in a way that has nine people tell you what the law is from their perspective then we don't need to change anything that's what we currently do but if you want something more if you want to say you actually have to be able to tell me why that why this action is reasonable justified in a free and democratic society then I don't think it's unreasonable to take into consideration what we might have on how people experience the law a lot of similar you seem to be suggesting that adding science to law would create improvements and would be somehow contributing to happiness but I'm wondering if at the same time would we produce oppression and deny people their subjective happiness so particularly assessing people's claims financial rewards or compensation and perhaps creating an equation based on the science and thinking of things like residential schools and so whether or not the science itself could be oppressive by denying somebody the right to say that their their rights or happiness has been trampled on by the law in some way and that's unjust regardless of whether or not the science would actually support them there's a real the weak point or danger that's there and I agree with you is that you have to belong to a group of a certain size before there can be any information there to validate your experience that already is how the law functions if you come and you say I have this unique experience they will say but a reasonable person would not think or act that way so I think it does give some space to protect people but you're right I mean it does run the risk that if you're the first person to profess you might lose it goes back to what you said earlier in your introduction as the law being a mechanism for supporting the status quo right and so if you bring science into it as well as being a way of reinforcing the status quo I guess the two together could in some ways conspire to deny people their subjectivity happiness is really so this is probably a part where I would part ways because I think what happens currently is that if you come with that unique perspective you lose that's the end of the court case if you come armed with some amount of evidence to suggest that you belong to a group and that your perception is reasonable then you might win and I can give you a concrete example it's one I often use with people and that's of battered spouse syndrome so if you've killed your spouse in self defense the test for self defense is that you have to have an imminent risk of grievous harm or death from whose perspective do you judge that the leading case struggled because the test is normally the reasonable person and this person is saying but I perceive the threat in a different way because of my circumstances and you're absolutely right that if it's the first person with nothing else that makes that argument he or she loses however at some point with enough evidence you can say actually my response is consistent with other people's responses not everyone but enough people that I demand recognition and a legal change and at that point you might get it I don't it does mean that you have to always have some measure statistical significance in order to have an argument be weighted it does mean that you will have to belong to a group of a certain size yes before there's going to be some kind of legal bias support those people currently lose in Canadian court cases on a regular basis does this body need to validate my I think that then is a question of circumstances so it's a relatively easy case and this is the first 30 years of charter jurisprudence that I think we've gone through of where there's no battle between two people's rights it's just one person's right and you're attempting to fulfill as Elliot Trudeau said that person's right to the utmost that changes when we start to get into a situation of clashing rights which has happened more recently and at that point you do need some mechanism to say the general public's safety of not having squeegee people on the street it's their right to ask for money or their speech rights and it's at that point that I think this notion of the individual goes out the window completely I think those are the tough constitutional cases are ones that pit groups or the public as against other groups or specific groups it's not a difficult case from my perspective if there's no clash at that point then you try to maximize the right as much as you can it's what happens when there is some clash so yeah, that's the heckling section my question is about the difference between dignity and happiness these happiness is not a word of a charter nor is dignity but the courts have moved to read in this idea of dignity and the interpretation of different kinds of rights, equality rights so from your analysis of happiness you've chosen happiness as the concept that we think is the driving force what's the additional does this concept of happiness have to the existing concept of dignity that we already sort of are beginning to embrace as a way to measure right so I guess my where I'd like to see this go in the future is are there aspects of dignity that are as counter-intuitive as what the subjective well-being research has shown because I think what has been really interesting about the happiness research is that we all think humans respond one way but in actuality that's not how we respond so my curiosity is dignity like that can I say with the sufficiency required in law which is not scientific by any means but can I say that I'm certain that that person's dignity has been diminished or enhanced how long does that impact have to last do you have to say is it really annoyed by the police in the moment does it have to be a last a week does it have to last two weeks four weeks where does that how do you know that the person's dignity has been impacted enough to amount to a constitutional violation and I think for that it might be possible to use some of these methodologies to actually unpack what dignity means or if you get somebody who says my dignity looks different than your dignity then you're in a situation of whose dignity reigns at that point the majority's conception of dignity or somebody else's conception of dignity yep what I'm taking from this is that we're looking for a law to be more of or at least the implementation of law to be more of a process here is a long going conversation with almost no absolute and that if we if we accept that that for example dignity is an important legal concept and you accept that dignity means one thing for this person one thing for me and one thing for this person and that's all going to change over time then you're looking for judges to be hosts of conversations as opposed to absolute decision right it's this notion of procedural justice that what people want is and what I would like to see is actual consideration of a group's experience and either acceptance or rejection based on transparent and clear reasoning which is not necessarily something that we currently do yep why happiness and why not the stress because it seems to me that all the examples you've given are people who are under some sort of distress and as a sociologist and as engaged in some of this kind of research I think trying to measure the stress would probably be easier than trying to measure something as abstract as happiness right so some of it is governed by what if you want to do longitudinal research as you know you're governed by the questions that people have asked for the past 60 years so you're stuck with this notion of life satisfaction even if you personally would choose to rephrase the question but I think the other thing comes from the fact that I do comparative constitutional research and if you go to other countries you get this real notion that the purpose of the rights or the constitution is to build something it's not just to prevent distress it's bigger than that it's to build the type of society that we want to live in it has a dual function of enhancing and preventing the diminishment of or stress as you put it so I think the stress probably makes more sense or distress makes more sense from a Canadian context what might not make as much sense from a South African context and that's probably why I've looked for something that can explain both this positive aspect of a constitution as well as its negative protections or its negative rights yeah yes what is the difference between your argument and just expanding what we already protect or may come to protect as positive rights under say section 7 so what's the difference between your argument and just making section 7 incrementally bigger as we have done over the last 30 plus years do you want to tell me your second question too sure this is a boring one it's just practical about what the evidence would look like in a case that is applying more theory so would you have the happiness researcher provide an affidavit and be told by an expert or would you have the individual provide evidence of their own subjective well-being right so I'll answer your second question first and that's that when you look at constitutional litigation in this country you've seen a massive expansion of the record in ways that if you were just to go back you know even 15 years to say is somebody's security to the person engaged when their child's at risk of seizure by children's services it was a three paragraph affidavit and the court accepts that as sufficient evidence that yes somebody's psychology is impacted by the threat of their kids being seized if you fast forward currently the cases that win usually have 10 to 20 volumes of evidence in them good or bad so I would say you never want the individual applicant's voice removed their message should still be there but the struggle then is is this an arbitrary response that this person's complaining about or is this a non arbitrary response are you asking for constitutional law to be shaped as this person saying in a unique way or are you saying that there's more to it than that because if it's just a unique way and there's a really good public policy objective for the infringement then you're probably gonna lose so I think I think the practical answer to your question is that there would need to be expert evidence what we currently do is we ask third parties to provide that perspective doctors sociologists psychologists my complaint is that that then takes so my infringement only gets recognition if the doctor says so not if I say so not if 10 people like me say so or a thousand people like me say so it only gets recognition if this other professional mediates that message I think that's part of what I'm trying to respond to as far as the difference between positive versus negative rights it could really go both ways so you say that adding more section 7 rights wouldn't do so we have the right to die we don't yet have a right to a basic income right how could your theory work I think you want life liberty and security of the person to capture the thing the needs and aspirations that are most important to Canadians and if there are certain components that it's not capturing then it ought to that doesn't necessarily mean that they win but it has this process-based conversation where you can then begin to say is the infringement justified is the rational connection is their minimal impairment is it proportionate to the infringement that's taking place right now what happens is we say we don't even want to engage with whether or not your homelessness leads to stress which leads to early death we don't even want to hear anything about that and so we're not prepared to even have this transparent conversation about yes we accept that this social structure means you'll die early but that's okay because we live in a free and democratic society and that's justified instead we plug our ears and ignore essentially yes and that actually matters to people so there's been some really interesting so most of what I talked about tonight is about happiness and how you currently feel in response to events there's been some very interesting research on procedural justice and happiness that people actually will accept results if they feel that the process was fair has nothing to do with the results so there may be ways that you could actually orchestrate some things that we're already doing without changing that it's taking place so the police can stop you but they have to say I'm stopping you because here's the explanation and here's a card saying it and maybe that changes somebody's response but questions yep yep I can see how in some cases it's a view of this sort of bigger social context but I think it can become problematic where you have it only so you have wonder of saying I'm unhappy because my religious rights are being infringed because I have to pay for great control for women I don't believe that we should do that so I think it can have these perverse effects if you only focus on that do you think that that's something you use thought mode? was with you right up until the very end of your question I think if you look at section 15 maybe it's used in different ways it's not always a good thing right so it's sometimes problematic and I think that if using it with this idea of happy it sort of takes out the social context where it has the possibility to do so sort of go back to the initial question about whether or not or even science sort of so I don't think that happiness is the be all and end all I'm not saying that you can reduce the charter to one section everyone has the right to be happy and leave it at that it's really interesting to this somewhat avoids your question but from a comparative perspective so the German constitution has a right to dignity in it you only get to use it if what you're complaining about is not captured by another right so a concrete right if what you're complaining about is not captured then you can go to dignity but I know if it removes the social context as a way as provides a way to have a conversation about what the actual interests are in a given court case and why they are important and why a judge might understand why they're so important to one particular group because he or she has never come close to that person's shoes in their entire life so we haven't had a section 15 clash yet yet they'll probably change the test when that comes for the fourth or fifth time we also want to ask about dignity we're going to take a long way together okay I guess it's going to be maybe we should be skeptical that research about subjective well-being can sell some of the most important questions about how we understand the idea of dignity but I guess I want to take you back to the slide where you're talking about the big conception of happiness it would yeah so the one that kind of pops out is that there's the feeling of conception of happiness it would conception of happiness is where happiness is not really about how I feel it's about perfectly objective facts about how I'm like-minded and so that's something that I think it's not really ever going to be captured by MRIs or any kind of social psychological subjective well-being research right and yet that's like a really powerful norm of tradition that important things are thinking about really really thick normative concepts like dignity now so that there's at least some people in some contexts who think when you think about dignity it's nothing about how I feel or it's nothing about how most people feel and it's nothing about what's happening in my brain it's about facts about my life and if that's the case and if those sorts of disputes are at issue in a case like Carter and I don't know if they are in different ways of thinking about dignity in that way then I guess like how much how much mustard is caught by lots and lots of research about subjective well-being yeah okay so I think the thing I like about this is it displays the philosophers not to pick on you but love for intuition and belief that the facts about my life can be discerned in an objective way that says those facts about my life are indeed the facts about my life and that somehow at death's door you'll be able to look back and say the facts about my life are this and those are concrete and you get it right or you don't and so the question then is still how do we get even if I were to accept what you're saying how do we get from the blackboard down to the judge who has to say whether that person's dignity has been infringed by this law now we don't have the facts of life at the end of their life yet so I have to determine whether or not that person's dignity has been infringed and I'm not in their shoes so I'm looking for I rely on my intuition which has been a disaster for some groups in Canadian law to have judges rely on my intuition of the facts about life because it completely ignores this other group or you can say is there other information that might be of use to me and it's not perfect and does it mean that it's going to spell out dignity with the clarity we might like the answer is probably no but is it better than the judge operating without that information and I think the answer is yes for that and to win the argument we have to go for I'm not going to say this on camera we have to go for more beers but all I have to do is do better than what the current judicial process is to be happy Do you have any thoughts on the concept of certainty in the law and the value of certainty for society and is there a danger to your approach in terms as opposed to looking at things from the reasonable person standard as to what everybody can expect the outcome of the law will be as opposed to looking at the subjective happiness approach of how will this make how will this make me feel or how will this affect the feelings of the person it definitely has a negative impact on certainty so I would say that if you can predict how a constitutional case is going to be decided in Canada with certainty then I have cookie for you because that area of the law at least does not seem to be rich with certainty other areas maybe so and maybe it's not a useful tool in all areas of the law but there's lots of places where the law attempts to employ a reasonable standard with certainty that's pulled from one person's perspective with no justification of why this other person's perspective is used and yeah that creates certainty to say that person's perspective governs that's what the reasonable person standard is but it doesn't answer the question of whether or not why we've picked that person's perspective and whether or not we've picked the right reasonable person's perspective a certain type of person goes to law school and we have certain values in our legal system that came to my mind with certainty predictability, stability, tradition even right so your theory I think has to acknowledge that it's upending a lot of the bed rocks of our common law system I acknowledge that I'm attempting to upend a lot of the bed rocks of our system and I love to talk through these doors like we like the roads we like the common circumstance of it all we have time for maybe one more question you've also been arguing that not just a legal system has to walk the path but the whole political government system has to walk the path so we have to act in right law which is a political dust and a lot of legal dust in a way that takes into account the increasing pluralism and the increasing difference of understanding of well-being yeah I think that the legislature needs to consider the impacts of its law and a wide variety of groups and it needs to show the monster really that it has considered those impacts and why it's chosen to reject and I think this has real benefits for pluralism pluralism doesn't mean that everyone gets to win necessarily but I think what we're seeing is a variety of groups in Canada and around the world that don't feel like their perspective is being heard before it's being rejected and that's leading to some very dangerous circumstances in some places I think on that I'll just end and thank you so much for joining me tonight


Thank you for joining us for our program at Mechanics Institute online for Divine Madness a novel by Lynn Kaufman. Lynn will be in conversation with poets with poets Allison Lutterman and David Watts. I'm Laura Shepherd, director of events at the Mechanics Institute. Tonight we are proud to co-sponsor our program with the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning. For those of you who are new to the Mechanics Institute we were founded in 1854, and we are one of San Francisco's most vital literary and cultural centers in the heart of the city. Here are General Interest Library on the second and third floor, an international chess club renowned to all, and our ongoing literary programs and author events, and the Friday night cinema with film series. You can see us online at milibrary.org, and also visit the website and also come down for a tour of our incredibly beautiful of Beaux Arts building. There are both virtual tours and live tours on Wednesday, and you can find that information on our website. The book will be followed by Q&A with you the audience, and we'd like to mention that books will be on sale and if you'd like to purchase a book, we'll put Lynn Kaufman's email in the chat and you can be in touch with her directly. So I'd like to introduce our program. Divine Madness. This is Robert Lowell, the sixth poet laureate of the United States, and Lizzie is Elizabeth Hardwick, a writer and critic whose true life partnership with Lowell was marked by his mental illness and desertion. Yet award winning playwright Lynn Kaufman's spare poetic novel is far deeper, much deeper than a harrowing account of a famously unhappy marriage. The fictional manuscript touches on Lizzie's friendships with Mary McCarthy and Hannah Arendt, her memoirs of the civil rights movement, and her southern childhood and more. In this novel Kaufman has composed an intriguing elegy combining fiction, reality, and writerly personas. And now a little bit about our speakers. Lynn Kaufman is the author of 20 full length prize winning plays produced nationally at such venues as the Magic Theater, Actors Theater of Louisville, Theatre Works Silicon Valley, The Fountain Theater in Los Angeles and the Abbington Theater in New York City. Most recently, she has three plays produced at the, at the Marsh Theater, including as a test two minds, and who killed Sylvia Plath. Her solo play who killed Sylvia Plath starring Laurie Halt had a six week week run at both the Marsh in San Francisco and also the Marsh in Berkeley, and it's a wonderful show. It also won first place in best show of the Marsh's international solo play festival. She also teaches at the from Institute, and also at Ali San Francisco stage. Alison Lutterman's four books of poetry are the largest possible life. See how we almost fly. The desire zoo, and in the time of great fires, her poems and stories have appeared in the New York Times Sunday magazine, the sun, rattle, Nimrod salon, prairie schooner, the Brooklyn review, the Atlanta review, her two highway and also in numerous journals and anthologies. She has written an ebook of personal essays, half a dozen plays lyrics for a song cycle, we are not afraid of the dark, and is currently working on two different musical theater projects. And David Watts is literary credits include seven books of poetry, three collections of short stories, two mystery novels, eight Western novels, a Christmas memoir and some essays on humanism in medicine. He is a musician, a classically trained musician, and the past national radio TV personality is currently teaching the allure of haiku at the from Institute, where he has taught poetry for over 35 years. So please welcome our guests are our guests of many letters and genres. Welcome to Lynn, David and Alison. It's a pleasure to have you with us tonight. Thank you. Yes, indeed. Thank you and thanks for putting on this event, which looks to be very interesting. So then I think you and I are to gauge in a little bit of conversation. And obviously it's over this wonderful book that you have written. I must say I didn't know what to expect when reading the book. I was delighted immediately by the style of your writing the Christmas as you approached your topic. The literary references that you gave along the way. It's a very elegant, interesting, quirky Lee written diary ask book that I must say I enjoyed greatly. And my first question to you is, what is it that attracted you to this particular subject to the subject. I wrote a play about Sylvia Plath, which Laura mentioned and did a lot of why was I drawn to Sylvia Plath because incredibly iconic, you know, the troubled writer who and she took her own life at the age of 30. And I was intrigued by, I guess by her life, and by the fact that when she was in crisis when her husband left her, and there's two babies to take care of, that's when she wrote her best poetry. And so, you know, in extremis I was drawn to Sylvia, investigated all that we did it as a play. And then as I was researching, I read that Sylvia Plath had taken a poetry class with Robert Lowell. And at the same time and sextum was taking it. And the three of them, Robert Lowell, Sylvia and and shared this kind of manic depressive bipolar illness and used it to inform their poetry. And so, you know, way leads to way, I started reading about Robert Lowell. And through reading about him, I discovered Elizabeth Hardwick, she's not nearly as well known as Lowell. I got deeply interested in her and I wrote a short play called Divine Madness about Lowell and Hardwick. And we did that on Zoom, 35 minutes, and I wasn't ready to leave particularly Elizabeth Hardwick. So, I, I wrote this novel I wanted her she was so discreet. Lowell was all over the place telling, you know, revealing everything about his marriage and leaving his wife or the other woman in the dolphin. Elizabeth kept her own piece about it. And I wanted wanted to hear what Elizabeth really felt during this period of time and I wanted to know her as a writer she's an exquisite writer. And so that's, and then the only other thing I was going to add to that is this wonderful quote from Shakespeare Midsummer Night's Dream. It's the lunatic, the lover, and the poet are all of imagination are our imagination all compact, the lunatic, the lover, and the poet. This, the lover certainly was Elizabeth she loved him from the time she met him through through his early death, never forgot him. So and the lunatic and the poet. Yeah, you could say in a sense that was Robert Lowell. Yeah, it looks like all three of those are present and Robert Lowell. And it's interesting that all three of those that you mentioned that were in this tight group of very highly productive poets and writers at that time, had a little bit of something going on in their cerebral space. That wasn't quite what the rest of their society would expect is normal. And it brought it brings up I think you touched on this subject somewhere along the way is contentment, the end of the enemy of the poet. Does one have to be in an uncontented state and order to reach into the depths of the consciousness and come up with creativity what do you think. Well, if I were really content I wouldn't write. I don't think I would. Because it calls up so much stuff. You know, so I think a sense of content and I would, I would think they would not be as obsessed with having to express what's going on inside. And you and Allison of course you're incredibly prolific and poets I don't write poetry, but I honestly, there's no other way to know how I really feel about something. I'm using both, you know, the analytic and the intuitive and and what's going on around me. Except, you know, for writing it seemed to me if I were content. I would just want to watch a series on TV, you know which I'm watching anyway, you know during during coven. Yeah, and be out in nature I mean it. It's a wonderful thing to write but it's also torturous. So, no I think, well the big issue is is, and we'll come to that maybe when in the discussion afterwards about the really excessive swings that certain poets have. And I've only read about this but I know a little. I felt a little bit of it when suddenly you're in an altered state. And that can be reached, I guess, mentally or by anguish you know it can be reached by drugs by alcohol so many writers have used those those substances to sort of get out of the ordinary or as you just called it the content. You know, but you know it's interesting because, and I did a little study of this. If you look at the personalities of different writers, you will find that both playwrights and poets end up with the personality most likely to have depression and anxiety. Not to say that all of us do, but that's an interesting observation and it makes me think about. A little study of brain functions on my own self in the process of writing trying to access the unconscious where I believe a lot of the creativity comes. You have to shut down your daytime mode of thinking in order to get into the unconscious mode. And that requires shaking off that sort of linear mathematical approach of daytime living where we go from one thing to another we have a schedule we balance our checkbook all that sort of thing by a portion of the brain that is has a sort of a sergeant major kind of attitude toward getting things done, but it's humorless and it's not creative. And so, to get creative one has to shut down that brain and open up the other side, which gets into what's called the default network more deeply connected with the deeper levels of consciousness. And I think that they who have so called disorders psychiatric disorders, move in and out of those zones with deafness from time to time. Absolutely. It's interesting that you put playwrights and bullets together. Now I'm basically a playwright have done much more work in the theater than than I have. I did three novels before which were pretty traditional novels that were published that was about in 2004 2005 I stopped writing novels, and it was only the fact that this play so drew me, and that the form of the unconventional, you know it's not a traditional novel at all. And when you mentioned, you know it's fragments fragments moments in, in their lives and their shared lives. And I'm wondering if plays to are not, they're not linear narratives, you know, like many, there are novels that are more experimental and not linear move dream like you know but they're not many. Most of them are are narrative and and sort of move forward in a logical time, logical traditional thought. So it's interesting David because I hadn't heard the two together I knew it about poets. But I didn't know. I wish I knew that before maybe I would have just written the whole. So I noticed that your style of writing was very interesting. You, you mentioned the word fragments a minute ago. You have chapters that are three lines long. And then you have chapters that run for two or three pages. So it has a very spontaneous feel to it, a very almost associative thinking process that moves through from vignette to vignette to vignette.  But I think it also brings up that issue of form and content, right. I always say in poetry that the form has to match the content. So if the content indicates a certain style of writing. It changes your way in which you approach it, not just in terms of the way you address the topic, but the form that you put it on the page. Yes, do you think that's right. I do and I attribute. I mean that's how I wrote it mostly and I attribute the layout to my publisher who is kind of extraordinary. She runs the press called tailwinds press. She's also a Wall Street Yale educated lawyer. She works out of both, you know, both sides of her brain. And she laid out the text and in fact there's one moment where I did not do this but it works beautifully. Elizabeth in the novel is haranguing very angry cow at Robert Lowell for using her letters or personal English letters during the divorce that he just lifted them paraphrase them put them in this book of poetry called the dolphin and want to pull this for it and you know and then so he's having this dialogue with her and he says, you know, if I had asked you you should have asked me she said you should have asked me before you use the, and he said well if I had asked you would you have said yes. And then surround my my publisher made a whole new chapter that just says Lizzie, and it says of course not. This is, you know, it almost has this sense of a play. And I guess, yeah, yeah, that that I hadn't thought of it as poetry but you know, but the connection between the way a poem sits on the page. Yeah, it does feel like poetry actually it. I wanted to also to talk about the relationship between these two. It's a fascinating relationship. Cal did everything wrong.  He got crazy. He became violent. He opted he co opted her letters and turned them into a bullet surprise winning collection. He stuck with him. And then you figure what in heaven's name, allowed her to put up with that kind of behavior she got to where she could actually notice the beginnings of his falling apart right he will become a little more animated. He become a little bit more the way in which he spoke, his pace picked up and pretty soon he was having to get electric shock therapy again. Time and time again, she was there time and time again she came back to him. And at the end you have her say, he was the best thing that happened in my life. Yeah, how is that possible. How is it that was the question. I went into writing that was what motivated the book. You asked what began it what began it was the research on the poetry cycle with Sylvia Platham. But what pursued me through it is because particularly today in the need to time and feminism. I have to think of her time to when they were together and they met in the 50s, and the 50s was still fairly conventional and he died. He died in late 70s. Think for Elizabeth. And it was never all the time, but what she says, his is still the most interesting mind. Yeah, of anyone I've ever met. She saw him as a genius. And I respected that. And, you know, so just the other day, someone said, I have a long marriage, gone on one marriage for a very long time still going.  You know, it's as simple as that. That's how to how to avoid divorce. You don't leave. You don't leave.  His craziness with other women but it was always, he would come back. And it was always in the middle of this mania. Not only would he come back. She entertained Caroline, his next wife. And when she got her in and around the time of the funeral, Caroline actually stayed in the house with her. Absolutely. Love, hate, hot, cold, black, white kind of thing. And you mentioned sometime the weave in the war. It comes together the opposites that make things work. And she mentions love in connection to Lowell, but I don't think that's the whole thing right. I think the genius, like you have said, she was fascinated by him she only thought of who aren't and low as the two geniuses. Incredibly original thinkers, because Elizabeth was not. She wrote the one book sleepless nights which was essays about her own life, and she wrote brilliant critical assets, you know, and but that comes from a different part of the brain. You know, then low and yeah it was. And everything I've read about him is when he came into a room, there was no one else. He was truly physically, emotionally, mentally, kind of larger than life. And that is the puzzle of this why she stay with them.  And why would she can consider taking him back. I think, see if I got this right is it Yates who talked about the crooked corkscrew of the heart. Yeah, I think that's the answer. It's, it's, yes, of course, she just, there would be no other man for her there really wasn't before. And there wasn't she lived decades after he did. Well, you know, it's, it's been said of poetry that it is not the job of the poet to answer the questions but to ask the right questions, not necessarily to provide the answers but ask the right questions and Robert Frost said, poetry, we don't look to poetry for answers we look to it for a way through. I mean, you're writing is very poetic. It touches very deeply on poetic technique and poetic observation is hardly a sentence that is not interesting in some way. Thank you. And so I think that maybe the same thing applies maybe you raised the right question. I think I hope so this of all my work, I've never believed in anything being channeled.  I, you know, it's not a channel, but I heard, I really heard her voice. I heard Elizabeth voice and I so admire. You know, I think it was Susan Sontak who said that a hardwick writes the most beautiful sentences in the English language she was so, you know, she was so articulate and so clear about parsing. And I think what was going on I mean this great sentence about her essays is that she feels that it's not, you don't write a criticism or review, basically, to say if something's good or bad, but to engage, you know that the mind of the reviewer is engaged with the mind of the, the writer, the creator. You know, that's what she did. And so yeah, I mean I have no desire I have no expectation of writing another novel, too many words. Going back. Going back to. It's come to say your message, say your message and go home right. Yes. Yes. I don't know that note. I know we should open it up and bring in Allison at this point for a little more discussion. Allison. Ready to go. Can't hear you. There. Yes, I'm ready. Thank you. It's fascinating to listen to you guys talking about this. I've also had a lot of questions and woman to woman I guess I wondered, you know, did you try to put yourself in her place. Did you imagine what you would have done.  Well I knew what she did. I knew that, you know, but that's why I wrote, I wrote the novel as a diary, a fictional diary. Maybe I'll just read the very first paragraph of it which sets answers they think the question you're asking Allison. This is Palestine, Maine, which is the little town in Maine where they had a house and 1977. And this is Elizabeth. It's all in the first person. This is the first page of my manuscript, and I'm not certain whether to call the narrator, I or she either way, it's me. I am writing this during the two weeks that Cal will be away. Visiting Caroline that's the new wife and her daughters in Ireland. Cal says he will return to New York on September 15, and wants to move back in with me seven years has passed since they got the doors. He wants to move back in with me into our old apartment on 67th Street, across from Central Park it's where we live for most of the 21 years of our marriage until he left me for Caroline. And then she says I've already mentioned Cal three times in this short paragraph, and Caroline twice, and not yet named myself. It's a familiar pattern. I prefer writing about other people. I've never kept a diary. I write for publication. However, in these pages which I don't plan to show to anyone I intend to overcome my reticence and reveal the details of my personal life without trying to make myself look good without regard for writing correctly or well I gained clarity through the process of writing I need that clarity now. And so that was, you know, I just put myself in that, like, I don't know what to do, should I take this man back. Right. And everybody says no. Right, right. You know, and so she's writing her way through to figure out what she should do. I was fascinated by her character as I read your book, and she didn't come across to me as being over. I mean she loved him deeply but she was also pragmatic I mean she was a woman who managed her own affairs who published to, you know she was a strong independent smart feisty woman she was not a pushover in your rendering of her at all. And yeah there's something very grounded about her that I liked a lot. She, and she wasn't a drama queen. You know she wasn't self pitying or, you know, it was a dramatic situation, but she was not dramatizing herself in it or having breakdowns or. I mean that was all he was the one who had the breakdowns and she was the one who kind of put things together and kept things going. And not only that she took care of all the practical affairs. I mean she ran the household he was very happy that they had a baby, but he didn't do much about it. Right.  So I think the only moment, you know that I really saw that pain is with the dolphin, you know, and you know where she says I've never been, never been so hurt. Yeah, life. And even after that, she somehow found it in her heart to forgive him and these days I think somebody would have, you know, she would have sued I mean I think at a 2020 version of her would have taken him to court over that but she did not. I don't sure that never even occurred to her at all. Well, what's interesting is, you know, I did it as a short play at 35 minute play with two brilliant actors, and do it out, make me know who plays. We just did it. Sunday, you know, the magic theater, who plays Elizabeth just had the same questions from at the beginning and as she works for the script and read the novel. And I love it because it isn't, it isn't of this time. Right. Very much not. Yes. I think that it isn't that kind of thing where you betrayed me, you humiliated me, you know, whatever, that's it. It's over. The sense of sort of, I don't know what it is Lord Jess forgiveness awareness that some things transcend that. And you know the other key really element I think made a real difference was the knowledge that he was had hard problems that he had gone through that seven years of separation were very tough on low. He was in a chaotic environment married to a woman who was as Elizabeth says is crazy as he was. So that rock, you know that stability of taking care of him. She said it was so touching and one of her letters to Mary McCarthy she said, you know I think Cal is closer. It looks like we lost.  And you're muted now. Gotta unmute. Can you unmute.  She make she may come.  I'll keep a watch on. Okay. Yeah, yeah, I was. I was so interested in that sentence. He was the best thing that ever happened to me. And I was going to ask Lynn, whether that sentence came from a letter that she sent to somebody or you know whether she lifted that out of something that Elizabeth hardwick actually wrote or not, but she's not here so I can ask her that. You know whether she projected or imagined that. It's amazing that she stayed or came back or received him again and again. And then, and love yes I guess that must be a big part of it but there was the intellect aspect that was the, the conviviality of the intellectually elite that he was a big part of. The magical interactions that would happen in salons or in parties or people talking. And his, his furious creativity, where he would do these manic states and write very quickly and so hard on the page that it would tear the page part as a part of his writing and revise maybe 10 or 15 times even in the first setting to do that. And so high energy, even though it is, even though it is pathologic, as we think of it in terms of normal psychology was something magical was able to put forward all these exceptional pieces of literature. Yeah, that's a rapid period of time. What are you familiar with Lowell's writing I ordered the dolphin and started to read it in preparation for doing this panel. And I, of course I had read skunk hour and some of his much anthologized poems, but I hadn't really haven't really done a deep dive into lowl. And I confess that reading the dolphin didn't grab me. It didn't. You know, it may be. I had a similar feeling about lowl I had, I had visited lowl. When I first came to poetry, which was, you know, 30 years ago or so 40 years ago. And I thought, well, why is he the person that Sexton and Plath look up to. Right. Sexton and Plath were superior in their poetic innovations and confessional aspects than lowl was, but I returned to him just now because of this connection we have. Yeah, about him with Lynn. And I, I decided that I, of his works, I liked this one, which is the for the Union dead. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. It's a much later poem and a poem group. And in this book he, he takes on the more personal in the previous ones it's so very formal. In a literary way, he makes references to previous literary geniuses and so forth. And it does have that sort of formality feeling that it's hard to bond with and in an emotional sense. And yet this one I find is bondable, at least for me. And maybe that would be if you looked at that one, you would have a somewhat different view. I'm still working my way through the dolphin I haven't, you know, totally given up on it but it didn't, you know, grab me by the collar and make me stay up late reading it or anything. It's interesting to read it now having read Lynn's book and understanding the circumstances in which it was written. And the thing about the differences in time. I mean he could have been accused of plagiarism in that sense. Right. Because he basically lifted the letters and put them in there but he them for his best advantage. He would change things to make himself look a little better and her not so good, which was horrible. And then when she confronted him he said well, you wouldn't have given me permission so I used them anyway. That's the same excuse if I ever heard one. And you know, Ted Hughes did not quite the same thing but when he, he rearranged the poems in Ariel before they were published, and created, you know that structure of the arc of that book. And a lot of feminist scholars have critiqued him for it because he gave the book a different any and the portrait of Sylvia which of course was all that was going to be left of her you know that book is how people know her. And, and he shaped it, and he shaped it in a way to emphasize her insanity and not other aspects of her. You know it's interesting to me how people take limit. How take issue with and permit themselves to make changes and other people's work. And it goes all the way back to Emily Dickinson right right with her long dashes and the editors came along and so now we don't need these. Yeah, we get rid of these dashes when they were integral to right feeling tone and the rhythm of the poem. You had to stop at a long dash. It's almost like having a spawn D right accent accent. It makes you stop. And when you stop then the mind picks up on what you've just heard and looks at it again into somewhat different light. And by the time you connect again to the linear linear aspect of the work. You have a fresher view of what you've just come from. We've been talking back we've been talking to you. Thank you I'm so sorry. I don't know what happened technology. So what did I miss. Yeah, I had a question about the line that line that you referenced earlier when you were talking with David, he was the best thing that ever happened to me. And I wondered if you took that from a letter of hers did she write that did she did Elizabeth Hardwick write that in a letter or a diary or something. She did. She did. Who did she read it to a friend. I think maybe to marry McCarthy, probably to marry McCarthy. And you know it's interesting that you mentioned that because again, you know we had Sunday night we did the reading of the play. And at the very end, and this was a reading in other words of the actors that were still on the script they had memorized the line, still playing with a little bit. Her last speech is that Elizabeth has in the play is, you know, what is it. So, I guess I've been warned people asking what I have married him again. Yes, I would. The breakdowns were not everything. Her last line that I had originally was he was the best thing that ever happened to me. And somehow, when we were rehearsing it right before the performance, it felt right to give that line to low. It was is, you know, and so she says, but the breakdowns were not, were not everything.  You were the best thing that ever happened to me. That gives me goosebumps and chills. That's what she longed to hear.  And if as a playwright, you have this wonderful flesh and blood brilliant collaborators if they're really lucky and I haven't been with this piece. You, it's, it's like, it's inevitable. This is what it has to suddenly clicks, you know, into place and go, yeah, of course. This is what she has been longing for and hoping that that, that that is true. I might go, I'm losing it again. I don't understand what's going on.  There was one thing you just mentioned that made me think of the fact that people have talked about writing as a universally collaborative occupation. In that sense that even if you're writing by yourself you're accessing other writing and other experience. The performance in the play. I mean, once the playwright turns it over to the performers, right, the playwright loses control. And what happens is a director or the actors or things like that and then modify. I mean, in storytelling, if you look at storytelling down through the eons, every time it gets told it gets changed a little bit. Sometimes a little deeper or a little more appropriate for the time or the language is a little more current interpretations of sacred literature happen the same way, oftentimes. And so maybe we don't ever write in isolation. The point is so well taken. And the fact that I think one of the things that drew me so much to Lowell and Hardaway was the times they were writing when writing was everything. You know, there's so much product, you know, and because of technology and everything we just bombarded. And but at that time the written word, you know, and what was was everything. And so many, I have many quotes from other writers and divide madness, because that's how those people thought. You know, that was part of their everyday thought, the stuff they had read the fact what their peers were writing. And, and yeah, that sense of connection of universality. I mean, we used to be able to talk with people about a book, right. A new book would come out a new novel and new volume of poetry and we'd all read it. And these, these folks who were in New York at that time, and, and, and Yaddo, you know this hot bed of in many ways. Double meaning. writers. Yeah, yeah. There's a line about that. That has to do with. What is it that you said the libidness of opening and closing of doors or something like that. Yeah. Art is colonies and that was, it was like academic conferences right out of town. Isn't that the same, that same kind of vibe. Well, maybe if any, do you think we David, we should open it to any questions if anybody. Yeah. Yes, let's open for questions and I'll start off with one and also, I don't know if you did a reading yet. A little, a little bit. Okay, but you could do a little more reading but my question is also I'd like to hear about her relationship with a Hannah aren't. There's some amazing incredible people in her circles. So I'd like to know more about that relationship. Oh, interestingly, I had written the play number of years ago that I got produced. And it was about Hannah aren't in her relationship with Martin. And for those just to review a little bit Hannah aren't was gone now is a brilliant Jewish writer, probably best known for her work on the Eichmann trial. It's like men and Jerusalem, and her big quote that is quoted all the time is the banality evil. So when she was talking about Eichmann, you don't make him a monster, don't make him one of a kind. He wasn't, you know, it was hurting. He was a bureaucrat, and doing what, you know, he was asked to do and just sort of separated his emotion this, you know, from that. And the parallel is, is Elizabeth's new Mary McCarthy Mary McCarthy and Hannah aren't were very, very close friends. And, and, you know, sort of Elizabeth didn't quite envy them but she really she respected that friendship, you know, of the two of them. And she, she felt Mary McCarthy was a great, you know, very good writer or good novelist, but Hannah aren't was a genius, Hannah aren't was the original thinker. And one of the things in the play that is that I came across is she comes into the house Mary McCarthy's house and Hannah aren't is lying on the sofa.  This is this is genius. The parallelism is, and this was the center of my play. So Martin High escaped Nazi, Austria, Germany. He did their state he became the dean of one of the major universities, and he joined the he had to join the Nazi Party, he did, so that he couldn't maintain his position as teaching position, but he did eliminate, you know, not not kill them without all the Jews out of the university. And so yeah, he, he never, he never decried or defend the Nazi Party after, after the war was over. He had to have his philosophy books published in the United States that they wouldn't. Most of the publishing houses wouldn't consider it because of his past, and Hannah aren't vouched for him. And, you know, yeah, to because she, she said well his work is separate from, you know, the political situation and also she had had an affair, passionate affair with him when she was young, he was her mentor. He adored him and there is a something of a parallel there, you know, modest. I mean, low was not a Nazi, you know, he did very that were deplorable but he was not a Nazi, and some, and I don't ever know if this is true for Elizabeth, whether she ever made that connection in her own mind but I would think she would own. She was so smart. She almost have to. That's, that's that that and and I love the gossip about Hannah are that when she entertained, you know she would, she would serve cocktails and then she would you know very very nice Jewish thing with cakes. And all of that. So that was that that literary literary circle and do we forgive I mean isn't this the major question. Right. Do we separate the artist from its work. And his or her work. Do we think about Woody Allen just right recent. So many, so many many. So I don't know I'll ask you to what do you think about that. What about do I forgive.  Well, that's not true. That's not true. I haven't watched one without thinking about that I haven't paid you know I've watched on Netflix. Because we get Netflix anyway but I don't, I won't like go to a theater and. And I have really conflicted feelings about watching him now it's very difficult to watch him on screen for me to see him as a character. He's not always a character in his movies. And yet I grew up loving Woody Allen my father adores him. We grew up on Woody Allen movies you know I mean it was something I did with my dad a lot was go watch Woody Allen movies. And it was really painful to me that, but I'm just like, Oh, and, you know, I, it's hard. I don't think of myself as a terribly forgiving person so I think if I were either of those women I probably, I'm pretty much of a grudge holder I'm not proud of that but that's kind of part of my who I am. So I think that anyone who creates does so probably consciously or unconsciously in a persona. And when you meet them, which I've done a lot of really top artists, they're not exactly what I expected. Right. They can be a little more conniving. They can be a little more uncomfortable. And whereas in their work they seem to be totally comfortable. I mean, even Robert Frost pick fights with his neighbors. I mean, you know, yeah, he was a grumpy old guy. Yeah, these lovely poems. I mean, right. So I think he wasn't a very good father either I don't think right. I mean there's a lot of false and I think writers are no different in that sense. But when we write, I think we somehow aspire to a higher standard. And that comes through in morality. And I think that stories are inherently moral, because they show the consequence of our actions. In real life, you can walk up to somebody insults them and walk away and never talk to them again and you don't see what happens to them afterwards but if you know I think you know the gun in the first act fired by the fifth act. So if you introduce something that's angry or heart full hurtful or problematic in a major way. Then who's going to happen in the narrative that shows the consequence of those actions. That's ethics that's morality. And it's, and it's the story itself that demands that. You know I know that writers are not any better than anybody else. I don't know if I would give somebody a pass if they were significantly worse, you know, then my, you know people in my, I mean I know we're all human we're all we all have frailties and yes writers are often uncomfortable and anxious and insecure and depressive people so you know just kind of take that as given but that's the business isn't it of separating lighter from his work or her work because you can. In your mind condemn the writer and also love the work. Yes. Yeah. Go ahead. I was going to say we have a question in from Mr Sheldon Bacchus.  So long ago I need to reread it. Tell me how, why. Well, Mr Bacchus would have to do that. Where do you see the. Am I coming through okay. Yes. All right. Prince Michigan's personality is, is very interesting. And what I'm kind of focusing on here a little earlier. We started the discussion we're talking about the difference between the analytic and the intuitive. Michigan was portrayed by this jet ski very interestingly in that he reached some sense of reality and his epileptic fits, which in fact, forced him completely from reality. In the, but the thing was, is that there was somehow that was where the truth was, that was where creativity was, was in, in the seizures. The essence of things became clear to him. And I was just wondering just that it's, that's almost archaic. I'm very familiar with Rebecca Solnitz. Just on the novel on active biography, biography on Edward Mybridge. Same thing. My bridge. My bridge was just the side of crazy, I think. But again, she was dealing with this issue of here's an intensely personal creative creative person, yet that creativity isn't realized until somehow that person is divorced from reality. It's divine madness. Wow, yeah, I think that was what David was really discussing early. Yeah, yeah. At the beginning. And the question is, you know, from what I've gotten my novel at any rate and what I've read is that it's a thin line. There is a point at which, yes, it's tremendously your thoughts are free and connecting in ways that in a traditional way would never come up with. And then you just tilt, you know, it moves to that the needle moves to, you know, you think you're Jesus Christ or Muslim or, you know, or what you're spouting doesn't make any sense at all. What makes sense to you is it is it kind of, you know, moving like what a hark, and you pass a certain point and then it's just chaos. Very interesting. I, I'm not sure I know enough to really say all the what I have. I've done some experiments on myself that have to do with trying exploring the deeper consciousness and I've used the hypnagogic state would that part of life which is between wakefulness and sleep. Where I found the richest resource was about 230 or three o'clock in the morning. When I train myself to wake up in the right, but I would write in the dark without without actually waking up. And so what I envisioned was I would dip down into the unconscious and whatever came up I would write it down without any kind of correction or editing or I have an editor that governs our work, we bring it into life in a certain way that's up to expectation, but expectation doesn't leave room for creativity, because it's what has been done already.  In this ranting there is a form of intelligence that is not present in the linear thinking daytime. And I've actually published two books of poems that come from this source. And when I first looked at them myself I thought they were crazy. I thought nobody's going to like these. But it turned out when I would give readings I would read one or two of these poems and although the audience seemed very quiet afterwards they would come up and say I really like that form. I don't know why but I. And so I what I concluded was that their unconscious was not and not unlike my own. Probably operating at similar ways than my unconscious. And so, yes, I think that the those folks who suffer from what we label as insanity. We've been in and out of various forms of consciousness all the time. And we just think it's not right because it doesn't match what our consciousness in the moment is, but it isn't expression of humanity. Otherwise it wouldn't happen. Otherwise it wouldn't be capable. And I guess the real message is how do we use that form of a barren quote unquote consciousness incorporated into our creativity in such a way that we move forward and low obviously did that. He was able to. And there are other examples to have that sort of thing. And it often comes in those who are the most distressed in their, in their real life. And there were a number of psychiatrists. I remember in the 60s and 70s, who would take patients going through schizophrenic breaks and not and and allow that allow, you know, that instead of trying to medicated, you know, so that would end or suppressed has to be in a very protected environment, etc. But yeah, there's, you know, lying wasn't it already laying the Scottish psycho analyst or there's also an article in this online New York Times website right now. There's an article about a woman who's choosing not to medicate her psycho her psychosis she she hears voices. I think her diagnosis would probably be schizophrenia.  Very interesting I think that sometimes real creative interesting thoughts can come out of those voices. Right. We all hear voices a little bit I mean the poets will tell you, I don't write the poem I just hold the pen. And the poem comes from somewhere I don't even understand. And so we become the channel, maybe for thoughts now it does come from inside us but I think what happens is it's different parts of our own consciousness that are speaking to each other. And I can tell you one thing that the unconscious is far more powerful and far bigger and far stronger than the conscious mind and if I try to revise one of those poems that comes out of this exercise, I get my hand spanked. Yep. No, it says who touched that poem it's already been started. I have that in place and actually I had it, kind of with this. So now I merged with what I'm trying to say, and, and leave it alone. Don't try to make it make more sense. Or more connect just leave it alone.  Sure that you are revising to the initial insight he's event or feeling that got it started in the first place, and not trying to pretty it up in some way that makes it published rule in the Atlantic. Exactly Barbara were you going to ask something. Yeah, unmute. I would say that when I was training to be a psychologist, one of my first patients. This was in late eighties had schizophrenia. And it was just that they had closed the mental institutions and psychotropic medication was really very much in. And when he refused to take the medication he said, it turns off all the color. Yes. And so what what you were saying made so much sense to me about just how important for survival is that color and that story and even he was willing to go through these horrible manic and depressive states and craziness and psychosis because the color was so important. There's a great song and the music go next to normal. I miss the mountains. Exactly. It's a beautiful song I love that song. Basically as a woman in deep grief for the loss of a child. And they're trying to help her by medication and she takes it. And the lyric is, you know, she's gotten rid of the lowest which was horrible depression, but she misses the highest misses the mountains. I'm just, it's just so. There's the story of Harvey the rabbit. Remember. Yeah. Where the Harvey was the companion for this person, the big seven foot rabbit. And when he didn't have the rabbit and was treated he became more gross and depressed but when he had the rabbit he was like a full intelligent interesting person. Yeah. We need our rabbits. Well friends, it's almost that time and I just I want to thank all of you for this rich conversation and yes we do need all the colors in our lives to create and to inspire. I want to thank Lynn Kauffman for her wonderful new book Divine Madness and poets, David Watts and Allison Luterman. I would like to encourage everyone to seek out their work online. And also I put Lynn's email in the chat if anyone is interested in purchasing a book to be in touch with Lynn and she can direct you to the publisher and also to other ways, other ways to purchase the book. And I wish you all very enjoyable reading. And it's on. But it's also the book can be purchased on Barnes and Noble, and also on Amazon and you want to email me though that's great, but the book and so you can get the book, gosh to get the book online. I wanted, since I've interrupted I want to thank you so much. Laura and Pamela and my two wonderful poets, you know, and everybody tuned in for a very soulful conversation. And now it's over to you. Great. Well thanks everyone thank you for joining us and come back to Mechanics Institute, whether we're on zoom or live in person at 57 post street here in San Francisco. I wish you all good night.