There is nothing more moving or poignant than a human being in the process of evolution. Those who dare to make something better of themselves, who fall down and pick themselves up again, over and over and over, will always impress and inspire me. To do so in a public way, and to share that journey no matter how trying or difficult, is the stuff of additional legend. We will all falter at some point. We will all fail. Some of us have done it numerous times – whether in our jobs and careers, or our personal and family lives, or even just in being the best person we know how to be. We trip up and make mistakes, we fall victim to temptation or heartache, we give in to the easy escapes that society so insidiously proffers. What matters is what we do in the aftermath.
How do we deal with everything that this wondrous, frightening, unpredictable life throws at us? That is the true test. Though it is most dramatically answered in how we behave when we are at the pinnacle of our world and our time in it, and how we act at our lowest points, the majority of our lives are decided on a much simpler day-to-day basis: how we act in the quiet moments. All those in-between times that form the brunt of our existence, the moments that lead up to and follow the big momentous events. If you can find grace in those times, if you can conjure beauty there, you might be all right. That’s where our lives are really lived. When I think of how people who have been through a lot make it through those moments, I often think of Kevin Sessums.
As she did with so many other important artistic figures in my inspirational pantheon, it was Madonna who first brought me to Mr. Sessums. Back then anyone affiliated with her gained instant superstar status in my mind, and his bold byline in one of her epic ‘Vanity Fair’ profiles set him upon the same perch as Herb Ritts, Patrick Leonard and Alek Keshishian. He breathed the rarefied air of her presence, but even better than that he could put it all into gorgeously-wrought turns of phrase, working words into gloriously-dizzying heights of fanciful and effective prose. His Madonna piece was one of reverence, but it probed and challenged the subject too. He was not afraid to get gritty, and Madonna, to her credit, was not afraid to let him. It showed me the symbiotic relationship between artist and biographer, when the object of adoration was compelled to reveal a little something more about themselves, and the chronicler of said object turns a story into a work of art.
It wasn’t until a few years later, after his self-professed fall from grace and the first of several redemptive rebirths, that he came back under my radar with his wild and witty ‘Mississippi Sissy’; following that, he went through a few more roller-coasters before pulling himself out of a drug-induced haze with ‘I Left It on the Mountain’. Both books were New York Times bestsellers and critical successes. His writing talent had not diminished; if anything it was sharper, setting things into greater relief. More cutting and concise too, as one needs to be as they get older and wiser. There was something poetic and almost elegiac that informed his work at this stage – a new, hard-won edge that lent things a slightly sinister sparkle. Here was a man who had seen the world – the best and the worst of it – and here was a man who had been beaten down by it as much as he wanted and needed to be buoyed. How strange the struggle we see so clearly in others yet eludes us as it is happening to ourselves.
After that, Mr. Sessums faded a bit from my admittedly-limited view until I started seeing his FaceBook posts through mutual friends. Of course I recognized the name, and as I clicked more and more on what he was posting, I thought I’d take a chance and reach out with a friend request. He was kind enough to respond, and ever since I’ve followed his writing religiously.
His latest quest is a brave beginning that cleaves his California life of the past few years and finds him starting over once again, this time in the cruel winter of almost-upstate New York. Adapting as only a true survivor does, he has taken his mastery of the written word and put it into these parts: the online world of transitory power and influence, the finicky and fool-trapping insidiousness of the internet. He recently started a website that allows us access to his writing – an online magazine assembled by the master himself: the man who first gave me such a thrill with a Madonna-covered magazine thirty years ago. It is sessumsMagazine.com and it is every bit as fabulous and witty and wonderful as one would expect from a guy who once worked for Andy Warhol. Within, he offers a few jewels of his past portraits of celebrities, with modern takes on current culture, and it is curated with the tasteful eye of a practiced pro.
He’s also revealing a glimpse behind the magical curtain, as is custom in today’s social-media-obsessed environs, and as such everything takes on an expressively-urgent meaning. As he brings us along for the ride, we each gain a little bit from our investment. To care about the journey of another human being is the hallmark of compassion; it brings us closer to each other at a time when the world wants to divide everyone into opposing camps. Sessums has a voice that is gorgeously poetic, and that powerful instrument has served him when all else has failed. His tremulous introduction to his new site was eloquent and moving, marked by wisdom, humility, hope, and dignity:
“I have come to the end of the day when I launched an online magazine, sessumsMagazine.com, into the world. I am still trying to comprehend how I feel about it all. Not the magazine. I know the magazine is good. Really good. I know that I am a talented editor and a curator with a keen and careful eye. I know that I can write. I have a voice. This is it – right now – here – in this sentence. I am secure in that knowledge. I am instead referring to how I feel emotionally about it all. I am not a business man. I see myself in artistic terms. And yet I am hopeful this magazine will be a new way for me to survive and navigate the world professionally with the use of talents I have honed over the last three decades. I am secure. I am vulnerable. I am not frightened. I am ready.
The idea for this magazine came to me when I was lying in a hospital bed a few months ago as close to death as I have ever been. In many ways choosing to create this magazine was The Choice That Was Not Death. I am just now understanding that and allowing myself to acknowledge it. I know that sounds rather stark. But at that point my life was a stark one. I began to conjure this magazine as the lifeline that I was throwing myself for I had to find a way to survive once I emerged from the hospital. I have created this magazine by the seat of my pants with no backing and no staff… So in that regard, I have had to prove my mettle yet again. Mettle, in fact, seems all that is left me at so many junctures in my life. This has been the latest one. And yet I often feel stranded in my own life. Creating this magazine was on some level a very lonely endeavor. And yet I knew if I finished it and got it out into the world, the act itself of doing that would be The Choice That Was Not Lonely. It is how the solitary writer feels each time he or she puts their work out into the world. This has been a version of that, but different. It’s that difference I am still trying to discern.
At the end of this day, I will be gentle with myself as we work out the bugs in the technical aspect of the site and the subscription pathways. I am working out my bugs too. I am finding this new pathway… I am grateful. I will make that choice too: to live in the gratitude.”
On a recent wintry night on his new street, he and his dog Teddy walked and frolicked in the frightening freedom of another beginning and the unbearable lightness of having let go of so many things. His loft has turned out to be a grand repository for the light of Hudson – perhaps not as striking as the light of Provincetown, or the often-sunny days of San Francisco – and it carries its own beauty.
For those who keep trying, who have been dealt hand after rotten hand in the impossible-to-master card game of life, I offer Mr. Sessums as inspiration and proof that no matter how dark or tortured your journey grows, there is always – always – another day. There are other bright rooms, there are more charming streets, there is someone who is as kind and generous as you need someone to be. There is beauty in our stark winters, and once you reach spring you will marvel that you ever doubted in the darkness.
