When I sat down with Maggie Nelson and Harry Dodge, the question on my mind was: “what does it look like to live a creative life in a world dominated by business and science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)?” Nelson and Dodge are writers and artists who live together in Los Angeles, California. As we talked about the value of the humanities in a STEM-centric world, we also discussed how human connection is fostered through thinking and their unique experiences of living a creative life. Our conversation has been edited and condensed.
Maggie Nelson is a writer and a professor of English at the University of Southern California (USC). She is the author of many acclaimed books such as the New York Times bestseller “The Argonauts,” “The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning,” and “Bluets” — which was named one of the top 10 best books of the past 20 years by Bookforum. Nelson’s writing transcends the divide between the personal and intellectual. “I think philosophy matters most when it’s felt in a person and related to your daily life, so I write from a perspective of somebody for whom that’s the case.” In 2016, Nelson was awarded the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship.
Harry Dodge is a sculptor, performer, video artist, professor, and author of “My Meteorite: Or, Without the Random There Can Be No New Thing.” Dodge’s work has been exhibited at venues nationally and internationally, and is held in numerous institutions, such as the Museum of Modern Art, NY; and Hammer Museum, LA. In 2017, Dodge was a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship. He is currently a professor at the California Institute of the Arts.
In our capitalist society, we’re constantly pressured to conform to specific notions of success and follow predefined paths. How do you cohabitate with the love of making art and the love of writing, and also survive in the society that we live in?
Dodge: One of the things I’m trying to do is to de-link money from the idea of success. To me success is joy. So, even though I’m teaching in the Program of Art, I don’t think it’s my job to make sure they become successful artists. It’s my job to make sure that I’ve done my best to model for them how to have a joyful life. I feel like I do a pretty good job.
Nelson: There’s decoupling, like Harry says, of success from material success. And then there’s also acknowledging that people have to make a living. Money does buy a lot of things. It’s a cliche, [but] it does not buy spiritual happiness and fulfillment and at some point in your life [the] bill for that will come due. I know that a lot of my students need to find those things out on their own. A lot of people don’t love their jobs and that’s also fine. There’s many ways to have a life where your job is not the main source of your pleasure and your joy.
What would you say to students who have to contend with pressures to pursue other paths that might lead to more financial stability?
Nelson: You can devote your whole life to something with all your passion and it still may not end up [providing financial stability], but I do generally think that there is room for you to make a life in the humanities. Even when [English] is not the default major, I still see everyday people in positions of a vast variety of kinds who have humanities study as their base and background. So I don’t think it’s limiting per se. Life takes a lot of dedication to the things [you want to do] and it’s really hard to dedicate yourself and put in really long hours towards [something] that you have no drive to do. I’ve put a lot of drive into writing books that [have] sold for no money, and you just do it because [you are driven to do it]. I wouldn’t have had that drive to put into something else that I didn’t feel the same way about.
Dodge: I witness many students who will tell me that they’ve had to overcome parental pressure to become a doctor or engineer or whatever, and that their parents were not supportive of them going to art school. I’m very proud of them for doing that. They’ve often overcome a lot of pressure to arrive where they have. For those students, I feel even more concerned and interested in providing for them a scaffold to a life of satisfaction and community. It’s not trifling that they’ve arrived, that they’re needing something from us. There’s a lot of ways that an education or an experience can bear fruit, and it’s not always financial.
Nelson: That said, the astronomical increasing cost of college and student debt is a big deal. As we work for our continued valuing of the humanities, we also have to work for situations that don’t make people indebted with no way out because they wanted to live an examined life.
What motivates you to teach?
Dodge: It’s very meaningful for me to be able to interact with groups of people, year after year, where we sit down and think together. It’s very intimate to think together. I especially love to read texts that are really confusing, because I love being in that zone of “I can’t figure this out.” We read these difficult [texts] over and over together and try and figure out what they are [saying]. It’s a little cheesy sounding, but it’s kind of a form of love to sit in a room with a group of people and try and figure something out together. If I was just alone in my studio as an artist or a writer, I would get very lonely and weird I think. Extra weird. So there’s something about needing to come out and greet [other] people that helps me.
What about you [Nelson]? What drives you when it comes to teaching, writing, or creative practice?
Nelson: I’ve been so naturally driven in these fields for so long that it never really felt like a choice. There are writers and artists who don’t like teaching or don’t have teaching as part of their practice, but I agree with Harry. It comes really naturally to me, and I like thinking with other people. The older I get the more precious it [is to talk] to people who are [where I used to be]. Now that I’m several decades ahead of where they’re at, I really value that cross generational conversation.
For you personally, what do the humanities bring into the world that you find valuable?
Dodge: For me, it’s being in the confusion, being in a question I can’t answer, or being in something that’s a little mysterious and bubbling. But then also researching it feverishly and trying to get more knowledge. But the knowledge never stands still. It’s always something just a little out of reach. I feel like the humanities is all about launching into things that are still in motion and that have not been pinned down.
Nelson: I think Harry covered that angle well. I’d take the political angle and say that, yes, climate change and different things need engineers working on technology, but they also need people pausing long enough to think: “what the heck is going on?”, “what are the problems we need to think about to work on?”, and “what are the best ways to work on those?” [These issues] can be scientific problems, but they often begin as humanities problems. If you don’t have that perspective at the start, I don’t know if you’d get the best outcomes at the end.
You’ve touched on this a bit already, but what are the things that bring you the most joy from living a creative life?
Nelson: I think sometimes when people hear the word joy associated with their creative life, they have a hope or expectation of a static state of happiness. That’s not been my experience of a creative life. In writing, we often talk about people having the pleasure of [having been published], but the writing itself is sometimes very difficult. [However], the pleasures of having written — which includes having thought, having researched, having tried, having published and all of that — I would call them deep satisfactions that have a range of effects associated with them from frustration to joy. For me, life in the humanities is one of the ways I feel those [satisfactions] the most thoroughly. I feel like thinking, and thinking with others changes me in a way that I really value.
Dodge: All that I would echo. Often being in practice means I’ve started something and it’s not good yet. It doesn’t feel right. It’s still bad. It’s not making sense. It’s not good enough. It’s not what I need it to be. Many thousands of artists don’t get a lot of attention or sell a lot of work, so the joy of being an artist has to be centered not on these kinds of outer versions of success. [For] each of my students, I really want them to find a way to feel joyful while they’re in their practice. It’s not always about producing words, but about producing thoughts. Because there’s something about being an artist where I feel like it’s important that you can [take the moment to] hear. You can get up in the morning and do exactly what you want to be doing, but, in order to do that, you have to get up and think, “what do I want to do today?”, “ what do I want to think about today,” or be attentive to the questions that are gripping you. If you can touch those things, then hopefully the work that you’re going to make that day or the song you’re going to compose that day [are] going to be somehow touching these effervescent mysteries that are bubbling in us.
Nelson: At USC we have a lot of people in business or other things. There are questions that will come up for them in their lives [that may sound] like, “am I happy with what I’m doing,” or “am I treating people fairly?” Whatever those questions [actually] are, they’re going to come up for them. I often think of teaching some “muscles” so when [these questions] come up, they’ll be like, “I’ve thought about this before, I have some capacity to think about these things.” Because sometimes in their pursuits, like in STEM pursuits, some of those issues are not really engaged with. For your point about so many people being so focused on careers or making money, when you’re in the classroom with the humanities you’re already doing the thing that a life in the humanities would be. You’re talking, thinking, reading, creating, being in both solitary and social contact about the examined life.
