"Finding the extraordinary in the everyday"

TAoN No. 110: A roundup of advice from an array of artists and creators. And more.

May 2

T Magazine, the New York Times’ style magazine, recently ran an issue focused on a combination of day-in-the-life accounts and straight-up advice from a huge variety of artists and creators and performers. I’m often suspicious of such stunts, but this one I found impressive. Lots of the advice really resonated with TAoN themes, and I ended up saving some of my favorite bits of that section — and realized I ought to share those highlights with you!

I guess that’s all the explanation required? Here goes! (Read the whole issue here.)

Kevin Young, 51, poet:

As a high schooler, I wrote terrible poems. But when I realized the subject of writing wasn’t far away from me but close by — in the field behind your house, or the dirt beneath your feet — I understood what a poem could be. I wrote about my parents, my grandparents, my family in Louisiana — people I didn’t see in the books I read. Understanding that literature was about them was probably the biggest leap for me. I didn’t discover some confidence in myself; it was more like, “I have to tell this story.” Doing so was very urgent and important. I stand by that. It was crucial to learn that poetry was about everyday people, places and things. It was finding the extraordinary in the everyday.

Sutton Foster, 47, actor:

Be a sponge. Listen and observe. You don’t have to know everything, because how could you? When you’re first starting out, you can get trapped by this feeling that you have to know everything. But that’s not true. There are people I’m still learning from. ... You’re constantly absorbing and learning throughout your life. That doesn’t ever stop.

Ayana Mathis, 48, writer:

[My first] book was a gift, and what happened to it was a gift. But the cost of a big success like that, particularly with a first book, was that I didn’t quite know who or how to be. Part of the bargain is that you have to take off your small-“W” writer sweatpants and put on your capital-“A” author cap and go out to talk to folks. I sort of lost my muscle for writing, and my discernment. It took a while, and a lot of trial and error, for me to find a new way to write and a new kind of privacy. I don’t mean like Kanye and the paparazzi. I mean an internal world that’s unassailed by external voices.
One of the great things about writing, which is also one of the awful things about it, is that no two books are alike. You never fully learn how to do it, but that’s a good barometer. If you’re utterly confident, that’s a red flag. But if you get to the end of a project and think, “It’s not perfect, but I’ve done everything I know how to do, and maybe more,” that’s deeply satisfying and completely personal. It’s between you and the thing you made.

Nayland Blake, 62, interdisciplinary artist:

I had a really amazing and very abbreviated studio visit with [the painter] Agnes Martin when I was a college student … . I had this whole rap about why I was doing what I was doing. I was making these very bad paintings, and I had all these justifications for why they looked the way they did. She came in and I ran my mouth at her for about 10 minutes. Then she looked around and said, “You think too much about other people,” and walked out the door. My jaw was on the floor. It shocked me. It was like that scene in the movies where people babble, and then someone slaps them to stop them. She wasn’t mean, but she was exactly right. I’d imagined that being an artist was like being a good student who could figure out the assignment and become a teacher’s pet. That visit made me a better artist.

Tony Kushner, 65, playwright:

It feels like my job now is to figure out how to remain engaged with the world, in love with the world, turned on by the world; how to remain capable of delight in the pleasures of inventing and imagining; how to keep seeking out plausible occasions for hope while remaining as brave and as honest as I’m capable of being; how not to despair; how to believe that generating meaning is the surest way to defeat despair; and, while continuing to try to do all these lively things that writing has always demanded and needed, to keep a watchful eye on mortality and incorporate what I’m seeing into what I write. …
OK, advice: Try to get enough sleep. Eat sensibly. Stay politically active. Keep reading; keep rereading; keep observing; keep synthesizing. Do not despise the young (even when they’re insufferable, rude, frightening). Locate within yourself the primal sympathy and hold tight to it; find soothing thoughts that spring out of human suffering, but stay angry; feel free to toy with the faith that looks through death, as long as you remember that it’s most likely a placebo; and be grateful for years that bring the philosophic mind, even if they also bring wattles and wrinkles and digestive infirmities. And at least consider the possibility that silence in a writer isn’t necessarily failure.

Lynda Benglis, 80, visual artist:

Don’t close yourself off. Whether it’s a room of one’s own, or revisiting your memories of self at various stages in your growth, or buying yourself a collection of materials, or going on a hike and collecting natural artifacts, or listening to your favorite music orchestrated publicly or selected privately, or finding new favorites or new friends, or simply going to the gym, on a bike ride, a horseback ride or playing in the snow or on the beach — context is everything. Put it into play and into work.

And finally, this one doesn’t really strike a particularly TAoN theme, but there’s something about it I find appealing — maybe especially as a note to end on:

Ryan O’Connell, 35, writer and actor:

I’m also going to use an ugly word: “ambition.” I’ve always been very, very ambitious, and we don’t talk about that in relation to our work because it makes it feel less chic. It makes it feel premeditated. Every profile I read of a successful person is like, “I was just walking around! I don’t know how I got there! It fell into my lap!” Actually, babe, I don’t think so. It’s very rare that someone gets plucked from obscurity without their consent and thrust into the spotlight. I wouldn’t feel embarrassed about wanting things, or wanting to be heard. You need a sprinkle of delusion.

It’s true. A sprinkle of delusion is exactly what I need. You?

The Art of Noticing is Rob Walker’s newsletter about attention, creativity, and staying human. Your support makes it possible.

In other news

I had a great time talking to Polly Campbell for her Simply Said podcast. Listen here, and read her (related) recent newsletter installment on attention here. Thanks, Polly!
Friend of TAoN Gary Hustwit’s new documentary is about Brian Eno!
Sometimes there’s something completely absorbing about someone else’s weird enthusiasm. Case in point: I am thoroughly charmed by this singing expert going gaga over the vocals in Rush’s “Tom Sawyer.”
Top-notch bollard creativity:
James Gammell @Destraudo
I found this bollard last week and I still think about it.
April 30th 2022
12,718 Retweets174,137 Likes
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Okay that’s it!

As always, I value your feedback (suggestions, critiques, positive reinforcement, constructive insults, etc.), as well as your tips or stories or personal noticing rituals, things we need a word for, and of course your icebreakers: consumed@robwalker.net. Or use the comments.

The Art of Noticing