The surest way to defeat despair

Gustav Klimt - Birch in a Forest, 1903

From Art of Noticing newsletter; these are collected from a recent NYT Magazine piece about advice from artists.

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.

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.