What Makes You Feel Alive?
F1 racing, pirate parties, and Raphael's V&A cartoons
What do you do to make you feel alive?
It was almost midnight on a humid June evening along the tree lined sidewalk of East Capital street. I stood across from a pirate, or at least a man dressed as one for the night. He had on a mostly unbuttoned linen blouse and eyeliner which had started to migrate downwards on his face as the night had worn on. We were both, it seems, searching for respite for the noise and heat of the (pirate themed) party in the house in front of us.
I had just heard a lengthy exposition on F1 racing, a subject I had previously known next to nothing about and now found myself deeply intrigued by. The pirate was an ammeter racer turned enthusiast who spent many weekends at a racing course where, he told me, having his face inches from hard asphalt while going insanely fast was the "closest he felt to being alive."
Thoughtfully, as he had just spend the past 30 minutes in a monologue, he turned the question to me - "What do you do to feel alive?"
I stood there, humid night air pressing against my bare neck, the smell of damp brick and summer nights, flicker of street lamps through magnolia leaves, and I couldn't answer because it all does.
I feel alive when the phone rings, when I fall asleep crying, when I make marks on paper that is so insignificant in the grand scheme of things it's mind boggling. I feel alive when I drink my tea too soon and it burns my tongue and when I walk home in the dark listening to a song that reminds me of spring semester junior year of college way too loud and I pass someone else on the street and look into their eyes and wonder what it might be like to be another person and how strange and separate our lives our but also how similar.
Sometimes, often, I get dull to this, like my sweaty pirate friend, and that is why we need art.
Poetry reminds us to watch the delicate way in which a grasshopper washes its face and to notice the small of the tangerine as we peel it. Music reconnects us to our past. Attending a concert makes us feel more present, more content than we have in a long time. Hearing the sound of a symphony - a hundred instruments making vibrations on metal and wood and string that somehow come together to create Sibelius - that will never not make me feel alive. Walking into the dark, quiet Raphael cartoon room at the V&A - the fragile paper drawings filling the walls, the dramatic yet ordinary drape of the disciples cloaks - why am I standing here looking at wrinkles in fabric for 10 minutes??
Thank goodness for art. It's saved me from having to spend my weekends racing in circles around a cement track in Maryland just to feel alive. No shade to F1.
Enjoying… the new record breaking KIimt! Klimt's Lady With a Fan broke the record recently for the highest public art sale in Europe for $108.4 million at Sotheby's London. Brexit has been rough on the London art market and the European art market in general has lagged way behind the New York scene for years. This was a much needed boost of confidence.
Reading… well, not yet. But Claire Dederer has a new book Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma that I am very excited to read. It expands on her viral Paris Review essay, “What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?" This dilemma of whether, and how, we can separate art from the artist is one I have often grappled with and am curious to hear her take.
Inspired by… can I change this category to depressed by for this week?? I recently bought some heavy duty brush cleaner at my local Blick at an attempt to revive my heavily abused oil paint brushes. However, after leaving them to soak for 24 hours, as the package recommended, the bristles are now completely splayed and I'm afraid they are all entirely ruined. I'm very distraught. Please send advice and prayers.
Listening to… Zach Bryan. Someone recently introduced me to his music and even though there are more country influences in his songs than I'd usually listen to, you can't listen to the harmonica and not feel like summer.
Question of the Week
“When do you feel most alive?"
"The artist brings to our senses and through them to our whole being something of the depth of our world and of ourselves, something of that mystery of being."
—Paul Tillich