In which I tell you what you already know: art is uniquely human

Coming at you live from the Poconos ⛰️

Hey, friends! This weekend I’m spending a few days in rural Pennsylvania at the Highlights Foundation retreat center. It has so far been two days of spending tons of time outside, eating incredible food, reading lots and writing lots, and chatting with other writers who are here for various reasons. The setting is spectacular, and the weather really showed out this weekend!

It’s incredibly dreamy here and I wish I could come back monthly, lol. It’s amazing how much being outside really does lift my spirits. I forget sometimes, because it’s not necessarily easy or convenient for me to work outside in NYC, but this weekend has me wanting to commit to making it happen more often than not.

But I digress. In this newsletter edition, you’ll find:

1. From the heart: I can’t describe this, but know I cried writing it

2. From the shelf: a book I can’t wait to read

3. From the page: art is uniquely human

Hope you enjoy!

Thank you for reading From Karis. This post is public so feel free to share it.

From the heart 💗

tw: discussions of death & suicidal ideation

I turned 30 on Wednesday, May 10th. Thirty! It’s such a wild number to me. I remember in 2010, when I was 17, I was convinced I was going to die at New Year’s Eve. No real reason, except I just had a feeling, and I’d listened to a song from my favorite band at the time (Barlow Girls, ofc) that was about a friend who was “forever 17,” and I thought it was a sign.

Then I thought it would be 27: the age I’d never see. I don’t know why I picked 27, other than that I was deeply depressed and most often suicidal in my early and mid-20s, and 27 seemed like such a far-off age, and I just didn’t think I’d make it there.

After I turned 27, I started to see…possibilities. I’ve always joked I was bound to die young — maybe not at 17 or 27, but surely I wouldn’t make it past 50, right? Except eventually it stopped being a joke and started being a deeply-held belief. So I mourned the long life I wanted but didn’t think I’d get. It’s a combination of living with intense suicidal ideation that wars with a desire for a long life and the belief that I’ll never have anything that I want because I don’t deserve it.

And yet. And yet I’m 30 now. Fifty feels so much closer than it did even three years ago. And I find that I don’t want to have 20 years left. I want more — I want every second allotted to me — I crave life, reach for it with hungry fingers, seek to inhale every bit of it into my greedy throat. I want to have experiences and write about them. I want to imagine experiences and write about them. I want to have the time to develop into a stunning talent whose prolific output shocks and appals.

It’s funny, you know? That I’m having these realizations today, when less than two weeks ago I was making a pros and cons list for taking my own life — and the pros outweighed the cons. I had to reach out to multiple friends and beg them to give me more cons because I knew I didn’t want to die, I just felt like I had to.

I remember, in the blur of the emotion of that day, thinking to myself — maybe this is it. Maybe this is why I don’t reach 50 — or 30. And then I cried harder, cause damnit, I really wanted to reach 30. Now I really want to reach 31. I want to reach 51. I want to reach 81. I want to live laugh love (but for real). I want to continue to make shitty jokes that I think are hilarious and make my friends roll their eyes. I want — I want to be.

And my brain fights me on that every day. I am so suicidal sometimes I could vomit. But rarely is that what I actually want. It’s what my brain wants. It’s the instant gratification of needing to not be in atrocious pain and thinking that’s a solution.

It’s not. It never has been, and it never will be. I crave life, and the only way I’m gonna get to continue to experience is to, well…live.

Live through the heartaches and the valleys and the rejections and highs and the writing block and the joys and the beautiful days and the ugly ones. I can’t promise I’ll never want to die again. I can’t even promise I’ll never again have to write a friend to beg for a con to suicide. But the promise I’m making to myself today, a freshly-minted 30-year-old, is that I’m going to cling as tightly to life for as long as I can.

From the shelf 📚

In this week’s edition, I’m here to talk about an upcoming book I simply cannot wait to inhale. I don’t know when I’ll get to it, because unfortunately my TBR is so tall it might literally topple over and knock me out, but I know I will. I know I will because this book is co-authored by one of my favorite authors.

Anna-Marie McLemore has written some of my favorite books, stories that have sunk deeply into the marrow of my being, and I’m so excited to read this epic fantasy, co-written with their spouse Elliott McLemore.

I’m not going to lie, the official synopsis as seen on Goodreads is like a riddle to me, and I’m very bad at riddles, so I can’t summarize for you what I think the book is about. I can say that I’m 100% sure that it’s going to be a sumptuous, lyrical fantasy that’s going to make me fall in love with every character and also make me deeply envious of the actual writing. So. If that sounds good to you. You should pre-order. Venom & Vow is out May 16, 2023.

From the page ✍️

Many have gone before me and spoken more eloquently than I can about art and why it’s uniquely human and why nothing1 can replace the beauty and joy of experiencing art made by another human. This piece isn't going to be a tirade against technology or advancement or a rousing speech encouraging action, mostly because I know my own limitations and abilities. No, this is just...a rave.

About art.

Human-made art.

When I say “art,” I mean in all its forms: yes, paintings and visual art, but also writing, music, TV, dance, embroidery — anything that adds beauty to our world and is wrought by a human’s hands.

There’s something so…connective…about taking in a piece of art and relishing in the way it makes us feel, the way it makes us see things differently, and knowing that another human sat on the other end of the piano or the typewriter or the easel and created this for us.

When it comes to books, because this is “from the page” and not “from the heart,” I think half the beauty of a gorgeous book is that it comes from someone else. Not only does that make me feel connected to this other person, it also inspires me to go out and do my own version.

I’ve been reading Susan Dennard’s The Luminaries this week. It’s my first novel by Susan, though I’ve subscribed to her newsletter for years and have bought several of her other series starters. This book is…the way the writing…it just wraps around my heart and squeezes it. I can close my eyes and visualize myself in Hemlock Falls. I can feel the mist as it rises, blanking my senses and chilling my spirit.

And I read The Luminaries and I marvel that another human created this. That she put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and crafted this lush world filled with beguiling characters and palpable tension and gorgeous, gorgeous words. That she has a family and household responsibilities and bills to pay and an imagination that crafted this story.

That I get to devour this story, and be connected to her through it. That in this capitalistic hellscape in which we exist, there is still beauty to be found.

I dunno, y’all. I just think that humans are beautiful and can create amazing art and I hate that we live in capitalism where corporations will try to shortcut the costly process of art-making and force feed us something lesser. Maybe the structure is there, maybe the words sound pretty together, but where’s the heart?

The heart in art is the human who created it.