Hunger / Happiness / the 'Artist'
I am thinking about fulfillment, satiety.
These do not seem to be qualities of the artist.
On every level--creative, psychological, spiritual, emotional, intellectual--the artist is not "meant" to be full, or finished. The artist is meant to rove. To be restless. The artist is not "meant" to be unhappy, but the wandering, the wondering, the constant probing--these activities often create unhappiness, or reveal it.
Of course what I've written so far looks like teaching notes for Kafka's "A Hunger Artist."
It's like, no matter what you're thinking about, Kafka's already written a story about it!
(This was how I felt when I first discovered Kafka, and then, like you, I learned how un-special I was, to feel that way.)
KAFKA! The Musical
Wasn't Zadie Smith supposed to have done this already? Maybe she needs help?
Mary P-S, where are you? After we're done the libretto for YERMA! The Musical, we should work on this one.
Anyway, Brian and I were discussing tonight the possibility of "choosing" happiness. It was a long discussion and parts of it were a fight and I don't want to re-tell it here, but to me it's always an interesting question: can you BE happy? Who are the happy ones? Is it a shutting off, or a turning on? An opening or a closing? A yes or a no? There are the prequel questions too, of what is it that makes each person happy, and can a person ever really change the way she is, etc.
Very recently I have become aware of the absence of a certain scale I used to have, some instinct that was always on, always fairly well-tuned, that told me what to do and how, that told me if I was fucking up and how to make things right and where to go next. These days I find myself asking, when I am upset, 'is this something that would upset other people?', and then wishing that a referee or kind stranger could just follow me invisibly, be that instinct I've misplaced. Each of my feelings is so demanding, explosive, intense--and, well, the result of course is some bad behavior.
I don't really identify myself as anyone other than a human and a mother. I love fiercely the people whom I love so I suppose I am a lover. I write words for money, which doesn't feel like being a writer, and then I write other words because I don't know how not to, it is a thing I do the way some people do other things, and I don't know if this is being a "writer" and I don't feel much attachment to that word although I also don't see the sense in spurning it altogether. It is not for me to say that anything I've ever done is "art" so I don't feel much for being an "artist," either. I like making things. I like making food. Maybe even more than eating it. I like making experiences for my daughter. I liked, earlier today, turning an empty tissue box into a paper-and-glue pot of paper-and-glue flowers. It's a lot better than the last two stories I've written.
What I want to know about discontentment, the feelings of sadness that come and go or come and stay a while and lift and then return, particularly my own such feelings, since this is my blogspot and therefore my little attic at the top of the stairs to play dress-up in and French kiss the back of my hand in, is: can I help it? And more importantly, do I want to? Are they part of me? Are they what I am, or what I do? Do they exist because I write, or do I write because they exist? And will all the happy writers please stand up? And then, squinting a little and seeing another side of this, if I'm ostensibly one of the "well-adjusted ones"--married, child, employment, house, family, friends--and I still feel like...well, like this, then who is safe?
The best kind of happy is still dipped in a little sadness. I see something amazing, and my heart fills like a balloon, and it hurts. The line between what is happiness and what is sorrow is a wavy watercolor streak that never dries.
At the end of the day, I don't at all think that suffering (necessarily) creates great art. But I know that for me, words are companions in a way that people aren't. Silence is a companion. Solitude is a companion.
And--and to come to my original point--want is a companion. Longing. Hunger. It is a prolonged state of agony that somehow feels good, until it goes too far, hurts too much, makes me self-destructive or unkind to others.
I think I actually write better--certainly more--when I'm on a fixed schedule, disciplined, clear-headed enough to stick to a routine and work resolutely to see a thing from start to finish, each day improving the previous day's effort. It's not possible for me to do this when I'm too sad. And generally, if I'm down, at least a part of why is because I'm not writing regularly or enough.
But contentment generally looks like a bald, fat, shiny man, licking his chops. Whereas hunger is light, lithe, chic. We complain that models are too skinny, but we are looking at them, and we are registering an ideal of beauty--or, more pointedly, glamour. We see a rosy-cheeked new mother, full-breasted, full-hipped, babe on bosom, and we say, ah, beautiful. And some of us say, that's beautiful because it's not me, I'll keep my size 0 (the size itself, a non-number, a nothing!) jeans thankyouverymuch, but, yeah, wow, go womanhood. Motherhood, particularly new motherhood, often can be perceived as a big, milky mess, repulsive--even to new mothers themselves. And breastfeeding, lordy--the connotations in terms of this dynamic (the feeding off the body, the eating of the body --> cannibalism!) can be downright shocking. And the model, meanwhile? Sexless, contained, the spectre of restraint. When it comes to The (female) Body, we are tortured and schizophrenic.
"Artists," though--there is an absurd strip tease between Consumption and Denial. I love excess. I'm just generally glad to keep it in my head, rather than across my body.
The posture of any artist should really only be discussed posthumously, if at all. Hunger-as-muse is illusory. (Muses are illusory.) The desire to be hungry is a distraction. It is the same as the desire to be glamorous. A desire to be is not an action. It is like confusing Facebook with "real life." It is like confusing "real life" with real life. It is thinking too hard, too long, about oneself (hi blogspot!), rather than just doing it: plunging one hand in, hard and swift and deep, pulling out one's own heart still beating, and using it as a goddamn flashlight, a goddamn bomb.
These do not seem to be qualities of the artist.
On every level--creative, psychological, spiritual, emotional, intellectual--the artist is not "meant" to be full, or finished. The artist is meant to rove. To be restless. The artist is not "meant" to be unhappy, but the wandering, the wondering, the constant probing--these activities often create unhappiness, or reveal it.
Of course what I've written so far looks like teaching notes for Kafka's "A Hunger Artist."
It's like, no matter what you're thinking about, Kafka's already written a story about it!
(This was how I felt when I first discovered Kafka, and then, like you, I learned how un-special I was, to feel that way.)
KAFKA! The Musical
Wasn't Zadie Smith supposed to have done this already? Maybe she needs help?
Mary P-S, where are you? After we're done the libretto for YERMA! The Musical, we should work on this one.
Anyway, Brian and I were discussing tonight the possibility of "choosing" happiness. It was a long discussion and parts of it were a fight and I don't want to re-tell it here, but to me it's always an interesting question: can you BE happy? Who are the happy ones? Is it a shutting off, or a turning on? An opening or a closing? A yes or a no? There are the prequel questions too, of what is it that makes each person happy, and can a person ever really change the way she is, etc.
Very recently I have become aware of the absence of a certain scale I used to have, some instinct that was always on, always fairly well-tuned, that told me what to do and how, that told me if I was fucking up and how to make things right and where to go next. These days I find myself asking, when I am upset, 'is this something that would upset other people?', and then wishing that a referee or kind stranger could just follow me invisibly, be that instinct I've misplaced. Each of my feelings is so demanding, explosive, intense--and, well, the result of course is some bad behavior.
I don't really identify myself as anyone other than a human and a mother. I love fiercely the people whom I love so I suppose I am a lover. I write words for money, which doesn't feel like being a writer, and then I write other words because I don't know how not to, it is a thing I do the way some people do other things, and I don't know if this is being a "writer" and I don't feel much attachment to that word although I also don't see the sense in spurning it altogether. It is not for me to say that anything I've ever done is "art" so I don't feel much for being an "artist," either. I like making things. I like making food. Maybe even more than eating it. I like making experiences for my daughter. I liked, earlier today, turning an empty tissue box into a paper-and-glue pot of paper-and-glue flowers. It's a lot better than the last two stories I've written.
What I want to know about discontentment, the feelings of sadness that come and go or come and stay a while and lift and then return, particularly my own such feelings, since this is my blogspot and therefore my little attic at the top of the stairs to play dress-up in and French kiss the back of my hand in, is: can I help it? And more importantly, do I want to? Are they part of me? Are they what I am, or what I do? Do they exist because I write, or do I write because they exist? And will all the happy writers please stand up? And then, squinting a little and seeing another side of this, if I'm ostensibly one of the "well-adjusted ones"--married, child, employment, house, family, friends--and I still feel like...well, like this, then who is safe?
The best kind of happy is still dipped in a little sadness. I see something amazing, and my heart fills like a balloon, and it hurts. The line between what is happiness and what is sorrow is a wavy watercolor streak that never dries.
At the end of the day, I don't at all think that suffering (necessarily) creates great art. But I know that for me, words are companions in a way that people aren't. Silence is a companion. Solitude is a companion.
And--and to come to my original point--want is a companion. Longing. Hunger. It is a prolonged state of agony that somehow feels good, until it goes too far, hurts too much, makes me self-destructive or unkind to others.
I think I actually write better--certainly more--when I'm on a fixed schedule, disciplined, clear-headed enough to stick to a routine and work resolutely to see a thing from start to finish, each day improving the previous day's effort. It's not possible for me to do this when I'm too sad. And generally, if I'm down, at least a part of why is because I'm not writing regularly or enough.
But contentment generally looks like a bald, fat, shiny man, licking his chops. Whereas hunger is light, lithe, chic. We complain that models are too skinny, but we are looking at them, and we are registering an ideal of beauty--or, more pointedly, glamour. We see a rosy-cheeked new mother, full-breasted, full-hipped, babe on bosom, and we say, ah, beautiful. And some of us say, that's beautiful because it's not me, I'll keep my size 0 (the size itself, a non-number, a nothing!) jeans thankyouverymuch, but, yeah, wow, go womanhood. Motherhood, particularly new motherhood, often can be perceived as a big, milky mess, repulsive--even to new mothers themselves. And breastfeeding, lordy--the connotations in terms of this dynamic (the feeding off the body, the eating of the body --> cannibalism!) can be downright shocking. And the model, meanwhile? Sexless, contained, the spectre of restraint. When it comes to The (female) Body, we are tortured and schizophrenic.
"Artists," though--there is an absurd strip tease between Consumption and Denial. I love excess. I'm just generally glad to keep it in my head, rather than across my body.
The posture of any artist should really only be discussed posthumously, if at all. Hunger-as-muse is illusory. (Muses are illusory.) The desire to be hungry is a distraction. It is the same as the desire to be glamorous. A desire to be is not an action. It is like confusing Facebook with "real life." It is like confusing "real life" with real life. It is thinking too hard, too long, about oneself (hi blogspot!), rather than just doing it: plunging one hand in, hard and swift and deep, pulling out one's own heart still beating, and using it as a goddamn flashlight, a goddamn bomb.
6 Comments:
This is an excellent post and beautifully written, thank you.
I have the same questions and struggles, and don't know the answers. I, too, think if I'm not happy now what the hell is it going to take. I both believe and rage against the idea that happiness is a choice. After too much disappointment, striving and suffering, I've shifted my expectations--I just want peace. Maybe that's equally unattainable, another illusion. I hope not.
This especially resonated: "The best kind of happy is still dipped in a little sadness. I see something amazing, and my heart fills like a balloon, and it hurts. The line between what is happiness and what is sorrow is a wavy watercolor streak that never dries.
At the end of the day, I don't at all think that suffering (necessarily) creates great art. But I know that for me, words are companions in a way that people aren't. Silence is a companion. Solitude is a companion."
This is gorgeous: "It is thinking too hard, too long, about oneself (hi blogspot!), rather than just doing it: plunging one hand in, hard and swift and deep, pulling out one's own heart still beating, and using it as a goddamn flashlight, a goddamn bomb."
A flashlight. A bomb. Yes. Yes.
Here's to doing it.
hi ethel, thank you, and thanks for reading.
maybe--and i'll probably deserve a punch for this one--the questions are the answer? there are only questions? and peace is always a good goal, never to be wholly attained...?
goodness it's gotten so dylan thomas-y around here. i need to post some recipes and pictures of cats.
happy new year to you ;) here's to the good fight.
I love it when you've squozen a little bit harder than feels good, Kristen. And I miss you! Which can *actually* be satiated a bit by *reading* you. <3 <3 <3
aw shucks, D. i miss you too. these comment boxes are totally insufficient. xo.
This is something amazing:
"The best kind of happy is still dipped in a little sadness. I see something amazing, and my heart fills like a balloon, and it hurts. The line between what is happiness and what is sorrow is a wavy watercolor streak that never dries."
All I've got is: yes.
This is a great post! I arrived here via Everyday Genius (btw, their link to your blog is incorrect). I don't know anyone that is happy all the time. I know a few optimists, but even they sink once in a while. And I don't think being "well-adjusted" makes a difference. Some of us just have melancholy personalities. It is both good and bad. It can make us hard to live with, and it can also drive us to write. I think I write because of this and not the other way around, although at a certain point the line definitely blurs, as you point out. Writing leads to bouts of not writing and then you end up like one of Raymond Carver's characters: "he was between stories, and he felt despicable." I just try to embrace it, barbs and all.
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