Flare: A Series - Part 1 "Make it Work!"
Stevie Nicks, Tim Gunn, Witches, Chronic Illness and Trauma
When I hear the word “flare” I think of Tim Gunn in the sense of add some flair. On rarer occasions, I think of Office Space, as in fifteen pieces is the minimum amount of flair. I definitely do not think of auto-immune flare, a match striking, a moment of burning hot, and then flame eating up the match.
Instead it’s flair, like individuality.
There is a similarity between Tim Gunn’s flair and a AI flare. Tim Gunn’s individuality is a scorching brand of it’s own: "We are on the cusp of fashion week, and … I love it and the whole exhilaration of it [and] those women walking the runway are not from this planet.”1
I often think of Tim Gunn now, because way back when my yoga students called me the Tim Gunn of yoga. My “make the pose work for your intention” was translated by them to “Make it work people!” But that was back in 2010 back when teaching larger bodies or modifying for injuries wasn’t as accessible as it is today.
I spent years learning as much as I could about yoga so I could modify it to make it work for others. I can sum up all that I learned in one phrase – trust but verify. Trust your body to try poses, but verify that something works for you.
Which brings me back to Tim Gunn’s individuality. I’ve been thinking on the flair/flare distinction also because what do we call one person’s style or sublime individuality? Is that flair? And what is a disease flare but a high point of the individual nature of health?
I’d argue that “make it work people!” is the theoretical opposite of “make it right!” The later assumes a binary, right/wrongness to performing a task (or living a life) whereas the former (make it work) begins with the presumption that the person making the decisions has the ability to choose the most optimal path.
I think of this a lot because the healthy/ill dichotomy isn’t serving me and others with chronic illnesses well. Instead, I keep trying to move towards a spectrum. And here’s the other odd thought I keep having: witches.
It seems like popular culture (movies, books, music) tends to behave like a flock of birds; we disperse in separate directions. Then at some point we all coalesce, reformed back into a flock, perched on the same tree. And each time we reform, it seems like we always come back to Stevie Nicks.
Are we also doing that same dance of moving from a black and white conception of health, where we think we’ve agreed on the parameters of what makes us “healthy” and what doesn’t but then we disperse towards our own markers of health. For example, did we all coalesce around not being able to work as the markers of illness in the Aughts (early 2000s). But as work changed, is it possible that we moved away from the agreed on center (the tree) as work was became more diverse?
Are we now moving to sense of wellness as being ok in the darkness? If you’ve ever listened to Stevie Nicks, you’ll know darkness is a recurrent theme in her lyrics. Take Crystal, for example, which was originally released in 1973. It resurfaced in 1998 in the soundtrack to the movie Practical Magic. And now, it’s popped up again on TikTok as a trend in 2021.
I turned around
And the water was closing all around
Like a glove
Like the love that had finally, finally found me
Then I knew
In the crystalline knowledge of you
Drove me through the mountains
Through the crystal-like clear water fountain
Drove me like a magnet
To the sea
Its a soothing lyric about being comfortable being overwhelmed. And for sure 1973, 1998 and 2021 were overwhelming times.
Most people choose what they listen to based on how it makes them feel. Who hasn’t created a playlist to change a bad mood? Or created their own version of a baseball player’s walk out song (played during the walk from dug out to home plate).
The same thing is true for reading. We can choose to improve our mood, or bolster our feelings of empowerment through what books we choose to read. And I think that’s why we are choosing more witches in our books as well.
I just finished Venco, about a coven coming together in Salem and defeating doubt. But I also have Ink Blood Sister Scribe on my pile of to be read books. And just last November I read The Witches of Moonshyne Manor. A quick review of what was released in 2022 (and what’s upcoming in 2023) shows a trend towards witchery continuing. I know, there’s a series you are dying to tell me about. Please do! Comment away.
A profound individuality coupled with empowerment in how to apply that individuality is the stuff of Tim Gunn AND Stevie Nicks. And witches too. I think that we (in the most pluralistic version of we) are reading more about witches for two reasons: bibliotherapy and pilgrimages.
Both of these things have a mythic quality to them. And it may be that we need myth right now most of all. I think Padraig O’Tuama sums this up well:
A myth is not something false, but rather a myth is something with so much truth that it needs a fantastical container.
I think there may be slightly more to it than that. I think many folks think that things are so burnt over, so crispy, so hopeless and themselves helpless and disempowered that they literally can’t imagine getting to a place where they feel steady or not overwhelmed, without intervention of the magical sort. For some folks, that involves witches for others it involves a power greater than themselves. And this peaks my interest. Is the renewed interest in books about witches the same as our circle back to Stevie Nicks? A desire to feel that you are flowing to the right direction in the middle of the overwhelm?
The healthy/ill dichotomy on an everyday basis serves me poorly. If I am overwhelmed by fatigue, I may call myself ill. But my lungs and heart may be working well, it’s just that my immune system’s attack on my nerves make walking exhausting. Similarly, someone with chronic fatigue may have no blood work or other physical symptom that rings an alarm bell for a doctor but that doesn’t mean they are healthy. If their quality of life is impacted by fatigue, then they aren’t well.
In the middle of an autoimmune flare it can very much feel like the future will be perceived only from bed. It can also feel like everything that was normal is now impossible. On days like that, finding beauty or comfort in small things can be a way to feel more well. But there’s something more. An every day item that is joyful or brings comfort is a tie to two times: first, to the past when things felt comfortable and safe, and second, to the future which might feel comfortable and safe again. That thing can bridge the gap between the two phases, making the liminal phase less scary. Looking for ordinary joys is similar to finding a way to flow in the right direction in the middle of the overwhelm. “Drove me like a magnet, To the sea.”
This isn’t limited to chronic health issues. In her book Push Off From Here, Laura McKowen discusses the End of History Illusion. To paraphrase, people think that “they’d grown and changed in the past, but when it came to the future, they predicted they wouldn’t change at all.”2 In essence, folks think they are stuck in the now forever. When someone is living through a period of transformation, the liminality of it all, that is, the inbetweeenness can feel more overwhelming if it has a permanent or unending quality to it.
This is also true for people recovering from trauma. In an article on Tiny Buddha, this sentence about trauma and the importance of stories jumped out at me.
Shockingly, the individuals most resistant to change were the ones who could not imagine any future day different from their current reality. As it turned out, even more important than healing the trauma of their past, was to teach their brains to imagine a new future.
We may gravitate towards Stevie Nicks because in middle of a swell of a river, she promises us that we are being drawn to the sea - a future space that is calm, allowing the upheaval of now to be more bearable. Her lyrics may teach our brains to think of a different future. Isn’t this in the same magic as Tim Gunn’s admonition to “Make it work?” In that phrase, Gunn challenges the designer to imagine the future product, then empowers them to get to the final stage by using what makes them unique or their individual skills.
In that vein Tim Gunn’s “make it work” concept is the same as a pilgrimage. Bit of a stretch? Stay tuned for Part 3. Before we get to the quest story, we need to dig into Bibliotherapy. That’s coming up in Part 2.
https://www.oprah.com/style/tim-gunns-fashion-advice-for-every-size/all
Laura McKowen, Push Off From Here, Ballantine, 2023, p. 91.