“Survival is Insufficient”

Thanks to my persistent fear of needles, I’ve never particularly wanted a tattoo, but if I were to get one, I know exactly what it would be. It would be the words “survival is insufficient” in small black ink on my left wrist, not very noticeable and hidden relatively easily beneath the sailor knot bracelet and hair ties I always wear. 

It’s kind of the perfect tattoo for me, as it combines two interests of mine. The quote originally comes from Star Trek: Voyager, and though I’ve never watched this particular installment of the Star Trek adventures, I’ve long been a fan of the original series. The second interest is the book that gave me this idea in the first place, a book called Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel. It’s about the apocalypse, caused by a virus that wipes out most of humanity, but it’s also about art, and why we as humans seek to preserve it even in times of peril and destruction. 

The novel follows a cast of characters, all of which are artists in some form. There’s Kristin and August, an actress and musician, who perform Shakespeare in the post-apocalyptic landscape with a traveling orchestra. There’s Clark, who preserves old-world artifacts in a museum of his own making. There’s Miranda, the artist behind the Dr. Eleven comics that give people hope in a time of loss and inspired the title of the novel itself. All of these characters exist to underscore one main point: survival alone is insufficient. We need the arts to be human. 

I went around my house and asked my family members what they thought about this. Half of them were unimpressed, but that’s what I expected, because I do not live in a house of artists. My father and my middle brother were more interested in why I was asking them in the first place. The other half, my mother and youngest brother, were more receptive. Though they don’t think of pop culture as art — when I first mentioned this, they assumed I was talking about Vincent Van Gogh — I know how important it is to them, though my mom did scoff at my assertion that video games are a form of art.   

“[Art] is a lens not only from the outside looking in but also inside looking out,” my mom told me, when I asked her if art is essential for culture to survive. 

“I hope [quarantine] changes the way people look at art, since it’s keeping us in, more people are trying certain types of art,” my brother — Jake — said. He’s only 14, but he also has me as a sibling.  

I asked them what specific types of art reminded them of this importance. For my mom, it was music. All kinds of music — pop, classical, jazz, anything. But her favorite is country, the art form at which I absolutely love to poke fun. All country music is the same, I have said on more than one occasion, it’s just people singing about blue jeans and trucks and beer. But maybe there’s something to be said for blue jeans and trucks and beer right now, because the crux of all country songs is the ability to share these things with friends (there’s also often a healthy dose of female objectification involved, but I’m not going to point that out to her right now).

For Jake, it was drawing. He wants to be a character designer one day, and though that’s likely to change, there’s also a good chance it won’t. I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was eight, and that dream was remained unwavering. I’ll often find Jake sitting on the couch with his sketchpad, drawing superheroes and basketball players and Star Wars characters. Art is responsible for his favorite stories, and one day, he wants to be responsible for those stories too. 

Then my mother threw the question back at me. What is your favorite form of art, she asked, and why is it so important? The first part of the question was easy, books have always been and always will be my favorite, but the latter part was more difficult. Why is art so important to me? And what is it about Station Eleven that cemented the importance of the arts more for me than the many other essays and think-pieces I’ve read on the same topic? 

It may be the level to which St John Mandel elevates tragedy. In the novel, the flu virus affects everyone across the globe, and society as we think of it ceases to exist. No more schools, no more airplanes, no more medicine, no more electricity. This is all stuff many of us still have right now, in some form or another. But for the people of Station Eleven, the only thing that’s left is a traveling band of actors and a lovingly-drawn comic book about space. I certainly have more than that now, but perhaps the sheer scale of the trauma directly correlates to how much we need the arts — the worse the moment, the more we rely on it. 

It may be the fact that St John Mandel is, in my opinion, one of the most eloquent writers I’ve ever encountered. I do think that writing is subjective, and that certain pieces will impact people in different ways, so maybe her writing just speaks to me in a way that other writing does not. 

It may also be the erasure of lines between “high” and “low” art in Station Eleven, in which a handmade comic book is as important as Shakespeare. I myself always got much more value from fantasy novels and science fiction television shows than I did from the National Portrait Gallery. 

It could be the combination of all of this. In all honesty, I don’t have an answer. I don’t know why Station Eleven has resonated with me so strongly more than the other pieces I’ve encountered with the same thesis. 

But it did tell me, for what was the first time when I read this, that what I do and what I love is important too. It’s saying that survival cannot, should not, be enough. We must seek out more, because art gives us the ability to escape, to tell stories of our world under the guise of another. It allows us to explore new ideas in a realm where we can’t be told it’s impossible, and it gives us a form of self-expression that science and math just can’t reach. Though I had to trudge through middle school and high school with a barebones art budget yet infinite amounts of money for STEM, I did so with the ardently held belief that art, that stories, are important too. 

Back when this quarantine was beginning, Emily St John Mandel tweeted that right now was probably not the best time to read Station Eleven, which I understand, because why read about a worst-case scenario pandemic when we are literally living through one? But I disagree, even if I didn’t have the guts to tweet that back to her. If anything, now is a better time than ever to read Station Eleven. It’s a reminder of what the arts are capable of, and what we are capable of through the arts. 

Because though everything may be falling apart, mere survival will always be insufficient.