Too Busy Surviving to Argue 'Bout Darwin, Darlin'

After winning last weekend’s Wimbledon Women’s Singles Tennis Championship, Serena Williams was interviewed and asked about what the Wimbledon title meant to her considering the personal and professional setbacks she has encountered in the past two years. Williams referenced her bouts with both minor injuries (a lacerated foot obtained from stepping on a piece of glass at a nightclub) and major health concerns (a pulmonary embolism), did the professional athlete’s duty of thanking all the right people (“without the support of my mom and dad I wouldn’t be where I am today, etc., etc.), and said all the expected niceties. But after wrapping up the usual post-match fluff (“my opponent fought hard out there today, etc., etc.,”) Ms. Williams did something completely unexpected: she actually said something genuine that led me to think about life and art.

The interviewer asked something along the lines of, “When you were injured and unable to compete, how much did you miss playing tennis?” It was a softball, a generic question that sports fans have come to expect from the commentary staff at major networks. What was Ms. Williams supposed to say in response? Of course she missed playing tennis; if she didn’t she wouldn’t be sitting in an interview after winning the Wimbledon final talking about tennis! But this wasn’t the direction of Ms. Williams’ reply. Instead she said (and I paraphrase) that during her time of injury she had little time to focus on getting back to the sport she loved because she was too busy focusing on surviving.

The interviewer looked semi-pissed/let down/bored at the response. I’m sure he wanted to hear something like “I thought about tennis each and every moment of my injury and rehabilitation. In fact, it was my love for the sport that got me back on me feet again, and I thank God for tennis because without it I don’t know if I would have had anything to look forward to after my recovery.” Instead, Ms. Williams said, “It was nice to know that tennis would be there when I got better, but during my struggles there were more important things to think about.”

It’s very Western, in the Rocky IV sense, to think about volume/intensity/duration of struggle as a deciding and qualifying factor in future success. People glorify the idea that when someone is down, the work they do (By themselves! With no one else’s help!) to get back up is more important than the fact that they actually get back up (or even desire to get back up). This idea is especially prevalent amongst the masses when the struggling person in question is an artist (or athlete or businessperson, but those occupations can’t be intelligently discussed here because of the author’s ignorance concerning them). People love the struggling artist who has to overcome his (the “struggling artist” in the collective unconscious is always coded male) “demons,” his “situation,” etc., to produce incredible work that will change the course of human history/psychology/philosophy/etc.  And the key is that he has to create his most “authentic” work during his time of struggle, in reaction to the struggle, not before he encounters his troubles or after they are overcome or resolved. Anyone can make great art when they feel good; only geniuses can make art in the face of complete destruction.

And this is why I like what Serena Williams said. When asked if she abided by the tried-and-true, “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” (even if, and maybe especially if, you’re a boot maker), “do it for the love of the game”-model of injury recovery, she balked. She said, in essence, “When you’re worried you’re going to die, at a certain point your thought life is dominated by efforts to plan ways to not die. After you not-die then you can think about things like tennis.”

I think artists think about dying a lot. Death is the ultimate stuggle. I think artists struggle with death and life and become struggling artists because there’s no way to get away from either reality. In many ways, I think artists use their work in an effort to not-die, or at least as a way to cope with the inevitability of death (see James Baldwin’s speech below). I’m totally fine with this notion; it is constructive rather than destructive, it tries to make something out of the concept and fear of an eventual Nothing. It is productive in the face of ultimate reduction. In short, I find it almost noble, a spitting in the eye of Death.

But I also want to create a dialogue about conceptions of struggling artists and the responsibilities these artists have to themselves and their audiences. Too often, audiences want to valorize the struggles of creative people and use said people’s creative productions as voyeuristic tools to get insight into some abstractly constructed idea of Pain (because, supposedly, artists know about pain better than non-artists). They say, “Don’t stop writing because of your pain. Write in spite of your pain. Write your pain. Write your pain because if you don’t, how will we understand our own pain?”

The artist’s first and foremost responsibility is to promote the wellbeing of herself (see how I dropped that feminist language on you to combat the patriarchal language used above? you liked that didn’t you?) and her people. If the artist feels like shit and doesn’t want to make art, she should feel no pressure to work out her problems through aesthetic means (although, if she finds her creative process and productions therapeutic to herself and her community, she should be supported in her efforts to make good stuff). Her art was with her before she recognized her struggle (notice how I say, “before she recognized her struggle,” since we are born into the struggle of death.), and it will be with her after she copes with her struggle; it does not necessarily need to be her only method of confronting the struggle. It does not have to define her struggle.

I’ve been trying to not-die since roughly winter of 2007. I’ve been working with language since roughly fall of 1996 (but I’ve only been getting paid for my work since 2010). When people ask about my 2007-present publishing record, my plans for future projects, my plans for future anything, I used to give NBC answers like, “writing has kept me sane through the tough times; writing has been there for me when I needed it the most; in the end, I’m thankful for my struggles because they generate ideas for new writing projects” and other bullshit like this. But the days of these answers have past. I write from time to time. I’m trying to not-die at the same time. Not-dying comes first, and will always come first. Helping other people not-die comes second (or, like, first-and-a-half). Art comes third. If art helps with the first two, solid. If not, the poetry will be there when I get over.