for me, solo art museum outings are a sacred practice. i get dressed up-- for myself, mostly, but also for houston’s most cultured senior citizens, the only other people who love a sunday museum jaunt as much as i do. (see also: the inevitably cool people who work the gift shop checkout.) i let myself meander. i make an afternoon of it. i pay less than an hour’s wages to emerge a changed woman.
i’ve been hungry for change. ravenous, almost. i’m always craving it to some degree, a constant low hum in the back of my skull, like the way i crave chocolate or salt or prolonged eye contact with a hot stranger. i both fucking hate this and fucking love this about myself. it’s my scorpionic nature, i think— this obsession with reinvention and rebirth. recently my change cravings led me to rediscover this rilke poem, written during his stint as auguste rodin’s secretary in paris. (if you were in dr. boan’s beauty and truth class with me in undergrad, please reread this in his signature passion whisper):
you must change your life. the power of that qualifier. must. there’s no way around it. i’ll never emerge from a museum unmoved, untouched, uneducated. i love art’s powerful reminder that i can move the needle of Self. that change is life’s only constant, even when it’s so slow i can’t see it happening.
in early 2021*, i visited one of my favorite museums in the world-- the mcnay-- after a long time away. it’s one of those rare places i could walk blindfolded and map out with terrifying accuracy. drape my eyes with thick silk and i’ll point a knowing finger: there’s that matisse, there’s that kehinde wiley, there’s that georgia o’keefe. on this particular trip, i was admiring a painting i’d seen dozens of times before - portrait of sylvette by picasso - when an elderly docent waltzed into my line of sight.
some years ago, he said, sylvette david— the sylvette— visited the mcnay, spurred by wanting to see her portrait before she was too old to travel. picasso created over sixty portraits of sylvette, capturing the elegant column of her neck and her signature blonde ponytail from all angles. sylvette drew quite the crowd, the docent told us, and the admirers were rewarded with stories of her firsthand encounters with old man picasso.
that image was so striking to me. the muse of a world-famous painting, by a world-famous artist, live and in the flesh. i wondered what i might ask her. i wondered what secrets i could uncover if i could talk to, say, vermeer’s girl with pearl earring or one of degas’ ballerinas. that image followed me home and into my journal, where i wrote a wisp of a scene, an underpainting of an underpainting. an elderly muse is moved to tears on a museum bench, face to face with her own portrait, and a young woman is perched next to her, armed with curiosity and the same buzzing thirst for change that lives in me.
i left that scene alone for over a year.
then the universe boomed from stage left: you must change your life. and that scene burst like a star from all the borders of itself into the novel i’ll be querying this spring.
this is all to say that this is my newsletter metamorphosis (cue hilary duff song, cue kafka references).
i’m not sure how it’ll take shape long term. in truth, i don’t think it has to have one fixed shape. i think it can just be a beautiful, amorphous lavender cloud, glittering and shifting and a little mysterious. ever-changing.
for now, the first series you’ll be getting is a bouquet of essays inspired by my (amateur and very biased) love of art history. it’s mostly about seeing and being seen.
keep a gorgeous eye on your inbox. as rilke said, here there is no place that does not see you.
talk soon, love you,
calista
*jsyk it was the january 6th, detail was irrelevant to the narrative but funny enough to note
I’m so proud of you and can’t wait to see what you have in store!😘
How I loooooved this Calista!!! You must change your life! And the backstory to your novel! More please 🫶🏻