Here Be Lions
Here Be Lions Podcast
Why Make Art?
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Why Make Art?

And why share it?
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* I know you’re all waiting for the History of Love Part II— don’t worry! It’s still coming on February 12th :) In the meantime, here’s an essay about some of the thoughts that have been rolling around in my brain about why we make art and why we share it.

If you’re my friend, or even a close acquaintance, then every October you've probably been forced to listen to me go back and forth on a question that has plagued me seasonally for a decade: should I get an MFA? In order to determine if I should apply to MFA programs, I made excel spreadsheets containing the names of my favorite writers with columns like:

Masters? (Heti and July, no. Krauss, Yuknavitch, yes) 

Age of first published book? (Morrison, 39, Robinson, 37, Carson, 36, Rooney, 27) 

Day Job? (teaching) 

The question I thought I was asking was: how do I make this whole life as an artist thing work? How am I going to get the money, the stability, and the experience to create out-of-this-world irreplaceable fiction? I’ve even emailed famous writers asking for their opinions: what should I do with my life?!?!? 

This winter, I'm realizing that the questions I've really been asking are: is my art worthy? And does my voice matter? 

My partner is a musician. When I see her perform something magical happens. The art she is literally creating in that singular moment is conducted through the bodies of others and transformed within their beings and from their bodies, energy is born. You can feel it. It swells. There is a call and response. Her work transforms and is transformed in an instant. I have never felt that with my art. 

I want to apply to an MFA for the same reason I send my work out for publication in literary journals– I want the Art Gods to bless me! I want to feel chosen—lifted from the crowd of dull beings and deemed creative! Inspirational! Genius! I want to kneel before the Gods of Art and be knighted by their steely grace. Yes! the MFA will say, you are worthy! Please go on! Please don't stop

I was in a poetry workshop a few weeks ago with Andre Hoilette (he's amazing by the way, take a class), and he said that publishing is a capitalistic endeavor. I’ve never heard that before, but it resonates deeply. He went on to say that publishers are looking for what will sell and what will sell is dominated by the whims of the “audience” which is essentially a collective consciousness that is, in and of itself, manipulated by those who are trying to sell. 

Money legitimizes my art. When I give someone my story and they give me a check, there is an implicit sense of value. My first poetry publication paid me fifteen dollars and I was ecstatic. I never cashed the check. I kept it as an artifact to remind me that what I created was worth something to someone once!

When I say I'm a writer people inevitably ask where they can buy my book. I'm always slightly embarrassed to say they can't buy it in a bookstore. It was published by a micropress, so it's not available to indie booksellers. Alternatively,  being published by Simon and Schuster, the Paris Review or Granta is like being promoted to the corner office with a sexy view. You've made it! You've been deemed worthy by the most legitimate brands writers and readers know. 

My eternal oscillation about graduate school can be boiled down to the fear that without an MFA or a brand name publication I am not a writer.  In other words, if I haven't been paid, does my art still count? 

I know many artists who realize in their mid 30s that they're never going to be famous like they thought. They're never going to make six figures on their short films or their poetry and an existential depression sets in. How can you be an artist when life demands your time, your energy in other directions? How can you call yourself a writer when no one knows your name? Are you an artist when forty hours a week you sit in zoom meetings and answer slack messages? If you don’t wake up making art and fall asleep dreaming of your work, if you spend more time putting the kids to bed and washing macaroni and cheese out of the couch are you really an artist?  I watch as these people pack up that marshmallowy, creative, joyful, oozing, difficult artist within themselves—containing their messiness—and can't help but think: you're missing the beat that you were born with.

And yet, here I am, at a similar crossroads. Self-publishing is very taboo in the writing industry. If you publish your own work, you’re considered without craft or talent. There’s also an assumption of ego or narcissism in the writer (but who are we kidding, aren’t all writers narcissists? See George Orwell). Art made outside of the tender, loving gaze of the Art Gods drips with hubris. Who said you could speak! We have not graced you with a megaphone! I struggle with profound feelings of shame when I share my work outside the traditional bounds of the publishing world. 

But there are some self-publishing success stories. When I worked at Airbnb, I met Jerry McGill. To this day he is the most dedicated writer I’ve ever met. His first book, a memoir, Dear Marcus, A Letter to the Boy Who Shot Me was self-published at first and then bought by a publisher. Laurie Moore wrote a stunning review in The New York Times. His latest book, Bed Stuy, is even better.

Sometimes when I go through all the cringe-worthy moments of my life, I replay a conversation I had with Jerry wherein I, a self-centered, white, 23-year-old bemoaned my inability to make a living as a writer. Jerry, gently but firmly, suggested that I might have a better chance than him as the publishing industry was inherently racist. I didn't really believe him (insert white privilege here). This was 2015. He asked me to see which publishing houses had Black or Brown editors and how many of The New York Times bestsellers with Black or Brown characters had white authors. Spoiler alert: they were all white. I think this was the first time the benevolent Art God that smiled down on us and bopped us on the head, saying either you're an artist! Or you suck!, became less like a gleaming, omnipotent, objective deity and more like the proctor of an ACT exam. 

My mom says that I'm the type of person who will cut off my nose to spite my face, and it’s true. A kid at my high school who I thought was as dumb as cement dust was awarded a perfect score on the ACT. So, I decided I wouldn't take any standardized tests. As a result of not taking the ACT or SAT, I couldn't apply to most of my top choice colleges, but I couldn't stand the thought of being anonymously measured against cement dust kid and coming up short. I'd rather not play the game at all then suffer being flattened in a system so unfair. (I said this as a privileged white girl who attended an arts magnet school in Denver, Colorado.) When it comes to applying to MFA programs, I feel a similar panic at the prospect of being judged, of impartiality, and ultimately, of failure.

But where does that leave me as an artist, an MFA-less writer? We've established that, for me, art gains its meaning through connection—when artist and lover are united and transformed. The dialogue between two disparate bodies. But if that were truly enough, I wouldn't quit sharing work here, one of the few places in which my art has provided connection or meaningful transference of energy. Art needs connection, but as much as I’d rather cut off my nose, I also deeply crave approval. 

And yet, the benefit of publication isn’t merely in approval. Publication provides a space where writers can refine and enhance their work through the judicious gaze of the other. Mark Mayer (a brilliant writer who has  an MFA) said that the most beneficial gift an MFA provides is a community of believers. Yes! Writers can't grow in a vacuum. You need the friction of your idea bouncing off another in order to create dissonance and energy. You can't write alone. Writing with other people is uncomfortable, it hurts, but there is transfiguration.

Nothing I've written hasn't been edited by talented people I respect. Like Kaisa Cummings, Daria Reaven and Alyse Knorr. My partner read an early draft of The Family and said she wasn't engaged until the scene when Miriam and her father were looking in the mirror. That scene was halfway through the book! It hurt. New love doesn't take kindly to criticism. But I made that scene the opening, and it's a better book because of her advice. We can't become better people alone (except, perhaps, if you're a Buddhist monk), and we can't become better artists in isolation. It's difficult to take responsibility for yourself without others to hold you accountable. 

Still, whenever I think about applying to an MFA I look through my work and think that it  will never measure up. It’s too personal! It’s memoir! There is no veil between narrator and author. Where is the craft? Where is the story?

In A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, George Saunders says, 

I teach “The Singers” to suggest to my students how little choice we have about the kind of writer we will turn out to be. As young writers, we all have romantic dreams of being a writer of a certain kind, of joining a certain lineage…But sometimes the world, via its tepid response to prose written in that mode, tells us that we are not, in fact, that kind of writer…We have to become whatever writer is capable of producing the necessary level of energy... This writer may turn out to bear little resemblance to the writer we dreamed of being. She is born, it turns out, for better or worse, out of that which we really are: the tendencies we've been trying, all these years, in our writing and maybe even in our lives, to suppress or deny or correct, the parts of ourselves about which we might even feel a little ashamed.

My work that creates energy and generates movement in the mind of the reader is the work that's truly personal, real. I don't mean literally real or “this is what really happened”, but emotionally bare. If I could be so bold as to say so, my talent as a writer lies in my ability to be emotionally honest to the moment. The writer William Henderson said, you should ask yourself “what should not be exposed” and that's where your story truly lies. I took a class with Benjamin Whitmer and he said that most writers will write until they get to the scary scene, the emotional scene, and instead of writing about what occurs in that dark place the writer cuts to the next. Our goal as writers is to write through that scene and out to the other side. 

And yet, why expose myself to the public? Does exposure make art? No,I don't think so. Does a newsletter where I lay my thoughts bare make art? No, I don't think so. My most recent novel, ORACLES, is experimental autofiction. ORACLES is about my experience tending to my estranged father as he died. I wanted to explore the central questions: how do you give your anger an end? and how do you love right? While I don’t consider it to be a memoir, I wanted to be as honest and objective as possible. Just because the narrative centered around my emotional experience didn’t mean I wanted to glorify or even condone my behavior. I wrote the book alone in my apartment in the fall of 2020 and it was a very painful experience because, in order to be emotionally honest, I thought I needed to be exposed–not as in “make something visible by uncovering it” but reveal my true, objectionable nature. The first draft of the book contained a scene where I described the worst thing I've ever done. Even writing about it now floods the cavity behind my lungs with acid. All my early readers agreed it should be cut. But why?! I wondered.?! The reader needed to know how horrible of a person I was! They needed to see what I'm capable of! Could I dare write a book without this darkness?!? Yes, the readers all said. The scene was like self-flagellation. It was abusive and served no artful purpose. 

I realized my book wasn’t objective–I wasn’t letting the reader decide. I inherently believed I was bad, and I’d crafted my argument to force the reader, and myself, into a corner of self-hatred as a way to justify this loathing. However, art can't be the tool we use to exercise  our inner demons just because we need a witness to all our betrayals. Art can't be the machine we use to wring out the vapid, useless parts of ourselves and ask, forlorn and desperate, now that you see me for who I really am can you still love me!? Art needs to take what life you have to give and metamorphose into its own being, become a creature with its own pulsing heart. My book has a lot of me in it and a lot that I'm not proud to share, but I've left those scenes because they flow to a greater understanding—as in sympathetic awareness or tolerance. Not a moral, not a “this-is-what-life-means” platitude but hope that each scene carries an emotional weight that transcends the self and, ideally, touches on a more universal feeling.

My art that conducts energy is deeply personal and exposed. I’m not the writer I’d hoped to be—the intellectual, all-seeing Anne Carson or the playful and surreal Jeanette Winterson. I identify with Saunders when he says of a story he’d just finished:

When I finished the story, I could see that it was the best thing I had ever written… The story was oddly made, slightly embarrassing–it exposed my actual taste, which, as it turned out, was kind of working class and raunchy and attention seeking. I held that story up against the stories I loved… and felt that I let the form down. So, this moment of supposed triumph (I'd “found my voice”) was also sad… 

This is a big moment for any artist…when we have to decide whether to accept a work of art that we have to admit we weren't in control of as we made it and which we are not entirely sure we approve. It is less, less than we wanted it to be, and yet it's more, too. It's small and a bit pathetic, judged against the work of the great masters, but there it is, all ours.

When I was twenty-six, I felt artistically and emotionally starved, so I quit my job and moved to New Zealand. On one of my first days there, my friend, Erika, was driving us to Piha beach outside of Auckland. I'm not sure what prompted me, but as we wound our way through lush, wet earth on a tiny New Zealand road, I asked her if she believed she was worthy of love. She said yes. Without pause, without doubt. I was moved by her certainty and also a little devastated. I’d never felt that I was worthy of love, but I wanted to feel as assured in my own value one day. 

Writing and sharing your work is similar to love in that you're offering up your body, your mind, your desires, and wounds and asking: do you want me? Do you desire what I have to offer? It's admitting to another: I want your attention. I want you to look at me and desire to know more. But, just as in love, you can't wait for your beloved to judge and weigh all that you are and determine your worthiness. To move forward with a reader, a lover, you have to offer your voice, your tenderness, knowing in your heart that this is who you are and because it is you and it is honest it is also worthy. 

After a workshop I took with an author, we were talking about my novel and I felt concerned that people wouldn't understand my protagonist. She shrugged and said, well they're just not your readers. What? I didn't have to write for everyone? My readers would come to me and not the other way around? It was simultaneously liberating and terrifying. Just who were my readers?

Just as you can't be a harmful and toxic person and expect to be loved (although I truly believe that everyone, even harmful and toxic people, are worthy of love), you also can't expect people to engage with your work without personal effort and growth. What an artist does, George Sanders says, is take responsibility for their art. And isn't that what we do as people in relationships? Take responsibility for our work? To commit to becoming better daughters, sisters, lovers? To own our choices and make better ones? 

In the end, though, while art yearns for connection and approval—that is not why I am driven to create. If I was the Count of Monte Cristo and imprisoned on Château d'If, I’d still find a way to write. Alone in a windowless cage without time or matter—I would still make art. 

I am driven to make art because I am tormented by confusion in this life. Don DeLillo says:

Art reminds us that we're alive, that you have something in you that's receptive to the mysteries. You see yourself in the art that you love, you feel something sweep through you that you can't analyze or speak clearly about, makes you feel alive in the world, reminds you that you have a range of being that is deeper and sweeter than you knew.

I'm not content with mystery, but I honor its presence. While I demand an examined life, art is an attempt to find peace, or at least some minimal comfort in a world of limitless mystery. In his essay, “The Creative Process”, James Baldwin writes, “The entire purpose of society is to create a bulwark against the inner and the outer chaos, in order to make life bearable and to keep the human race alive.” To be an artist, he says, is to tear down that wall—let the chaos through. 

It’s through art that I can bear the chaos flooding through this body. The question isn’t: should I make art? But: do I deserve to share what I create? And the answer to both is: it doesn’t really matter, do what you want.

While the question itself of whether to get an MFA is often driven by pressure from the publishing industry and gate keeping set by capitalism etc… I don’t have to succumb to such pressure. Through thoughtful investigation into the pros and cons I’ve decided that, for now, I’m going to forge my own path and try to think outside of the conventions of what it traditionally means to be an MFA-awarded writer.

As much as I crave approval and connection, they are often the desires that fill me with shame, and I’m not really interested in being ashamed of who I am any longer.  

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Sammie Downing