Arts
Wednesday, October 21, 2020 — 11 
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

The wound that was never 
fatal: On ‘The Changeling’ 

The first time I found a 

copy of Joy Williams’s “The 
Changeling,” I was 19 and 
wandering around the public 
library searching for it — though 
I wasn’t aware of this yet. It was 
a few months before summer 
break and I was on the brink of a 
spectacular mental breakdown. 

This would be unexpected 

news for everyone, including 
myself, because I had my life 
perfectly 
compartmentalized, 

my days carefully cut and 
quartered and neatly wrapped. 
Every day I went to class and 
sat in the seats closest to the 
walls, and ate the same veggie 
sandwich at the same dining 
hall at exactly 5:30 PM, alone. 
I was working three jobs, 
doing private research with 
a professor, my GPA was way 
above average and I was so 
incredibly numb. Every weekend 
I would walk 40 minutes to the 
public library and pick books 
at random from the shelves 
— vapid romance novels, epic 
fantasies, ones that promised to 
teach me a foreign language in 
10 days. And I would let them sit, 
accusing and untouched, on my 
desk until they were due back 
home. Nothing really interested 
me but I was desperate to find a 
book to teach me how to feel so I 
went back again and again. 

“The Changeling” became the 

first book I finished in months. 

At surface value, its plot 

surrounds 
Pearl, 
a 
young 

alcoholic mother of a baby boy, 

Sam. She flees her first marriage 
to run away with Walker, her 
exciting lover, but ends up a 
widow in a devastating plane 
crash that only she survives. 
Pearl, and a child who looks 
like Sam but she is convinced 
is a changeling, a child who 
is 
secretly 
swapped 
with 

another in infancy. Pearl and 
this child begin living with 
Thomas, Walker’s brother, on 
an unnamed island inhabited by 
several adults and a seemingly 
endless number of children who 
sometimes seem more animal 
than human. Pearl finds herself 
becoming a sort of surrogate 
mother to these children, a role 
that she cannot understand. 
The children appear to love and 
torment her with equal amounts 
of fervor, which only hastens 
her loosening grip on reality 
and herself. With Sam and the 
other children of the island, 
Pearl feels an unbridgeable gap 
between them and herself as 
a maternal figure. Every day, 
Pearl drinks by the pool as the 
children clamber around her. 
They enthusiastically ask her 
questions about herself, the 
island, the world, but “... she 
had developed a trick to take 
herself out of their range … she 
concentrated, she rose in her 
mind, she moved of a distance. 
Her body would lie there, 
surrounded by the laughing 
children, but she would be gone. 
Having 
knowledge 
without 

knowing, her thoughts far away, 
her body there, but in darkness, 
stroked by the whispers of 
summer.” 

This novel reads as a sort of 

fever dream; with each page you 
are unsure of how much of the 
narrative is actually based in 
fact. It is a strange and dizzying 
landscape, one that captured me 
as soon as I reached this line — it 
was as if these were my words, 
my thoughts, laid out bare on 
this page: 

“She felt that if she could 

only get interested in and 
knowledgeable about a kinky 
subject, for example hockey 
or sharks, she would be a more 
contented person. She could not 
just be fucking all the time. Soon 
something more would have to 
happen. Pearl did not feel that 
she was a real person.”

That 
summer, 
just 
after 

coming home from college for 
break, the hole in my chest 
tore open and I became so sad 
that it hurt to even breathe. I 
stopped sleeping and eating, 
went on hours-long walks every 
night, just wandering around 
the woods behind my house in 
the dark listening to the same 
playlist on repeat. The bones in 
my chest and the knobs of bone 
in my shoulders surfaced, the 
skin on my face was peeled back 
so tight it was easy to picture 
what my bare skull looked like 
underneath. I looked inhuman. 
My skin was a gross yellow color, 
eyes bulging out of their sockets, 
fingers 
like 
claws, 
jagged 

spine like scales. I often found 
myself 
unable 
to 
recognize 

myself as I casually passed a 
reflective surface. My mother 
was distraught and confused as 
she held this creature, shaking 
with sobs again over nothing at 
all, nothing that it could name 

in any language. Why are you 
crying? she asked. Let me help 
you, what’s wrong?

My treatment center was 

quite far from us but my parents 
drove me there multiple times 
a week to get electricity zapped 
into my brain; it was an hour and 
a half’s drive across the Tappan 
Zee bridge, and I remember 
feeling choked up with rage and 
self-hatred, overwhelmed with 
guilt about making my parents 
have to miss work to drive me 
to a place that taught me how 
to feel human, how to do basic 
tasks that even infants know 
how to do. 

Like clockwork, I started 

crying as soon as my ass hit the 
car seat. 

I 
don’t 
understand, 
my 

mother said.

How could you love someone 

like me? I demanded. I was 
disgusted by everything about 
myself. I was coarse and twisted, 
ugly and helpless. 

I don’t know, she answered, 

But I still do. 

At the time, I heard that as “I 

have to.” Isn’t that what mothers 
are supposed to do? Provide the 
kind of love that blinds you, has 
you reaching into the dark, but 
stupidly unafraid? I was furious. 

How does it make sense to 

love 
something 
you 
cannot 

understand? 

“The 
Changeling” 
doesn’t 

make sense, but that was just 
what I needed. Love, fear, 
violence, joy all blend into an 
indistinguishable 
haze. 
The 

children quote Dante and plot 
murder, a boy pulls a length of 
Christmas lights and star tree 
topper out of his stomach. A man 
dreams of “[seizing his lover’s] 
throat with his jaws (to) worry it 
with joy until the bones [break] 
like seeds on his teeth.” Pearl’s 
vagina is compared to a wound, 
“the wound that opened again 
and again. The wound that was 
never fatal.” This same wound 
— the one that delivers Sam into 
the world — allows for them to 
“fold back the flaps of skin and 
unfold the baby from her like a 

bridal gown … her terrible dark 
wound [that would become] a 
nest for the flying creatures of 
the night.” 

When 
my 
mother 
was 

pregnant with me, she had a 
dream that she was fishing and 
caught three fish. The three fish 
were supposed to foretell me 
and my two sisters. She tells this 
story whenever she is feeling 
particularly sentimental. 

You were the biggest one, 

she’d tell me. You were the first 
and the most beautiful. And you 
were mine.

At the end of that summer 

my poor health landed me 
in the hospital with heart 
complications. The first night I 
had to run some tests, including 
an ultrasound of my chest. The 
technician smeared cold gel 
on my skin. In the monitor, my 
black and white heart stared 
back at me. It looked like the 
glassy eye of a fish, swimming 
around in its fluids.

Senior Arts Editor Jo Chang can 

be reached at changje@umich.edu 

JO CHANG

Senior Arts Editor

DESIGN BY JO CHANG

When art meets algorithm: 
artists’ dual-edged sword

William Deresiewicz sees a 

crisis in the arts, and he needs you 
to stop it. Unfortunately, it’s not 
going to be that simple, because the 
problem comes from something 
that is increasingly woven into 
the fabric of our daily lives: The 
Algorithm. By “the algorithm,” 
Deresiewicz means the coding of 
apps and programs that we use 
every day to consume content, that 
show us certain posts or songs at 
the top of our feed — the invisible 
hand that, as Deresiewicz said, 
“picks up things that are already 
viral and makes them more viral.” 

Any non-Luddite knows that 

this is how the Internet works, 
and Deresiewicz himself will 
acknowledge that in some cases, 
the algorithm has been good for 
small artists who make it big 

seemingly overnight — think Lil 
Nas X or Rupi Kaur. But these 
artists are the exception, not 
the rule. Overwhelmingly, the 
algorithm swallows small artists 
whole, forcing them to the margins 
or completely eclipsing them with 
viral acts. In terms of seeing new 
artists, the power tips away from 
the audience and toward the big 
tech companies — all the while 
allowing us to think we are still in 
control. 

This is an uncomfortable reality 

for everyone, not just artists. The 
general public, the consumers 
of art, don’t want to think about 
art as something dictated by 
the market forces of large tech 
companies. After all, “the artist” 
is a quasi-mythic figure in our 
culture 
— 
moody, 
mysterious 

and 
Walden-esque. 
If 
talking 

about money in daily life is mildly 
unpleasant, talking about it in the 
arts is practically sinful. Artists 

are supposed to exist outside of the 
market, unmarred by capitalistic 
whims. Thinking about art in 
relation to money thus feels wrong, 
because we want our art to be 
above it all — to make commentary 
about economics, sure, but never 
participate in it. 

A truth we don’t like to apply to 

our artists, writes Deresiewicz in 
his book “The Death of the Artist: 
How Creators Are Struggling to 
Survive in the Age of Billionaires 
and Big Tech,” is that “wanting 
to get paid does not mean you’re a 
capitalist. It doesn’t even mean that 
you assent to capitalism. It only 
means that you live in a capitalist 
society.” But as long as artists exist 
in that capitalist society, and as 
long as they want to make art, they 
are part of a fundamental paradox 
that “cannot be resolved; it can 
only be endured.” 

Here lies the tension that 

today’s artists must endure — so 
how are they doing it? For his 
book, 
Deresiewicz 
interviewed 

hundreds of artists from a range 
of mediums, including music, 
writing, poetry and visual art. He 
doesn’t downplay the crisis he 
sees, explaining in his book that a 
title like “creative entrepreneur” 
for an artist is simply “sugar for 
the turd of gig work.” Most full-
time artists work paycheck to 
paycheck, piecing together funding 
from selling art, doing live events, 
Patreon (a subscription service for 
artists’ content) and other assorted 
income streams. This is because, he 
told The Michigan Daily, any artist 
“who wants to follow their own 
vision and be interesting and say 
what they want to say is going to 
be at odds with a system like that.” 
This means they probably won’t 
make much money — “and that’s 
the problem with the system.” 

Aside from making a compelling 

argument, Deresiewicz’s book also 
manages to create a nonfiction 
work 
of 
literary 
merit. 
His 

writing style is direct, just like his 
interviewing style; he has no time 
for you to waste, and he won’t waste 
yours. He writes without mincing 
words in a straightforward way 
that makes the reader trust what 
he has to say. He describes the 
Ramones, the Talking Heads and 
Blondie as “the archetypal three-
chord punk quartet, a cerebral 
art-school act, and a disco-scented 
dance band fronted by a singer 
with a cotton-candy voice.” A 
bland, purely informational voice 

EMILIA FERRANTE

Daily Arts Writer

Lessons from Ethnography

Can Ethical 
Critique 
Change 
Society?

Online Event: Thursday, October 29, 2020 | 4:00 p.m.

WEBB KEANE 

George Herbert Mead Collegiate 

Professor of Anthropology

 An online lecture. For more information, visit 
events.umich.edu/event/75454 or call 734.615.6667.

wouldn’t appeal to the bulk of 
people reading his work, a large 
percentage of whom are either 
middle class or upper-middle class 
people, or are artists themselves. 
His writing in the book manages 
to captivate both audiences, which 
is good, because those are exactly 
the people he most wants to reach. 
These are the ones who 
have 
been 
conditioned 

away from paying for art 
but who have the means to 
do so.

One thing that has made 

it 
infinitely 
harder 
for 

artists, along with everyone 
but the billionaires, is the 
pandemic. 
Deresiewicz’s 

book 
was 
written 
in 

2019, but he seemed to 
unfortunately 
predict 

the 
future 
when 
he 

wrote 
“People 
don’t 

make 
art 
in 
isolation, 

and 
online 
interactions 

are 
incomparably 

impoverished 
relative 

to those that take place 
in real life.” This year, to 
contextualize 
this 
new 

normal, 
Deresiewicz 

reached out to all of his interview 
subjects 
for 
the 
book 
and 

completed follow up interviews 
with ten. What he found was both 
completely expected and very 
distressing — “It’s been a disaster 
for the arts.” 

Deresiewicz’s 
entire 
book 

lays out how the digitization of 
art, especially music, has led to 
dramatically decreased revenue 
streams (think Spotify plays vs. 
CD sales). This reality has led 
many artists to rely on live events 
for money. Without income from 
those live events, many artists 
now struggle to make money off of 
their art, even after adjusting to the 
digitized art world. 

In addition, arts institutions 

from museums to theatres have had 
to close as a result of the pandemic. 
“A lot of them might not survive,” 
Deresiewicz said, “especially the 
smaller ones, the independent 
ones that produce interesting work 
and artists that are still getting 
traction.” Even revenue streams 

from day jobs like food service 
or Uber driving have dried up. 
Deresiewicz and his interviewees 
acknowledge that this could be a 
chance to reset the art world, but 
more likely is the notion that larger 
institutions will get larger, and 
smaller ones will get swallowed — 
the game of the algorithm playing 
out in real life.

The paradox of art and money 

is, 
according 
to 
Deresiewicz, 

inherently 
unsolvable 
in 
the 

current 
economy. 
Like 
other 

systemic issues, the power of the 
individual is limited. There is 
hope, though, for both consumers 
of art and for artists themselves. 
People have already become more 

conscious 
consumers 
of 
food, 

clothing, plastic water bottles and 
more — so, Deresiewicz argues, 
why not art? Often, he said, at 
“other end of the arts economy, 
of the supply chain, from you the 
consumer, is not a corporation” 
but rather an individual artist, 
struggling 
to 
make 
a 
living. 

Deresiewicz warned, “If 
you’re getting something 
valuable to you and you’re 
getting it for free, you really 
need to question that.” 

As consumers of art, we 

must learn to not expect art 
to be free (or simply equate 
exposure with payment). 
There is hope for artists as 
well. Young gen z artists, 
for example, despite having 
a complicated relationship 
with self-marketing, have 
a leg up in terms of pure 
online experience. They 
can use that experience 
to their advantage, says 
Deresiewicz, if they have 
good art — which comes 
from separating the online 
self from the “authentic” 
self. 

Deresiewicz’s 
culminating 

advice for young artists is simply 
this: “Instead of starting with the 
question ‘What can I make that’s 
going to get attention and make 
money?’, start with the question 
‘What do I want to make?’ and then 
make it, and then figure out how to 
get attention and hopefully money 
for it,” he said. 

Art first, promotion second. 

We must learn to seek out art that 
makes us think, that challenges us, 
that makes us cry or laugh or feel 
something — and then we have to 
pay the artist who makes it.

Daily Arts Writer Emilia Ferrante 

can be reached at emiliajf@umich.
edu 

Overwhelmingly, the 
algorithm swallows 
small artists whole, 
forcing them to the 

margins or completely 
eclipsing them with 

viral acts.

ALEEZA JILL NUSSBAUM

