I always forget that Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Archaic Torso of Apollo” is the origin of the line “You must change your life.” The command, clamoring with potential energy, is starkly placed at the end of Rilke’s meditation on the fragmented sculpture, unruined by its own missing.
How to look at art is ever-evolving, culturally, individually. I ‘read’ paintings left to right, start at sculptures somewhere in the middle, like trying to take in totality all at once, then up and down.
After making art alongside a friend who collects material for their collage-style zines from mundane life, my eye was attuned to found objects, scraps of paper, ideas disguised as other ideas. Around painters, I think perspective; photographers, some aspect of light.
Back to “Archaic Torso of Apollo.” Here we have Rilke under the influence of Auguste Rodin, poring over the incomplete body, unleashing the precision and openness to awe that underlines an artist’s sight. The gaze that turns stone into a god, a god into a poem, a poem into the next thing, and the next.
What evoked that final imperative: “You must change your life”? That beauty (a)rouses us is undeniable, to be sure. Probably, the jump (which is really a lift, a heavenly ascent) from observation to action is easily made. To encounter art, to enter it, is to flip some switch in oneself, turning the attention fully to the possible.
After shows, readings, art exhibits, I return to my own practice; involved, evolved, with new vigor. Rilke, incidentally oracular in the wake of this remnant of deity, is imbued with that same power that sets myth in action. When I reflect on this poem’s hold on me, its initial beauty comes secondary: “his legendary head / with eyes like ripening fruit”, “his torso [...] / suffused with brilliance.”
I forget the strike of awe interred on me by Rilke’s language, recalling only the concluding directive. Did the intensity and fullness of his encounter with the bust of Apollo lessen, too, over time? Is art immortal only as far as what has been learned?
Artists, humans, we keep talking about life; the primary thing encountered only at each of its myriad ends; the inadequate though abundant condition that, once redacted, glitters, unfairly, brighter.
As in the case of Prior Walter, protagonist of Angels in America, afflicted with visions of angels, of the splendorous grotesque. His devastating plea spat out from the clutches of disease and hallucination: “Bless me anyway. I want more life.”
And what of Ocean Vuong’s rhetorical question from On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: “And so what? So what if all I ever made of my life was more of it?”
More life. Like more time, but not really. Because more life is irreducible. More life is not more minutes. More life, an uncountable thing.
More life, because we cannot plan on the sublime, but know that living is its main prerequisite. More life, because our loves beckon to us on both sides as we lunge close to death. Because if heaven isn’t an all-night all-out rage party and a vast but quiet library all at once I’m not going. I’ll stay here, upturned palms begging for more life.
“Du mußt dein Leben ändern.” “You must change your life.” Five monosyllables like fingers on an outstretched hand.
Because I saw beauty and think you should, too. Because the human spirit, unrepressed, undenounced, begs for confidants: be in this sight with me, look with awe at what we have. In the immortal words of Lucille Clifton, “...celebrate with me what I have shaped into a kind of life.” Life, in shapes defied by breathing. Life beyond the essence of birth.
The word life maintains its satisfying contour despite copious repetitions. A doubling down results in the removal of what’s obscure, leaving only life, more life.
Alejandra Pizarnik: O life, what have you done to this life of mine?
Terrance Hayes: I live a life that burns a hole through life.
Rilke’s poetic proverb “You must change your life” urges not that you must wait for change, but that you must allow it. To beg for change, also, is to request more life. More rearrangement, resetting the world. Or how, as an exercise in gratitude, I try to remember what it was like before encountering my loves, marvel at the fact of our unshared earth-time reversed into common form.
Because, in life, the only way to restart is to change, like how in Bright Eyes’ “First Day of My Life,” the speaker swears “[he] was born right in the doorway,” on the cusp of this unforseen experience, long-awaited love.
And this is how I realize. Life has only ever been about one thing: the stranger who says hello while passing, making you want to also be a stranger who says hello; the shaky-voiced singer whose poignant lyricism makes you vow to pull your instruments out again.
Like the friend who bungee jumps first, or gets everybody on the dance floor. Like Octavia Butler's science fiction. Like the people who clean up the beaches in groups or alone.
It’s not just that art teaches us how to live. Life teaches us how to live.
“You must change your life.” You must ask for more of it. You must fall in love with, if not everything, then something— an angle of light, an archaic torso, a poem that captures both. You must interview for jobs. You must introduce yourself to people and their partners. You must shop for groceries. You must smile at children. You must encounter a new favorite movie. You must clean up spills.
You must change your life. Meaning: you must live.