If an Artist Feels
Issue 166
I wore a sweater in Panama for about forty seconds. The sweater was just right for the plane, a little uncomfortable in the terminal, and then hilariously, masochistically overbearing in the parking lot. Wearing a sweater as a second layer in Panama makes about as much sense as wearing a Panama hat in the arctic. Hot air is frequently described as thick, or as a wall, but this was a first: I had never seen clouds of steam so full and pervasive that they resembled a northern fog. How I recalled the cool, crisp air of summer in the Moroccan desert in these moments, especially when I spotted, I believe, a gecko lathering itself with some lotion alongside some very tired and unmotivated flies.
And I wasn’t exactly unaccustomed to the heat. Not only do I prefer the heat to the cold, but my flight had just arrived from Brazil, which now seemed to take a rather crisp feel, the summertime weather in São Paulo enough to trigger goosebumps when compared to Panama’s inferno. So there I was, swimming in my clothes, squinting against the sun, the asphalt branding the bottom of my shoes—with these moments of sautéing still, even after a few years, singed into my mind.
Just as a scent can yank my thoughts into the past, I have a catalogue of memories that are linked to extreme temperatures, and those memories seem, I believe, more vivid, more visceral, more noteworthy, than other memories—even when the specifics don’t contain anything beyond the sensation of temperature. The imprint of extreme weather with such fidelity appears similar to how passion and intensity and drama prompt everlasting sensations. With argument, pain, loss, error, embarrassment, shame, regret, and, at least for me, temperature, the memories are always striking and always available for a nighttime, sleepless inspection, without any hope for the grace of forgetfulness.
In one gust of memory, I feel the sticky, oppressive heat of the New York City subway, the month August, the time noon, the train halted, a layer of grime atop my skin—the air is stagnant, I smell sweat, garbage, there are heavy exhales against my neck, a wet arm jammed against my lower back; and I also feel, now in Tirana, years later, the sensation of breathing hazy air on a balcony in the midafternoon, the entire city dressed in a white glow, my throat dry, my skin drenched, the sun harsh, relentless, its painful heat a weight against my body, when my hand grasps a metal railing and then snaps backward; and then I feel, too, the density of air on an empty rooftop in Marrakech so many years ago, long after the sun has set—it is still heavy, muggy, too thick for my lungs, there’s a veneer of moisture on my arms, with the nighttime winds simply shoving more heat into my face.
But to convey these sensations is tricky. As I write these lines, the temperature is mild, almost imperceptible, yet I am attempting to recall the experience of sunlight against my skin, to articulate the fatigue and exhaustion and ferocity that comes with heat so that you, too, can inhabit those sensations. Thus my act of memory, and my strain to place words on the page, emerges from a desire to spark your empathy, to have you experience a sensation that wasn’t yours. And empathy does seem to be the right word, as I want to grasp, corral, and then shape the sensations inside my mind into coherent sentences that will, if I perform the trick just right, stimulate you to feel.
Perhaps this is a little controlling of me. Perhaps this is a slightly authoritarian desire. Perhaps wanting you to feel the sensation of heat merely because you happen to have stumbled upon these paragraphs reveals something a bit distasteful about me. Perhaps a more gracious reading of my desire asserts that stirring your emotions with my words brings us closer—that the sharing of my memory by your reading provides an intimacy that only writer and reader can experience. Perhaps an even more gracious reading of my desire asserts that these words might trigger you to abruptly remember events from your own life, with my creation igniting a memory in your mind that I didn’t know existed. But perhaps that desire is also a little controlling.
I do imagine that nearly every writer starts out with some elusive passion for expression. That’s difficult to define and not exactly novel as a goal, but it obviously comes with an impulse toward the page, toward the crafting of sensations into sentences. When this desire appears at a young age, the root is probably too complicated to pinpoint, but surely there’s something underneath the external, verbalized need to scribble with a pen, with every creative act, in some ways, an expression of how the artist wants to shape the world—it is, more specifically, a desire to wrestle control from complexity and disorder and despair.
Even in the more highfalutin beliefs around pure, childlike creativity, there’s an implicit sense that the artist spots a gap somewhere in the world, or that the artist uncovers what’s been missing, and that creativity is a manifestation of that sensation. Yet there’s still the curious question of what comes next for the artist with the superior vision. And there’s a more curious question about how much tossing creations into the world betrays a desire for control. Some artists want an audience to feel. Or to understand. Perhaps even to believe. And some artists want to unleash a primal scream, conveying what’s visceral to them just like a screaming child in a restaurant who, surely, affects everyone’s meal.
A maestro stands before an orchestra, determining tempo and volume and orienting the entire composition toward a particular interpretation—but what about control? How much does the maestro relish authority in those moments? When the music starts, when it stops, what is accentuated. Both the actions of the musicians and the ears of the audience are hostage to the maestro’s baton. Are the lifetimes of practice and the striving toward the very few classical musical positions not just a little bit about savoring that authority?
A horror writer labors deep into the night and struggles to envision the ideal scene. One that frightens, repulses, and disorients. One that leaves readers shocked, anxious, that compels them to turn the pages faster. Where’s the line between adoring a delicious, mischievous creation, and a step into sadism?
A painter grips a fine-bristle brush and dabs just the slightest highlight on a portrait, attempting to capture a little sadness, or a little happiness, maybe a little ambivalence. The desire is to imprison the sensation—to seize what the artist feels with brushstrokes and reveal it for viewers. But how much desire, in that creation, is about compelling the viewer to perceive? Is the artist indifferent to reaction, uninterested in whether anybody even looks, or is the desire to stir emotion? If the painter wants to beguile, enchant, or charm, does the painter actually want to control?
When an artist says that they want to touch, or influence, I step backward. Sentimentality, most especially, causes me to flee. This is unearned emotion, this is telling the audience what to feel: the sensation of being an artist’s toy is what I most resent. And everyone who is attuned to this shortcoming gives a subtle lift to their eyebrows whenever a storyline appears suspiciously dramatic. A character may cry or celebrate, they may succeed or fail, a story might collapse into tragedy, yet these emotional climaxes must feel genuine, they must occur as natural, undeniable results of creation—not as mere methods to tug at the emotions of the audience, not as mere words that prompt a reader, for instance, to feel the heat of a harsh sunlight.
Rather than push a character toward a volcanic moment in a novel, a writer might choose, instead, to nudge the reader toward an emotional reaction. Living as an artist’s plaything feels manipulative, uncomfortable, there’s a sensation of unease, a sensation that comes whenever you realize that you’re treated as an instrument to be played. The storyline stops in these moments, and the only goal seems to be a rather controlling one of wanting to strum your limbic system.
Nothing prevents a creation that triggers tears or laughs or inspiration. Great artists catalyze reactions, but those reactions are earned: they’re a byproduct of an actual journey, and not simply the result of a different, more deceitful objective, one that simply wants to control tears or laughs or inspiration. To complain about sentimentality in a creation is to complain about the lack of emotion in a creation. It is to observe passion, but to notice that nothing intrinsic to the art accounts for its appearance. What’s seen, instead, is a simulacrum of emotion, a desire to control emotion, a desire to mold a creation toward a predictable reaction, and that false note just might diminish the real sensation.
And perhaps that’s why I can sometimes admire all those artists who sincerely call themselves entertainers—whether they’re musicians or writers or any other performer. As much as the literary world enjoys pointing out the impurities of popular fiction, I, just occasionally, and not too loudly, wonder if that’s exactly backward. If you’re consumed with a desire to affect, agitate, persuade, to make a reader feel the sensation of heat, perhaps that’s a little less pure than the artist who arrives without that need for control, because they are, instead, looking outward for their purpose, and simply creating with the desire to delight.
That’s really thought provoking ... it helps me pinpoint this troubling sense with some writers that they are merely manipulating me, a manipulation that I sometimes resent.
“ Wearing a sweater as a second layer in Panama makes about as much sense as wearing a Panama hat in the arctic.” 🤌