a tsunami in San Francisco, a venture capitalist, and painter Amy Sherald
on art that tries to understand the subterranean
My life is not particularly poetic but occasionally I have days like last Thursday.
a tsunami
I was walking home from an appointment in SoMa when my phone buzzed a warning. Tsunami alert. You are in danger. Move to higher ground. It paused the Pharrell and Rick Rubin conversation I was lost in, while walking in a beam of morning sunlight. I ignored the message and proceeded to my watering hole. I answered Alex the barista’s usual how’s your day going with a cheeky well, apparently it contains tsunamis. We all had a good chuckle after which I used the restroom and waited for them to finish my chai latte. Sipping cinnamon foam I returned to a dreamier state and continued writing on my laptop. Around me, well-dressed professionals continued their coffee chats and outside a combination of tourists and construction workers went about their day.
Startling me out of my reverie, my phone again. Did you get the tsunami alert lol. I responded, lol, you are in danger. Who writes these. My friend Madeline, I’m like wondering how serious this is cuz it’s like sunny skies here. Should we move inland? I racked my brain for tsunami knowledge. I think you’re fine? There isn’t even a slight breeze over here. Come to Telegraph Hill if you start to feel sketched out. Three minutes later she called me, We’re coming.
I made my way home. Flocks of pigeons swirled but still no wind. I crossed the street with a bearded man who pulled out one airpod and did you get the tsunami alert? We chatted as we both huffed and puffed up the hill. There was an earthquake in Eureka, off the coast of Mendocino basically. Oh my god, I thought. How could I forget that earthquakes cause tsunamis? The wind has nothing to do with it.
We arrived at the top of Telegraph Hill alongside others flocking to safety. It’s a party out here said my mayoral neighbor Daniel, standing outside his house amid the crowd, holding a cup of coffee and court. The tsunami is due to hit at 12:10. I frantically texted two friends who work by the water. Don’t go outside. Madeline and her boyfriend drive up the hill. I packed my passport and some clothes just in case. Daniel shifts his weight from one foot to the other, In my forty-five years here nothing like this has happened. The groupchat wakes up. I’m watching the ocean to see if anything looks suspicious and Is everyone okay??
12:11. The tsunami warning is canceled for the coastal areas of California and Oregon. Relief breaks like a wave.
a venture capitalist
At 2:30 in the afternoon I make my way to Japantown for a meeting with a venture capitalist. I am nervous. Months ago I said I was working on something new which in Silicon Valley is some silly code for building a venture-scale starutp. I break the news that I am, instead, focused on writing. He asks me, what is my goal? What type of impact am I looking to have? And at what scale? I almost say critical acclaim.
But I catch myself. Even now, dear reader, I am nervous. I do not want to professionalize my writing. I do not want to even consider success. Like falling in love with a person, art is too pure. So perhaps I can relay my idea of success to you, through repetition.
Success is in fifteen years I am still writing. Success is producing language that architects reality by making the invisible visible. It is language noble enough for human pain and tender enough to carry human love. It is writing that does not yield to power or delusion.
I grew up looking to win awards. If I am able to write without waiting for applause, that will be my success.
Success is writing to change no one’s life but my own. I must write like one loves. Without condition. Without reason. Without fear. We love as if life lasts forever and so I must inscribe our stories into the annals of time itself.
painter Amy Sherald
At 4 o’clock I hop in an Uber and crawl to the SF MoMa to see American Sublime, an Amy Sherald art exhibit. It was like walking through a jewelry store.
Each painting, hung on a gold frame, was rich with color and magical depth. The depth, I think, came from making gentle, knowing, almost loving eye contact with Sherald’s portraits. I felt as if I had just met a room full of people without needing to speak to them. We stared into each others eyes and, somehow, I knew these people. They looked back at me, almost daring me to say You are not real. You are just a painting. In a place like San Francisco where most people have their headphones in and eyes downcast to their devices, I had hungrily searched each face in Sherald’s collection.
I wondered, what does Sherald want as an artist? She painted Michelle Obama’s official portrait. She has won numerous awards, and her paintings have gone for 3.5 million dollars and beyond. She is successful, but was that her aim? To make work that is universal, and by relation, to make Black art that is universal (New York Academy of Art). Sherald is trying to capture the essence of her subjects (their ātman, if you recall from my last post).
There is an ancestry-inspired spiritual revival happening among artists of color. I see it in the artists I encounter and in myself. It could be a blended reaction to the hyper rational, hyper data-driven times we live in and the ahistorical, random yet massively popular art created by our counterparts.
While Sherald is operating at a frequency far beyond mine, we are both trying to fulfill the same sense of purpose. Whether through painting or writing, we explore the subterranean world of human interiority to empirically arrive at some kind of sacred truth because we believe.
We believe there are tremors within us so slight they go unnoticed, but Sherald is attuned to what rises up, sometimes at great speed, and instead of flocking to the hills for safety she waits on the shore, arms stretched out.