Stones in a Box: Each One Labeled “Parable of Success”

Artist and writer Nic Wilson offers an essay about art, success, and how the two collide — in a form true to Nic’s practice.

One day, God told them to “make an index of everything. And I mean EVERYTHING. If you leave anything out, I’ll know …” In their way, they made a miniature of the world in words. The index was beautiful and robust and indeed contained everything. Or so they thought. When God came to inspect the index, it immediately knew that the makers had forgotten to include the index itself and they were struck down for this omission. 

*

Recently, I spoke at length with someone who said he didn’t experience jealousy. The more we spoke, the less we seemed to understand one another. He described having feelings that I would describe as jealousy. I wonder now if he simply didn’t like the word. Something about naming those feelings with that word was not possible for him. His body appeared to reject it. How do we live in a language where this kind of paradox is not only possible, but common?

*

In her book The Sovereignty of Good, Iris Murdoch often refers to the “background” of life: the vapour of consciousness and awareness that informs your decisions, actions, thoughts, beliefs, and relations. This background is all the experience that you have soaked up into your self — the bits that make up people’s moral and social structures — both active and dormant. This background holds you in place and forms a unique comprehension of reality that is in turns opaque, oblique, and apparent. It is against this backdrop that we live lives, think thoughts, flush toilets, see art, and drink sparkling water.

*

The plane is flying around a roaring cauldron of electricity but I’m not sure how close we are to danger. From above, I imagine this cauldron looks like the Blitz or some other horrible incendiary campaign of force. It illuminates the clouds like a setting sun and makes their edges into bright white lines. The passenger sitting beside me has the hands of a knife-maker: nicks and gouges at the tips and knuckles. I pray for them to rest their hand on mine if only to feel the warmth of a living person while we quietly hang above the red and orange flashes.

*

I’ve been daydreaming about a world where it’s commonly known and accepted that there are groups of people who long to be struck by lightning. I imagine them standing in fields darkened by a gathering storm. The air is thick. They spread out, arms up, and they wait for the rumble of Jupiter and the lick of heat that follows. 

*

Ambition is so often its own punishment. 

*

I’ve always been interested in the way that meaning radiates, seeps, or spills out in unintended or puzzling ways. In academia, one of the most durable barometers for success is the alignment of an artist’s stated intentions with an audience’s reading of a work. In a culture that is so deeply committed to language working in rational and predictable ways this seems like a sensible pedagogical project. I don’t think I have ever loved an artwork for this reason though. I’m more excited by what slips out or sits under the surface, like a silent letter, or is set loose on the world with a sly smile. I like to see these faint emanations of insight that are usually invisible when held against the bright background of life. If I am shown and can see this radiation and help others to see it we are all humbled by the experience. There can be a raw, experiential quality to art that helps tune me into that pulse of life. We tune ourselves to it and not the other way around.

*

I saw a performance by Jeneen Frei Njootli that felt like rolling down a hill, falling down a hill, and getting pushed down a hill all at once. It hooked into a lot of the joy, terror, and surprise that has accompanied the wave of children entering my life in the last decade. It made me think about the ways that empathy is an imperfect echo. I like the way performance can become a space of tremendous detail and attention. It’s a way of seeing people recede into an action while also being laid bare by it. Several years ago, in a performance workshop led by Marilyn Arsem, 12 people sat in a room with their eyes closed. One young woman asked that we “get to the point.” Arsem said “that’s not really what the exercise is about.” She would often say “there is something on the other side of boredom.” I still find myself agreeing with both of them.  

*

It seems cruel that it takes the same amount of energy to write something mediocre as it does to write something good. Every single feeling can be the same, every emotion can turn along the same arc. In a coffee shop or a library or at a kitchen table everyone dips into the same pool of time not knowing what will emerge. For me, 90-99.999̅% of that ritual is futile and its results are cast back into the pool. 

*

Lightning strikes are the cause of many wildfires and also the most likely source of life on earth: the dynamic, improvised choreography of chemicals and electricity. In Western mythology, lightning is often a symbol of spontaneity, chance, and chaos but, mainly, an instrument of wrath. There are ways that it makes sense as a convenient stand-in for what is often called the creative act, which some describe as a flash, like the tumblers of a lock clicking into place. There are other forms of electricity that might analogize creativity as a more sustained, ambient process. The electricity of a lightning strike flows through the connective fibres of our nervous system. These long strings of sensation are also home to the hum of neurons firing gently along the surface of time. 

*

Q: What advice would you give to someone wanting to get struck by lightning? 

A: Wanting it is a good start but it’s never enough. Focus on your home-grown electricity and try not to be too jealous every time you hear thunder. Find a way to weather feeling pathetic.