The Book of Formation, page 15
I: What comes after Mull?
MI: The whole exchange. You receive your personality, learn it, work on it, and then pass it along to the next guest. That would be true sustainability. P recycling forever. Every season a new personality. Every moment would be like pure discovery. The first time you eat an apple, over and over again, like seeing the world for the first time forever. No one would have to feel miserable again.
I: But that’s only theoretical at this point?
MI: It’s an idea. Mull makes it real. Mull was just an idea until she wasn’t.
I: But why do you think Mayah made her turn without you?
MI: She didn’t.
I: But, I mean, you weren’t there when she did it.
MI: Yes I was.
I: But that day, you didn’t know it was happening.
MI: She wanted me free from any association. She knew the process wouldn’t be accepted by the network, her fans, anyone.
I: But earlier, you were saying you wanted to keep Mayah relaxed, right? And you didn’t go for help, and by doing that—or not doing it—you were basically assisting, right? Implicating yourself.
MI: Yes. All she requested was that I keep her nice and open. Parasympathetic. How could I deny her that? So I quieted the p in my voice. I placed her head in my lap, rubbed her facial triggers, and helped her work through every glow.
I: Her face was shaking, you’ve said.
MI: She was working through her old personality.
I: By this time did you feel the henbane kicking in?
MI: Yes.
I: In the transcript you describe it as a feeling of compassion.
MI: I couldn’t feel the hard surfaces around me. The ground, the counter, Mayah’s face, which I was touching. It was all just like thick air. And as soon as I felt it, that’s when I first saw Mull.
I: What do you mean?
MI: I saw her taking the turn.
I: But she was unconscious?
MI: No, not really. She was starting to glow. I could see it.
I: It’s been suggested that the oil you used was basically a placebo, that henbane itself doesn’t really do much, that it wasn’t particularly active. What do you think of this?
MI: The henbane isn’t important. That’s true. To me a placebo would be the best possible result. It means that I produced all these feelings, independent of all this material nonsense. [waves his hand around]
I: P for placebo.
MI: Yes. [laughs]
I: So, as you were relaxing her, did you feel you were just following her plan? The rubbing—this is what she had told you to do?
MI: Yeah, just a basic rub out. Neck, shoulders, colon, fingers, soles, roof of the mouth, backs of knees. Pushing the blood toward the heart, away from the brain. Using three fingers on the delicates.
I: And it helped?
MI: Of course. But again, the rubbing isn’t what’s important. It’s just a way for her to know I’m paying my full attention to her. Only to her. She has to know that and hear my voice and feel my fingers and feel that attention. So I begin by doing a [in a low, soft voice] “Whhhaaaat?” Like that. “Whhhaaaaaaat?” With my voice going up at the end of the word.
I: The opening call.
MI: It’s comforting for her. I’m helping her say goodbye to that personality. And as I do this, I slowly pulled my hands away from her, so that she couldn’t perceive the difference. The idea was, if I did it well—and I think I did—her muscles would go limp. No p left. And this is when I began asking [in gentle voice] “Where’s Mayah?” Just like that. As if I couldn’t see her. As if I had nothing in me but plain curiosity. I said, “If only I could find Mayah!! I don’t see her anywhere!” But I’m looking right at her the entire time [staring ahead] so she knows I can see her.
I: Peek-a-boo.
MI: And then I walk around the room and hold any object I find around me, patting down everything like a blind woman. I pick up a lamp [cradles imaginary lamp], a food wrapper [looks inquisitively at imaginary wrapper], and I examine each one. I look through the whole room like this. “Is this Mayah?” I say. “Is this?”
I: And she’s lying there watching?
MI: Yes, yes! I step right over her body, as if to me she is no different from the carpeted floor. I inspect a peeling corner of wallpaper, her long wood pipe on the credenza. I ignore her, perfectly, and then, after I’ve considered everything, I take her arm like this [lifts limp right arm with left hand] and look at it very carefully. I inspect her. I touch her legs and I pull on the leg hairs, as if she’s just another object.
I: Did she react at all?
MI: Oh no.
I: But weren’t you concerned that she was dying?
MI: She was, yes.
I: But it didn’t worry you.
MI: No.
I: And so how long did this go on for, with you massaging and playing this game with her?
MI: I felt as if it didn’t last long enough. An hour is what I’ve been told, but I can’t say for sure. Henbane undoes the feeling of time. But then Michael interrupted us…
I: And called the paramedics.
MI: He insisted that we call, even when I tried to explain the situation to him.
I: I read his testimony and he said when he walked in you were cutting Mayah’s hair. Is that right? And that her face was smeared with blood.
MI: Yes, but that blood was already there. I didn’t do that. She had done that before I came into the room.
I: She’d cut herself on her forearm, right? With shears.
MI: Yes, to apply the henbane to the wound. But listen, this was a forceful turn. An exploration. She wanted Mull done in a single fluid motion—not labored over for weeks and months. Effortless. We’ve done years of strenuous, demanding turns, and those are often necessary. People like to feel the strain of a transition. It’s important for them to feel the work to understand the importance of what they’re doing. That’s how America is. But Mull was a chance to take a turn without the plaque that can build up over time. Sometimes a moment of violence can communicate with the body in ways that hours of thoughtful work can’t.
I: And Mayah was stubborn.
MI: She was a well-developed tree. Like any sprout, it begins thin. You can snap it with fingers. Then it becomes thicker, harder, and you need a pair of scissors to cut it. Later, you need a saw. Then a chainsaw, a machine many times stronger than any human. Mayah was like that.
I: Was Mayah stronger than other personalities?
MI: Oh yes. She strengthened it every day, which is not something most people do. And even if they do, or try to, they certainly haven’t been doing it as long as she has.
I: Since she was a kid, right? I remember her describing some of the games she played in the shower—
MI: And nobody—I never saw anybody who was as dedicated to p as she was. It was all she ever thought about.
I: All that being said, do you understand Mull? I mean, why Mayah made that choice?
MI: She always thought her body was aging too quickly for her p. And she was right. It was breaking down. It wasn’t meant to be old. These last few years, it was eating away at her.
I: Now that you mention it, Mull doesn’t really seem to have an age. Kind of timeless.
MI: As far as she’s concerned, she’s immortal.
I: I’ve heard it said that Mull has the personality of a dog.
MI: Yes. I’ve heard that. It’s kind of true. She’s not putting so much energy into her personality all the time like the rest of us. She saves it, stores it, and you can feel it. Just to be around her feels healing. The way it feels to be near a good dog. Good warm presence. She doesn’t even need to do anything. She’s just Mull. The best.
I: Sounds like a comforting presence.
MI: I promise you, nothing is more comforting than Mull.
6 In early 2006, a group of movers created the “Free Marshal” logo as a response to the public witch hunt of PM. It has since appeared on all variety of clothing, building, and printed matter.
7 Michael Billings served as behaviorist of Peggy Creek Hot Springs from 1998 to 2006.
8 Alan Wheeler, the show’s executive producer.
VIII.
May 2014
LAS VEGAS, NV
In 2013, singer and “chameleon of pop” Maggie began a three-year residency at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada. The series of two hundred highly anticipated concerts at The Colosseum (the Palace’s four thousand–seat venue) announced her return from an eight-year hiatus as a performer. The full run of shows sold out in eighteen hours.
The residency received ebullient reviews, even from the writers who had once dismissed Maggie’s early hits as populist dreck. It seemed that nostalgia was swinging in her favor, and that her age, stamina, and temporary absence had served her well.
The run at the Palace also marked the beginning of Maggie’s collaboration with Marshal, her “personality director,” who was himself stepping out after several years away from public life. Many people suspected he was patiently waiting out the ripples of controversy from the so-called Isle Trial, but in fact, he had been spending his time working, quietly, diligently, on himself.
The pairing of the two ‘90s icons didn’t surprise anyone: Maggie (born Margaret Caitlyn Willani) had been a vocal advocate of PM since her second album and even cowrote the international bestselling memoir of her life in the movement, Singing Without P (2008). She has made six turns, all of them publicly—Margaret, Miss Maggie, Mae, Maggie Mala, Magdalena (or Lena), and Maggie. The last of these names both began her career and was now revivifying it twenty-four years later in Vegas. She had come full circle.
Her personality changes were frequent, unabashed, and provocative, especially during the years when she was perceived as a role model for young girls. Her detractors remarked that her turns were cheap stunts. (Michael Jennies at The Washington Post famously said her career wouldn’t last beyond “the generation of teeny boppers who first adored her.”) For her fans, though, Maggie’s bouquet of selves was a resounding call for personal growth.
After years of rigorous touring and constant public presence, however, she looked withered—the Lena years—and she decided to step away from attention. The media, for their part, waited to hear the archetypal story: she’d swallowed the wrong cocktail of pills, curled up in her bathtub, and passed on. But instead, years later, all of us were reintroduced to the new Maggie in all her radiating energy—loud and rude with a vocal drawl and a shortshort haircut. Somewhere, she had found a fresh source of p, and it seemed she had absorbed it well.
Undoubtedly, her greatest contribution to the movement has been an ability to assess and adapt to her cultural environment. She understands the expectations placed upon her by fans and critics, and she pivots constantly to confront them. As she aged, she recognized what was needed to support her development, reinventing her attitude, style, music, and dance routines to suit her moment in life. The twenty-one-year-old pop star is not a sustainable personality for anyone.
In the last few years, Marshal’s presence beside her had seemed to cast a more tasteful light on both of their careers. During the residency, most of his work was done backstage, but occasionally Marshal warmed up the crowd with a soliloquy on his favorite topics. At the concert I attended, he stood onstage in a heather-grey kilt and riffed on cosmetology. He told an anecdote of his recent haircut debacle and how it nearly swept away his personality. “Am I getting weaker, or are the scissors getting sharper?” he said, and they all laughed. He asked any hair stylists in the audience to stand and then clasped his hands together in prayer and bowed to them.
Sometimes Marshal would join Maggie onstage for the encore, when they would engage in some droll, scripted banter before the band stepped into the first tinkling notes of “Name Me,” her nightly closer. His primary duties, however, remained hidden, and he offered few public statements about the work. Except for the inclusion of “Marshal Isle Presents” on every Maggie-related billboard in Vegas, he seemed to have stopped pushing himself as a product.
—
Since the end of M!, Marshal’s life choices had consistently flummoxed the media. First, his bold refusal of fame. Then, after years of silence, a modest resurrection, not as a star, but as what—a producer? Nobody had the pleasure of announcing “Marshal is back,” because he wasn’t, not really, not audaciously, not bigger, not hotter. If anything, his presence had become less commanding and more commonplace. Where’s the story in that?
From another angle, however, the narrative was clear. When M! came to a close, Marshal could see that culture wanted a new kind of personality. Mayah, too, had seen it coming and made her exit accordingly, before her time was up. Magazines didn’t want the old A-listers, and fans didn’t want magazines. The rise of social media had unleashed a new kind of up-to-the-minute celebrity, able to narrate their own stories in real time. Comparatively, a daily talk show was irrelevant, and a week-long self-transformation was a punishing lesson in patience.
Marshal knew his own personality well enough to understand it could not provide the world with what it needed. Sure, he could’ve changed to accommodate it, but as I see it (though I don’t think he’d ever truly admit this) he didn’t want to forget about Marshal. He’d grown attached to it, and he knew, even if he did give it up, that no one could possibly guide him to a better self. This man had defined the contemporary turn, and the only person who could improve upon it—Mayah—was gone. Or maybe some splinter of Masha still remained inside him, afraid to return to the hotplate of celebrity, and it just wanted to be left alone.
This may sound like blasphemy to some readers—and perhaps I’m way off in my assessments—but part of my intention in publishing these talks is to allow a little uncertainty into the discussion. I think Mayah wanted this, too, and I only fully decided to publish the talks when she called me, years before Mull entered the world, and finally gave me permission to publish.
“Eventually,” she said, “when the time feels right, show the world the boy we raised. Warts and all. They won’t get it. It’ll destroy my reputation. But that’s fine. If all goes well, I hope my reputation is destroyed by then anyway. It’s the only way I can move on.”
I don’t have any interest in staining Marshal’s reputation. I want to see him as a full human being. He wasn’t a saint and he had no interest in becoming one. A saint lives perfectly within a system of standards. She abstains, performs, eats, and breathes inside that system. She creates a single, clean self and never strays from it. But the problem is, when those standards are no longer important to culture, her sainthood is obsolete. If the world no longer values the virtue of modesty, a humble saint holds no value.
But Marshal escaped his sainthood. He recognized the velvet prison of PM, of culture, and planned his getaway. He did this not by simply leaping from one prison to another, but by transitioning to a way of living that was beyond imprisonment.
—
After my conversation with Isle in 2006, I took many trips to Las Vegas to visit him. I despise the town, but when he mentioned in an email that I should stop by to see him, I told him that I had plans to pass through later that month—a fib—and soon found myself in his hotel room, drinking a cocktail of prickly pear juice and absinthe.
It took me no more than a few minutes to notice that Isle’s personality had become something altogether different from the one I had last interviewed. I asked him if he had made a turn, and he responded that he “didn’t have to,” as if he were done with the whole enterprise of the personality arts.
As we continued to speak, I noticed that Isle had picked up a habit of wiggling his fingers and spreading the toes of his bare feet. It was subtle, at first, almost like a tremor, but the more absinthe he drank, the more apparent the movement became, until it looked as if he was tapping along to a rhythm only he could hear. I assumed it was some kind of fasciculation, like the ones I sometimes experienced, but when I finally asked him about it, he told me he was “remembering how to act around [me].”
These tics, he said, allowed him to access a memory bank of behaviors he’d been rehearsing for up to ten hours every day. Furthermore, what he called “remembering” wasn’t recalling an event, but becoming a new personality. Constantly. In other words, he was attempting to embody a new fully developed attitude, worldview, and physicality in every breath.
What I began to learn over the next few hours was that Marshal had spent much of the last decade developing personalities for every situation—hundreds of them, an entire internal society of his own making. During his time on the show, he was accumulating these personalities, describing them in charts, drawing out their movements. But rather than cataloging them by name, he programmed them into his memory with combinations of slight, almost imperceptible movements. As he saw it, the personalities were the movements, and through these wiggles, these triggers, he was able to dance through a cascade of selves, perpetually changing, never settling on a single one for more than a few moments. By moving in these ways, he was constantly refreshing himself, existing in perfect transcendent concentration.
We spent that first night discussing this philosophy. As he saw it, the process related to what neurologists called “mirror neurons,” the cells that allow us to mimic the world around us.
“I just want to be like water,” he said, once. “No form. No conflict.”
In the morning, he asked if I would continue to visit him and continue the conversation. I had been the first person with whom he’d shared these ideas, and he hoped that he could work on them with me openly so that I could help him address the flaws, especially those in his voice. I had become his confidant.
So I spent many days and nights with Marshal and a video camera. (I had hoped to include those talks in this book, but legal obstruction from Maggie’s team would not allow this.) Sometimes visitors stopped by, but we rarely left the hotel room, as Isle found the outside world “distracting” to his progress.
