VIEWPOINT: What's The Why Of It?

By Susan Scarf Merrell

If you teach writing, as I do, much of the mission in guiding a student is about figuring out why a particular story is the one a particular person is compelled to write. As in: Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine. Of all the infinite number of stories you could have told, why this one? What is about you, about what you believe, about what you know, about what you want to say, that drove you to just this joint?

Sometimes it takes a while to identify a why. You try on various ideas until you find the one that shows you how to think clearly about the work in progress. You can never look at someone else’s work and say, “You should do this.” You can only look at it and try to see what the why is.

Once you have that, you can join with the work and with the artist’s goals. You can help them to create their best work by understanding what their work wants to be. Not what you want it to be. But what they want it to be. Their why.

I think about this in terms of Sag Harbor, too.

I came here more than 30 years ago. My husband and I have lived and worked here full time since the 1980s, raised our children here, buried my father here. We’ve been Sag Harbor residents most of our adult lives. Sag Harbor suits us. It’s not perfect, sure, but it’s right for us. It’s the gin joint we walked into, the place our story has unfolded.

I don’t think loving the Harbor means you are averse to change, nor do I think you have to have been born at Southampton Hospital to feel that you have a role to play in this village. What I do think is that you have to understand your why.

If you came here to fix us, to tell us how to be, to take us over or buy us up, you don’t understand what we are. If you think you’re smarter than we are — that you know better than us about how we should live or what would be good for us — you don’t understand who we are. And, certainly, if you want to use our village to improve your own situation but at our expense, that won’t fly.

I’ve been reading Ruth Crocker’s excellent biography of Mrs. Russell Sage, who was Sag Harbor’s benefactress more than a hundred years ago. Her mother was born here, and she loved Sag Harbor, and she wanted to use her newly inherited fortune to help the community. She gave money for the fire department’s uniforms. She bought a house here. She supported research about the community and her relatives, Captain Charles L’Hommedieu and John Jermain.

Sag Harbor was in poor financial straits when Mrs. Sage arrived, reeling from a textile factory fire that compounded the ongoing poverty arising from the whaling industry decline. The villagers were initially grateful for her generosity. She donated the high school, named after her ancestor, and the library, named after her grandfather.

From 1908 to 1912, Sag Harbor’s well-being was Mrs. Sage’s project. She gave money for Mashashimuet Park, replacing the racetrack that had been there with a more morally uplifting recreation area. She even underwrote the programs of supervised recreation, including folk dancing, and uplifting and educational talks.

Mrs. Sage’s emphasis on a moral makeover began to offend the villagers. Contractors for the high school inflated the costs of the construction. Mutually recriminatory, Mrs. Russell Sage and the villagers of Sag Harbor parted ways. Although she retained affection for the village, she no longer summered here.

Mrs. Sage’s mistake was that her gifts were about herself. She undermined her own generosity by making her gifts about her vision of Sag Harbor, and not engaging in a conversation with the villagers about what they wanted their home to be.

While over the years we have grown to revere Mrs. Russell Sage’s generosity, and the buildings she provided for us, that fiercely independent spirit that resented her well-meaning interference still lingers everywhere. Her why was to reform our moral fiber. Our why was resistance — and our why proved stronger than the Russell Sage fortune.

Sag Harbor’s villagers are not a we. And yet we are a part of a community, a part of something larger. And, in that sense, we know how to stand up for ourselves. We always have and we always will. This is a village that takes care of itself, and will continue to, no matter who wants to change our ways. You have to talk to us. You have to engage with us. That’s how we can all evolve together.

Perhaps that is Sag Harbor’s why.

Susan Scarf Merrell, a resident of Sag Harbor, is co-director of the Southampton Writers Conference and program director of Book Ends at Stony Brook Southampton.