The Orange Landline & The Purpose of Art
On mindless living, breaking rules, and Rick Rubin’s art as confrontation
Hello Friends,
I’ve been dreading turning 50, not because I fear aging, but because my dad died at 50. I dreaded turning 47, too, the age my mom became a widow. I was 17 then, my sister 15. I’ve no memory of the few days he was in a coma after the stroke, or his funeral. Except this: I’m alone in our small flat, folding a shirt in the living room, facing the balcony. The city is sinking under the nightfall. My back is turned to the hallway. I feel the emptiness of space closing in, the front door behind me. I remember my father’s footsteps. I feel uneasy, walk to the orange landline, dial my friend and ask if I can come visit. I don’t tell her that I’m scared.
A few weeks after I turned 47, a former love died by an overdose. He was 44, a gifted poet with a sharp sense of humor, an irreverent wit, a wild kindness, and a shadow side. For a few years, he made me feel singular, albeit often suspended between intense desire and the geographical distance between us, like Marina Abramović and Ulye in Rest Energy. When he died, an echo of my mother’s fate rang alongside the clamor of his death.
When I was in elementary school, the evening news warned parents about a youth “cult” whose members wore black, listened to morbid music and allegedly participated in suicide rituals and satanic worship. One segment ended with Bauhaus’ “Bella Lugosi” and Peter Murphy’s hypnotic voice booming through our living room. The music stood out in stark opposition to the candy spinning on the radio. Its nexus of existentialism, dark aesthetics, and eroticism had a profound effect on my understanding that art is meant to keep us from mindless living.
“Art is confrontation,” says Rick Rubin in The Creative Act. It is the opposite of conformity. But what exactly does that mean in practice? To challenge broadly accepted conventions? Visual art is typically displayed in galleries and museums, not in football stadiums. We find poetry in literary journals, not on pizza boxes. Artist bios are composed of accomplishments, books authored, and awards. They do not quantify rejections, failed projects, or financial fiascos.
Then there are rules that are inherently more subtle. In the States we are told that good writing is concise, clear, and unsentimental. And since there are so few works in translation, that standard is rarely challenged. Other times we create our own conventions. We turn our prior successes into personal directives. If we write a poem that receives praise, we might be tempted to use it as a personal standard and repeat its techniques over and over, creating a similar poem. But that’s production, not art.
Art often evolves from errors and accidents. Technical missteps can lead to new styles and directions. Art can also evolve from the intentional push back against rules. There are two ways to do so, according to Rubin. One is to “try the opposite.” The other is to “double down, to take the shades you’re currently working in to the extreme.” He says:
“If you’re a sculptor, for example, you might start with the idea that what you’re making has to exist in the material world. That would be a rule.
To explore the opposite would be to consider how a sculpture can exist without being a physical object. Perhaps your best work could be conceived digitally or conceptually, with no solid footprint. Or maybe it won’t be your best work, but the thought process might lead you somewhere novel and intriguing.”
I like his suggestion to experiment with balance. And I’d argue that the experimentation can be taken even further. Maybe that stubborn poem would work better as an essay. That thick memoir might be more vibrant as a collection of micro pieces. Or that old grief that resists language might need paint and canvas to express itself.
One of the rules subtly pushed on artists is to “pick our lanes.” While academic programs, bookstores, and grant institutions categorize artists by their primary disciplines, and marketing gurus tell us to niche and specialize, many of us work across genres and disciplines. Traversing modes is a strength and a logical application of the curious, creative mind. It also nudges us to truly confront our purpose: What am I after?
After my father died, we discovered that he wrote poems—some to his estranged first daughter and some in which he imagined his own funeral. He was a voracious reader, but no one knew that he wrote. Many years later, the first poem I wrote in English was to him. The piece came to me like a feverish stream of messages in a central telegraph office. I tried to express what was beyond my grasp, as if the poem would help me understand him better. Since then, each of my book manuscripts, including the one I’m working on now, included a piece about him. So far, though, I’ve pulled every one of them out. They were not great poems, but they did give way to better ones.
This weekend marked my partner David’s 50th. Mine is in December. Approaching the age my Dad was when he died makes me see things differently. The unresolved strain between us leading up to his death has been ripening into a strangely sweet awareness. At 50 my father was nowhere near done doing what he wanted to do and becoming the person he wanted to be. An avid gardener, he spent the months leading up to his death tending to the earth—his bed of strawberries, an entire kiwi orchard, a small olive grove, a pomegranate and persimmon tree, rows of chard, potatoes, peas, arugula, radicchio, a hedge of currant bushes—all in the patch of dirt around the island home where he was born. He died, and the garden continued becoming long after him.
Perhaps it’s this heightened awareness of mortality, but now more than ever, creative energy feels like a weight in my body seeking release. I can’t seem to find enough hours in the day for the work I want to do. I’m inpatient and want faster progress. I find myself rushing as if a cosmic thunderstorm is rolling in. But art requires me to push back against the firmest rule—time itself—and to tend to it as if time wasn’t a factor at all. It asks me to stand in the storm of making and let time thicken, to lean back in trust, to wipe books and paint brushes off the kitchen counter to make space for birthday cake, to savor another year, to be reminded that art saves us from oblivion.
Love, Andrea
Starting October 8th, I’ll be teaching a 6-week advanced poetry writing workshop through Writers.com. If you’d like to get a spot at early bird pricing, register here.