Icarus: The Plight of Overachievers & The Creak of Success
What if Icarus survived his fall? What if I?
I have been thinking about Icarus for years now. I wouldn’t say he haunts me but rather flutters in and out of my mind.
Icarus came to me again today, while I was sitting in an empty concert hall watching the dress rehearsal for a new orchestral work (titled Fantasie im Wintergarten) by Elena Kats-Chernin (arguably one of Australia’s greatest living composers). The room was ablaze with sound and light. I couldn’t help but tear up during the second movement as its beauty unraveled before me; growing quiet before thrashing into the third and final movement. How did I end up here? The short answer is that I was given the job of looking after Elena and the orchestra’s other guest artists this week.
Seated in the almost empty audience was the first time I’ve heard the piece in full, as I had been too busy popping in and out of rehearsals to catch anything more than glimpses: the crash of cymbals here, talk of flat cowbells there, the private serenade of Emily (the violin soloist) practicing in her dressing room. But sat there, in front of the fullness of it, he comes to me… that ambitious rule breaker, that shimmering winged hero. First he soared, eyes glaring in the fury of the sun, hopeful and twirling. But Icarus falls, as he always does, through the cloud cover and into the turbulent beauty of the sea, or in this case the flowing orchestration behind Emily and her violin concerto.
At first, the tale of Icarus seems like a cautionary one against teenage rebellion, if he had done what his father told him, took the course he was given, then he wouldn’t have perished into the sea. And the myth is often used to illustrate a need for balance, as it offers a warning to travel between the extremes. Not let oneself be overcome by passion, not let the feeling, desiring part of ourselves overtake the logical and reasoning portion.
Therefore, Icarus is often a warning against achieving too highly or going against the warnings from authority. But also illustrates the seemingly inescapable perils of the artist, those who dare to dream or who wish to fly to the sun with nothing but homemade wings. However, in none of the various retellings of Icarus’ flight is his body ever found. So, I am inclined to believe in the words of Taylor Swift, “no body, no crime”. Or that maybe he didn’t perish beneath the waves. Perhaps this fall was just the very beginning of his story.
I’m not the first to consider an alternate ending for Icarus, the 20th Century Poet Edward Field reimagines the fall in his poem ‘Icarus’:
“So the report filed and forgotten in the archives read simply
“Drowned,” but it was wrong: Icarus
Had swum away, coming at last to the city
Where he rented a house and tended the garden.”
However, Field’s poem still ends with a drowning of sorts, this time it is a suburban, gray suit adorned, weary Icarus who while traveling on commuter trains and serving “on various committees” wishes he had drowned. Field still suggests that Icarus is a fallen hero: “Can the genius of the hero fall to the middling stature of the merely talented?” Here, we are still hearing a tragedy of the high achieving and the perils of an artistic genius forced to live out his days in the monotony of suburban modernity. I can’t help but wonder if Field slipped into some autobiographical fears here, as a Celloist before the war, a bomber during the war, and a poet and gay icon after it.
As I am writing this, the refracted light from a disco ball glitters across my living room. It reminds me of Emily Sun in her sequined ball gown, only metres away from me, holding the sun, at very least in her last name. And arguably in her hands as she played her strings with a fire, at once gentle and setting the room alight. When speaking with Elena later, she described Emily’s playing as “luminous”; being made of light. I couldn’t help wondering if Emily was the sun, effortlessly embodying the luminosity which we’ve been told, melts wings. Or if Emily was once like Icarus: aspiring to the brilliance of the sun, but didn’t perish and instead became brilliant and shining?
Not to conflate my recent successes with an internationally renowned musician, but I thought I was going to have to live with my potential a lot longer. I was prepared to lug it around in my chest, only let it out at special occasions, blush when someone brushed too close to my hopes, that kind of thing. This year was a leap of faith, I entered into it without a plan and only hoped for a good nap after my intensive honours year. I remember being at my friend’s birthday in November and her mum asking me what my plans were, now that I had finished my thesis. I’ve been asked that a lot in the last few months, along with questions about what I planned to do with an honours degree in literature. “Hang out for a bit” was always my facetious answer. But there was a truth to it, I was actually prepared to just hang out, which is to say, I was not prepared for the success of my studies or writing more generally.
Partly, because how can you be prepared for it? And mostly, because I didn’t do any of this seeking success. I did my thesis on joy because I couldn’t stop thinking and reading about it. At the start, I actually made peace with the thought that it might not be taken well by my classmates or my supervisor. “Um, so, my idea is kind of batshit,” was how I introduced my topic at our first class. To my luck, I was well supported. “I don’t think that’s battshit at all.” Andrew, my supervisor responded with his signature earnest tone. There were also many times when I lost him and/or the rest of my class and they didn’t get it. There were also many times last year where I told myself I was never going to write again, that I hated academia and everything it stood for and squished us into. I nearly quit, like, once a month. Last year was actually one of the most isolating years of my life. I spent most of it alone, huddled over my ipad, doubting myself. The other small parts of it were spent trying (and often failing) to not think about it. I had to constantly remind myself that there was a world outside of my thesis and actively force myself to go catch glimpses of it.
It didn’t help that most of the Uni year coincides with winter and it was a long, wet winter last year too. A lot of this time is a blur to me now but I distinctly remember halfway through a particularly bad week for me and my mental health, we had our first spring-like day. I was supposed to be with my thesis because I had a deadline looming. But that day I didn’t head to uni to sit alone in the honours room like I had told myself I would. Instead, I drove to the foot of a hill in a reserve (that I don't remember the name of) and climbed the hill. I was inappropriately dressed and unaccustomed to moving my body, so got incredibly puffed out but after some struggle I came to a very small, yet flowing creek.
It’s going to sound petrifyingly corny to write about now, but I had this profound moment with this entirely too regular creek somewhere in the eastern suburbs. I remember thinking, “That’s right, creeks exist! And have always existed! And will continue to exist, forever!!” I can see now, that this was definitely more of a testament to how insular my life had become, rather than an ode to the wonder of creeks or nature more broadly. But the point is, it shifted something in my core (I actually can’t believe I forgot to include that creek in my thesis acknowledgements).
Embarrassingly enough I was so moved by this revelation that I relayed this information to my entire class (including our honours convenor). I don’t know what reaction I’d ancipated, but I was met with supportive confusion, which I didn’t particularly notice at the time because soft laughter and wide eyes was often my effect on the group. My declaration about my life changing creek encounter might’ve actually happened in the same class that — when prompted to talk about the research process — I rambled on about the magical nature of research. More specifically, how my thesis seemed like it wanted to write itself and it was my job to follow its lead. No one else sensed this it seemed, and I probably wouldn’t have either before the creek.
I remember getting my marks back for my first lot of course work earlier in the year and crying, then berating myself because I didn’t want to give that much of myself to anything, let alone an institution so corrupt and unkind to its most vulnerable. “This place should respect failure and make room for it!” I said repeatedly to myself and my classmates, “Don’t they know that the backbone of all new academic thought is failure: failing to do things how they’ve always been done or failing to think in the same ways that have already been thought?” So in essence, I actually set out to fail. Well, kind of.
I’m writing all this now with my bound copy of my thesis perched on the couch next to me. Its bright blue cover subsumes the gold lettering on the front, like the sky did on that first day of spring or how I imagine the beginning of Icarus’ flight. I chose the colour because in Gilbert Baker’s original pride flag he included (and then later removed) a stripe of bright turquoise and dubbed it a representative of queer magic. Every decision I made in my thesis was for me, or my reader who I couldn’t quite imagine but thought they’d probably be pretty gay and interested in my views on Hyperpop and a horny gay novel about a shapeshifter. I was blessed to have a supervisor who was supportive, even of what he didn’t quite understand, and then put my name forward for the yearly award in English honours, which I have won.
So this is success, it's a strange feeling. Now, people's ears perk up when I talk about my thesis now, but maybe that’s because I’m sharing more. Why am I sharing more of my work on account of external validation? Perhaps, it’s only human nature but it feels odd. It’s still the same words, in the same order, with the same typos, and the same garish blue cover but now it’s an award winner. Now it holds the research I’ve been asked to present in Estonia to a room of academics from all over the world. Now it will be the launching pad for an essay I’ll be writing for Faber. Now my potential is a benchmark I must reach and not a stuffed animal clutched to my chest for comfort; it's out there in the world and we can all see it. It’s exciting but also the most terrifying thing. Because what if I fly too close to the sun and fail? What if the glimmer of creating grows too hot and melts my ambition?
I thought I was going to have to live with my potential but now I must live up to it. As eloquent as that sounds, I think I must reframe this if I am going to forge on and not drown under the shadow of myself. Most of the work of living up to my potential has already been done. It’s been done so long in fact, that I had time to have it printed and bound. I’ve already followed the creak of joy under the floor of my chest and it brought me here. I’m realising I was never taught how to sit with success, let alone float calmly on its breeze. How does one body getting what they wanted, let alone embody what they didn’t know was possible? All I’ve had is warnings not to fly too close to the sun, and tales of artistic failure. What does one do when they aim high and aren’t burnt? Or what does one do when they fall from their flight and survive?
This week, another musican mentioned — in conversation with Elena — that there is something magical about the creative process. I feel affirmed whenever another creative says this. I’ve said many times that writing a thesis on queer joy was unto itself a radical act of queer joy. I did it as its very own case study into the potential of joy. I did it for the joy of it. I did it. If you’d like to read it, let me know. For now, you’ll find me listening to Elena’s ballet Wild Swans and practicing how to fly, which is to say, how to fall and survive; how to achieve and succeed.
With joy,
From Roisin.
Note perfect, as always. I sang with some musicians yesterday and they lit candles, as they acknowledge making art as a spiritual practice. Doing this from now on!