The Human Touch

A little less control

Inès Longevial

The Sunday Letter #39

I hope you’re having a beautiful weekend wherever you may be right now. A few nights ago, I attended Katie Tupper’s hometown concert in a gorgeous crowd made up of many of her longtime friends.

We swayed along as she crooned to Woman No, surrounded by oh so many familiar faces, as is common in this city of less than 300,000. “Woman no, woman no / Can’t you take a little less control?”

Before the concert, I’d met up with some folks who introduced me to their friends by telling them that they should follow me on Instagram. Their friend instantly pulled up my profile, clicked the link to my newsletter, and within a few minutes seemed familiar with my whole oeuvre. As we departed for the show, we found ourselves shrieking in a shoddy elevator shaft that shook before spitting us out, signalling that we should take the stairs the rest of the way. As we emerged shaken, their friend turned to me and joked, “Are you gonna write about that?!”

*

The next night, I ran into many of the same friends again at a house party/art show put on by the525. We all laughed at reuniting only 24 hours later while joking the same old refrain of running into someone you know in a town like this: “Small world, huh?” 

I must admit that I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time lamenting the fact that I don’t live in a bigger city where I may have better opportunities to network with other writers or hob-knob at literary parties. It’s a discomfort I share with other friends often, when we remark on the depressing factors used to measure whether to stay in a place that’s relatively cheap and far enough away from any coasts to feel mostly safe from climate catastrophe, though it often feels backwards in so many other ways. 

I’m trying to shake myself out of this mindset and appreciate the beauty of this place, a flat yet colourful landscape that influenced my own dad’s artwork for decades. He was so infatuated with the beauty of this place that even years after his death, whenever I find myself around trees with brightly-coloured red leaves, I imagine sending a photo for him to use as inspiration in his paintings. How I hope to have his eye, how I hope it never leaves me.

As we made our way through the party, we floated to a room upstairs surrounded by soft lighting and art books. As I sifted enviously through an Inès Longevial book, I mentioned my theory that all artists secretly want to be a different kind of artist. For instance, you may recall that Taylor Swift cast herself as a writer in the All Too Well music video. Or, just take a look at the art of Sylvia Plath, Jemima Kirke, or Joni Mitchell to see how a creative vision can manifest itself in various mediums. A writer (me) may secretly wish she was a painter, a painter may secretly wish she was a musician, and on and on. I have no proof for this theory beyond my belief that inherent in artmaking is a frustration at the impossibility of ever properly conveying what it is we hope to say. My friend, a painter, mentioned that she’d always been intrigued by sculpture, though she found her husband’s photography practice to be educational for her own painting composition. This seems to me an important point; that growth in one medium often correlates to growth in another, because so much of the essence of art remains the same. Does it accomplish what it sets out to do: an essential question regardless of format.

Personally, I’ve been aching for the feeling of submerging my hands into charcoal dust, to embrace the delicate dance of light and dark in chiaroscuro. I want to do it all, to make paintings and movies and sculptures and something with my name on it that could stand the test of time. The vanity of that. And yet, as we always lament, it feels like there’s never enough time.

Still, I keep a little cart of art supplies near me, reminding me it’s there if and when I may need it. 

This search for perfection, for conquering every medium, is something that drives me in overwhelming ways, which my friend warns can mean you lose the magic of the fun of it all. Don’t forget to just sit and enjoy it, too, she reminds me.

*

Before leaving I snuck outside into the cold for a quick smoke, where a friend introduced me to strangers by encouraging them to read this newsletter, of which he is a regular reader. So there I was, shivering on a balcony with strangers, feeling like I could talk all night. About art and writing even though I’m both embarrassed at talking about myself and grateful for such a supportive little enclave of creative, ambitious folks who want to soak up art and words and ideas, and don’t mind showing up here in these virtual pages once in a while. 

I grew up unbearably shy and fearful of rejection, but I find myself embracing the art of meeting new people by using a simple ice-breaking technique: I simply assume that every new person I meet will have something funny, interesting, or horrible to say. Sometimes a stranger surprises me by being all three. But you have to be open to small talk and good surprises to encounter it. And as someone who loves observing strangers, small talk is the best way to gather sharp snippets of dialogue or wondrously odd human behaviour.

For example, sometimes a coworker will nonchalantly reveal the most heartbreaking trauma you could ever imagine, and other times they might share the most bizarre airplane story they’ve ever heard (it involved a cat and breastfeeding, that’s all I’ll say). Other times, you’ll be at a party and someone might spill wine on your friend’s white shirt and then instantly offer them a piece of vintage decor to make up for it. These are times when you run into people you haven’t seen in years three times in the span of one week. When you eagerly catch up but realize you will never understand what they actually do for work now (something with technology and investments, maybe). And sometimes the conversation with strangers is so warm that you could stand outside smoking in minus -20°C weather all night, feeling like maybe you can be grateful that this is your hometown and these are the people in it. 

*

A recent profile of Joyce Carol Oates focuses heavily on the prolific writer’s friends, from whom Oates has been known to pilfer life details for use in her own fiction: “Although many of them have had aspects of their lives dramatized–the turnaround between event and literary rendition can be rapid—they seem at peace with it, touched by her attention.”

Touched by her attention. A friend once remarked that when I quoted her here, it made her feel like she was in a Sally Rooney novel, which delighted me but also served as a crucial reminder that contrary to what I tell myself every week, this small little newsletter doesn’t just shoot off in a vacuum to be read by no one. Sometimes it feels like it would be less terrifying that way, but all the more lonely.

I suppose this is what I’m often trying to capture when writing about life, the sense of possibility offered by human attention. At the party, my friend mentioned that he was moved by people who could write without using AI or ChatGPT. We all laughed, but if I was honest with myself, I hadn’t really considered using AI for writing—though I had used it once or twice for photo editing. It seems to me that AI is an attractive tool for people to experiment in mediums in which they’ve hit a roadblock of expression and lack the ability to convey what it is they’re trying to convey… But I suppose the chief criticism of this argument is that practice is the key part to learning. Artificial intelligence models, while able to create from a vision, don’t offer the tools for practice, for failure, for the overwhelming madness of trying to develop a discipline.

You need friction for anything to change, I reminded my friend in classic stoner speak; if everything ran smoothly nothing could ever really shift.

And as monotonous as art-making can be, as lonely or infuriating, the practice can also be beautiful if once in a while you hit upon the real thing, creating a spark between strangers when before there was none.

And just how warm it can be. 

This week’s recommendations

Jessica DeFino on when war sells serums.

Rachel Aviv with a haunting portrait of Joyce Carol Oates, and the magnitude of a prolific writer convinced of her own lackingness.

The Eras Tour confronts the climate crisis.

Leslie Jamison on completing a beloved friend’s manuscript after her death: “I kept fiddling with passages, refusing to close the document, beginning to realize what should have been obvious from the start: finishing the novel meant saying goodbye to her all over again.”

A profile of the inimitable Lana “My thoughts are all shaped like men” Del Rey.

Barbra Streisand’s new memoir and the power of a young woman convinced of her own greatness: “She simply accepted herself as gifted, with the same conviction that made her believe she could speak to God.”

Dazed reviews Saltburn by asking whether the rich can write good class satire.