A Walk Along the Buttermilk Channel with Rachel Lyon
"I was looking for specificity when expressing myself. Clarity."
“Mommy, look! A water drop.”
Rachel Lyon and I are standing in front of the Pier 6 Playground Water Lab as her four-year-old son splashes in the puddles made from jets of water surging out of the ground. For a moment I wonder what made that particular water drop—out of so many—interesting enough for the boy to highlight it, but I forget to ask him and then get quickly distracted.
We’re at the park to say hi to Rachel’s mother—who is watching Rachel’s son and daughter—while Rachel and I are out for our walk. Rachel’s mom and I have met before, and we talk in the shade for a bit, catching up while the mist from the skyward shoots of water cools us. It’s summer in Brooklyn. One of the hottest days of the year.
[Editor’s note: This particular Walk It Off happened over 8 months ago. Yes. I know. It is now March. I promise you more are coming, but for now please pretend that it is sweltering hot. Thank you.]
Rachel and I worked together on an island 10 miles off the coast of New Hampshire when we were children—or, more accurately, newly formed adults. Our early twenties. We also lived in San Francisco for a time after that, when a motley crew of friends from that very same island decided to move across the country for no other reason than it seemed like the sort of thing one should do when one is young.
It strikes me, watching Rachel’s mother watch Rachel’s children, while Rachel watches them—and I sort of talk at everybody—that it’s not often you get to see three generations of a family gathered together, one right next to another. Like Russian nesting dolls that are also somehow time capsules of DNA.
The boy lets out a laugh and I take a moment to appreciate it.
Before Rachel and I meandered down to the waterfront, looking out at Governor's Island and the ships passing through Buttermilk Channel, we met at Poppy’s. We both bought iced coffees in a futile attempt to fight off the heat and set out into the cloudless day.
Isaac: You grew up around here, right?
Rachel Lyon: We’re a block away from my parents’ house.
I: Did you grow up at that address?
RL: We moved there when I was a freshman in high school. My parents moved to Brooklyn from Chicago when I was a baby. We were in DUMBO until I was 10 or so, then Fort Greene, then we moved to Carroll Gardens.
I: And where are we walking now?
RL: Cobble Hill.
I: Has the area changed since you were a kid?
RL: Honestly, I think Cobble Hill has probably changed the least when compared to other areas in Brooklyn—because it has always been an upper middle class residential neighborhood. I remember when we moved here it was very much an area code shift for us.
I: You went to Saint Ann's School.
RL: Correct.
I: Mike D from the Beastie Boys is an alumni. Jennifer Connelly. Emma Straub. Meghan O'Rourke. Lena Dunham. Jean-Michel Basquiat attended for a bit.
RL: A lot of writers, actors, artists, and musicians.
I: You taught there for a short time, too, right?
RL: I did. For two years after college—in the lower school.
I: Your parents are both involved with the art world, right? When you and I first met—almost twenty years ago, now—you were a visual artist. Is that fair to say?
RL: My mother, Debra Pearlman, is an artist and my father, Christopher Lyon, writes about art—so my childhood was very arts world-adjacent. So when I went to college, that was the world I was familiar with. I felt comfortable talking about art.
I: You were smart at art.
RL: Sure. So that’s what I majored in, and for my senior thesis I did an exhibition of my own work.
I: Which was around the time we met. What shifted, for you? When did you begin pursuing writing as a medium over visual art?
RL: I’d say I grew up a little bit in my early twenties. I shifted gears—sort of slowly, and then all at once—working in images didn’t feel right to me anymore. Language began to feel more comfortable.
I: Which is interesting, because your father writes about art—emphasis on the “writes.” Did you feel a little torn asunder between your mother, the artist, and your father, the writer?
RL: I try to follow what feels most natural, and at that time in my life it felt more comfortable to write. I’m a person who likes to take my time when I’m expressing myself, and writing is an extremely satisfying process for someone who wants to slow down and articulate themself thoughtfully.
Images can be misinterpreted, or interpreted many different ways. That’s something I really enjoy about visual art. And literature is obviously open to interpretation, too. But at the time, I was looking for specificity. Clarity.
I: Control?
RL: Control! Also, with a painting, or a sculpture, or a drawing, the viewer can see it in a gallery, stop, take a quick look, and move on.
There’s a statistic about this. People usually stand in front of a work of art for an average of nine or so seconds. But for a novel? You have to sit down and spend days with it. Or weeks. Or months, even, depending on your schedule, or how quickly you read.
That type of long term engagement with a piece of art by the person receiving it feels immersive… it feels like a real relationship.
I: Would you say it’s more intimate?
RL: Yes. For me. A really great visual artist can make work that feels incredibly intimate and clear—but I wasn't, in my opinion, a great visual artist.
I: Agree to disagree. I remember being blown away by your art when we were young.
RL: That’s kind. I mean, I've always been interested in both. I was always interested in writing. I took a lot of creative writing classes—I was one credit shy of a creative writing certificate in undergrad. I loved my poetry classes in college. So it was always a part of what I was doing. It was just that, as I said, I was more familiar with the visual art world, so I felt more confident in that space when I was younger. My love of writing—my want to write—it felt more fragile. Like a secret I wasn’t ready to share at the time. It took me an extremely long time to take my interest in writing seriously. Even longer than that to call myself a writer.
I: When did you decide to get your MFA?
RL: I was one of the oldest people in my MFA program. I didn’t have a portfolio until I was 28.
I: So you grow up in New York City, go to college, spend some time in San Francisco and then back here teaching in Brooklyn. Where did you go to graduate school?
RL: Indiana University.
I: As someone raised in New York, did you love going other places, or did they seem small? Less exciting?
RL: I really enjoy other spaces and landscapes, but sometimes I worry that I stick out like a sore thumb. For example, at IU I still didn’t have a driver’s license. I was living in Bloomington, Indiana and I couldn’t drive to the grocery store—always had to ask other people for a lift.
I: Very New Yorker of you. So you feel a bit like a fish out of water in other places?
RL: Always! I mean, not always, but often. I mean… isn't fish out of water such a crazy phrase, when you think about it? Like, we use it to indicate someone who doesn't feel at home, here or there, but a fish, out of water, literally cannot breathe, literally suffocates. Out of water, a fish dies. I know it's just a cliché, but it's actually really evocative and sort of terrifying when you think about it. And, to answer your question, maybe I do sort of feel that way, sometimes.
I: Do you think that's part of why you wanted to figure out ways to express yourself?
RL: It’s funny, one time I had a friend from high school who said to me, very bluntly, “Do you think you're a writer because you have trouble communicating? Like, when you're talking to people?”
I: Jesus.
RL: It hurt my feelings, for sure. But honestly the answer is, “Yes.”
I: Do you feel better understood after you publish something? Or when somebody connects with your work—
RL: Oh my God, yes. It’s so meaningful. There's nothing better than having someone really connect with—really understand—my work. Fruit of the Dead, touched on a lot of personal topics—
I: Mothers. Addiction. Desire.
RL: When young women have reached out to tell me that they shared the book with their mom, or that it helped them with their own recovery, those notes mean everything to me.
I: We’ll definitely get to Fruit of the Dead, but I’d like to talk about your first novel for a moment, Self-Portrait with Boy—is it safe to say that book is about the art world?
RL: Yes.
I: Did you choose that topic for the same reason you studied visual arts in college? It’s a space where you felt comfortable? Write what you know, in a way?
RL: Absolutely. Everybody tells you to write the book that only you can write. “Write what you know.” So, I started with this loft building in DUMBO, which is very much based on the building where I lived as a child. Then I worked outward from there.
I’d overheard this story when I was growing up. Not the whole story, but little snippets. Bits and pieces of the story, over the course of my childhood, that there had been a young kid who fell off the roof of the building where we lived and died. So that's where my first book began, with the idea of that building, and this vague story—ghosts of the East River.
I don’t even know if I totally believe that advice anymore.
I: What’s that? “Write what you know?”
RL: Yeah. I think it's a good place to start, especially if you’re at the beginning of your career. But an experienced writer? I think an experienced writer can make their way into any story—with enough research, and respect for their characters. With imagination and creative thought. You don’t have to write what you know if you know what you’re doing.
I: Put that on a t-shirt.
RL: That said, I’m not sure I totally know what I’m doing yet.
I: But I think that’s an encouraging thought. Especially for people who are maybe interested in writing—but haven’t lived what they think of as spectacular lives. In my opinion, any piece of writing advice is never 100% true. There are always so many exceptions to the “The Rule,” that my only rule is that no rules actually exist.
RL: Exactly—and for folks worried about their lives not being “spectacular” enough, there’s that Flannery O'Connor quote.
I: Which one?
RL: “The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.”
I: How did your parents react to Self-Portrait with Boy—given that you were writing about the art world, the loft space where you grew up? Your world, of course, but also their world.
RL: It's interesting. My parents have a constant ongoing dialogue about their own creative work—especially my mom’s creative work. What her work means outside of their relationship. Outside of her as a person.
I: They give each other feedback not as partners, but as artist and critic, respectively.
RL: Right, and they brought that to my work, too. Don’t get me wrong, on one hand I’m their daughter and they’re proud of me, which is really nice and special. But on the other hand? “A pretty decent debut,” would probably be their reaction. Not in a cold way. Honesty around art is just—
I: The language of your home?
RL: That’s a nice way to put it. The coin of the realm. They’d say, “Do me the honor of looking at my work objectively. From a critical standpoint. Please. And then I’ll do the same for you.”
I: That’s touching, in a way.
RL: It is…
I: Do you think they appreciate that this is the life you decided to pursue? The life of a writer? Of an artist?
RL: Definitely. I also think they left me no choice. So, they better be happy with it.
I: That’s an amazing way to put it.
RL: There was no way I was going to be a lawyer, or a doctor coming out of our household. They simply did not prepare us for that.
I: How does that make you feel?
RL: I appreciate it now, but I would probably have a different answer if you asked me when I was 22.
But overall, I’m really lucky. A lot more lucky than, say, my mom, who grew up in a household where nobody was interested in art, which she started pursuing in earnest at the age of 11. The rest of her family wondering, “What’s Debra doing in the basement?”
I: “What’s Debra going to do for money? When’s she going to get a job?”
RL: Exactly.
I: I hope it’s alright that we’re talking about your parents so much, but I find the idea of an artistic family fascinating.
RL: No, I get it.
I: In a way, it’s similar to you being from New York City. An oddity for those of us that didn’t, but for you it’s simply a part of your life. I remember when we met, you were one of the first people I’d really known who grew up in NYC, so I would pepper you with questions.
RL: While for me, New York is just where I grew up.
I: In the same way, your family is simply who you grew up with.
RL: Which is how I feel, but now that I’m older I get why it's interesting. In a way, I’m a second generation artist.
I: Yeah! You nailed it. It’s this weird thing—
RL: It is this weird thing, but it’s also all I know.
I: So the Self-Portrait with Boy book comes out. At that point are you finally saying, “Ok. I’m a writer. I can do this.”
RL: I’d say that’s accurate. I mean, I definitely made some big changes at that point. I quit my full-time job and started teaching classes four nights a week. Which, like, not recommended. My agent—our agent! Meredith Kaffel Simonoff, truly the best—specifically said, “Don't quit your day job.” Good advice that I did not take! But I wanted to make an effort to support myself as a writer.
I: How’d it go? Do you enjoy teaching?
RL: I love teaching. I’ve been doing it ever since. Though I don't teach as much now. And fortunately we are a two-income family.
I: You and John—your husband—and the kids live in Western Massachusetts now.
RL: That's right.
I: Moving out of the city, one of the best ways to support yourself as a writer.
RL: Absolutely. I’ve been teaching a class at the library there, which has been wonderful. I was a visiting faculty member at Bennington last spring, and the spring previous—that was fun. I have a residency coming up at the American University of Paris.
I: Oh wow.
RL: Yeah, I'm psyched. It'll be so fun to talk to those students.
I: Huh.
RL: What?
I: Just the way you phrased that, “It'll be so fun to talk to those students.” Do you think teaching gives you that same thing—the same thing writing does—which is a way of communicating?
RL: Yes. Teaching forces you to articulate your thoughts and philosophies in a way that is clear to other people, and therefore clear to yourself. In that way, teaching and writing are very similar to me.
It’s also super helpful for my creative process. I’ll talk about something in the classroom, and it will often help me figure out something on the page. Nine times out of ten, when I come out of a class, I’m super invigorated to sit back down and keep writing.
I: Let me know if I’m getting to close to The Therapy Zone™️—but why do you think you’re so obsessed with communication? Is it something from childhood?
RL: Last week I did a live TV segment on a local member station in Springfield, Massachusetts—
I: Hell yeah.
RL: It’s called Mass Appeal on WWLP. Right off the bat, the host turned to me and said, “So, why did you want to become a writer?” And my response was, “Ah!” I was totally caught off guard.
But what I ended up saying—again, on live television, which is super embarrassing—was, “I was a shy kid. So it was useful for me to sit down and take my time communicating. When I’m put on the spot, I get very self-conscious. I clam up.”
I: “Much like what you’re doing to me right now, Mr. TV Host.”
RL: Right!? But that’s the real answer, I think. I was self-conscious as a kid. So I had two choices, either don’t communicate with people, or lean into it and figure out how to communicate with people.
I: So you were a shy kid growing up?
RL: I was very self-conscious. Like many writers. I loved reading and spending time alone and making stuff.
I: While we’re on the subject of lil’ ones, do you think it’s going to be interesting raising your kids not in New York?
RL: It's already interesting. The four-year-old knows the names of all of the birds and can identify them by their song—
I: Extraordinary.
RL: He’s this little naturalist—in a way that I never, ever was. Both of my children like to be outside all the time. Whereas, when I was a kid, I didn’t like grass.
I: I’m sorry, you didn’t like grass?
RL: Literally, the feel of grass on my legs freaked me out. I hated it.
I: That’s the most New York City Kid™️ shit I’ve ever heard. Are you happy for them?
RL: Definitely. It’s special, that they have all that space. At the same time, I also feel strongly about bringing them back to the city on the regular. Making sure they feel happy and comfortable here, too.
I: The best of both worlds.
RL: The same way they’re obsessed with nature, they’re also obsessed with everything here in the city. They perk up every time we leave my parents’ house in Brooklyn. Always pointing things out, talking about them. Exploring.
I: Communicating and sharing.
RL: Like you said, the best of both worlds.
I: So how did you come to your second novel, Fruit of the Dead? When did you realize you wanted to do a retelling of the myth of Persephone, Hades, and Demeter?
RL: It was 2017, and the Me Too movement was starting to really take off. So I was thinking a lot about power dynamics and sex and relationships. Re-examining things that had happened to me—to so many of my friends. Having important conversations. But I was also getting super frustrated by some of the dialogue around Me Too. Especially the response from men.
I: How so?
RL: There was this feeling that the Me Too movement was a new thing. That it was suddenly happening, instead of—
I: It highlighting a tale as old as time.
RL: Exactly. So, I was already working on a book about a young woman who gets involved with her employer, but—born of that frustration—it occurred to me that it would be interesting to incorporate an ancient story as a kind of undertow.
I: To say, “This isn’t new.”
RL: A lot of the responses I saw from men were, “Uh, hang on. You guys are changing the rules!”
I: Whereas you’re saying, “No, this shit is a forever story.”
RL: It’s ever-present. As long as there is testosterone, there will be stories like these.
I: Did that elevate the book for you?
RL: Completely. The story was there first, but it really started working once I decided to incorporate the myth into the novel. It broke the whole book open for me.
I kept returning to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. I read it and then re-read it and then re-read it again, always finding strange new details and turns of phrase. By highlighting poetic moments, it became a sort of conversation between this ancient text and my yet-to-be-fully-formed novel. I’d never done that before, and I found it invigorating. Seeing how many things from that work I could weave into the story I was writing.
So I started working in all these Easter eggs, which led to me putting an actual Easter egg hunt in the book. I kept playing with new ideas, inspired by this meta dialogue I was having with the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. I liked the idea of making the gods of Olympus the 1%—because the book is about power and wealth and late capitalism. The seduction of money and luxury.
I: The book is very much a story of seduction.
RL: Seduction and entrapment. So what better myth to use, really?
I: Did you always know that there was going to be a pharmaceutical aspect to the novel?
RL: At first, Rolo Picazo—
I: The pharmaceutical executive. Sort of your novel’s Hades—
RL: At first he was an author, and Cory Ansel—
I: The protagonist, your Persephone.
RL: Was going to be his writing assistant.
I: No kidding? It’s hard for me to picture your book without the pharmaceutical aspect.
RL: This was before I incorporated the myth—which, again, felt so right—but not long after I figured that all out, a new problem arose.
I: Ain’t that always the way it is.
RL: So one of the more challenging aspects of working with these old texts—and maybe scholars of Greek mythology would disagree with me—but in the versions I found, there isn’t a lot of interiority in terms of the characters. The reader isn’t getting into the heads of the characters in the way that we do in contemporary novels.
These texts are telling us what happened, but it’s up to the reader to extrapolate what the characters’ motivations are. As a contemporary reader, it feels foreign. But it also opens up a lot of opportunity.
I: How so?
RL: It allowed for me to sell the motivations of these characters. So a natural aspect of the novel that revealed itself to me—as I was writing—was giving my Persephone character agency. In a way, that was my primary creative project.
I remember thinking, “I want to give Cory agency. I want her to be making these choices—good or bad, wise or unwise—and for those choices to feel reasonable and realistic for an 18-year-old to make to a contemporary reader.”
So that’s where the pharmaceutical aspect came in. I started leaning into Rolo, not as an author, but as a billionaire pharmaceutical executive. Which allowed me to create the fruit—the drug—as another form of seduction, of course, but also as a believable reason that an 18-year-old girl would stick around in a threatening place for as long as she does.
I: Is it fair to say that addiction and substance abuse are topics that interest you?
RL: I am both familiar with them and interested in them, yes.
I: Are you comfortable talking about your sobriety?
RL: Sure.
I: How long have you been sober?
RL: Six years.
I: I can do math. So you were working on Fruit of the Dead when you got sober?
RL: I started working on this book around the very end of my drinking. It was the summer of 2017—Self-Portrait with Boy hadn’t come out yet, but I was super anxious about its release.
With my debut coming out, there were going to be a bunch of parties and book events. I wasn’t sure how I was going to act or what I was going to say at those events if I were drunk—and at that point I was drunk every night. So I gave myself a deadline. Get sober before the book comes out.
I: Did you?
RL: Self-Portrait with Boy came out in February of 2018 and I quit drinking in January of 2018. I’ve been sober ever since.
I: Ok. Don’t shoot me—and please let me know if I’m leading the witness here—but in a way, your sobriety is also about making sure you were clearly communicating. I’m sure your sobriety about so many other things, as well. Sobriety is vast, or course. But, you were worried about being misunderstood, or making a fool of yourself—
RL: Definitely. I don’t think that’s a stretch at all.
I: At the time, were you considering it a break from drinking—or were you shooting for sobriety from the start?
RL: I had tried breaks before. They never really worked. In May of 2017, I remember, I tried to take the entire month off. I lasted six days.
I: Did you find it hard to quit when you really quit?
RL: 100%. In fact, at my book launch party for Self-Portrait with Boy I remember my friend—our friend—Kendra Allenby, she kept handing me glass after glass after glass after glass of sparkling water. There was wine everywhere, so she made sure my hand always had a glass of water in it.
I: That’s a very thoughtful gesture.
RL: I had really wanted to be chill, for it to feel effortless. But I was very not chill. That first year was really, really hard.
I: Has it gotten easier since?
RL: I’m hesitant to say “easier.” But it’s more comfortable. I’m more familiar with it.
I: Do you think being sober has changed your work?
RL: Yes. I used to write hungover in the mornings. I would get up at 5:30am and write—it felt helpful, in a way. A good brain space, because you’re unfiltered—
I: Hazy. Tired. But you stay out of your own way. You don’t overthink things.
RL: Exactly! Then you get the buzz from your coffee. So the caffeine and this fucked up brain mash together? That was a very productive place for me.
As counterintuitive as it sounds—learning how to write without a hangover was a challenge for me.
I: How’d you do it?
RL: It was hard at first. But then, moving through this new, sober mind it felt almost like I was exploring my brain for the first time in a long while. I found that in place of that unfiltered, easy voice was a kind of metanarrative I hadn't been able to hear before. I was able to track my thoughts better. I wasn’t as distracted. My ideas felt sharper, clearer.
I: There it is again.
RL: What’s that?
I: Another aspect in your life where you’re searching for clarity.
RL: I think some people truly understand themselves. They know themselves. Know their own personality. They come out fully formed. But I’m not that person. I’ve had to dig inward—even when I was a child—to try and figure out who I am. What motivates me. And I’m still very much doing that.
I: You like figuring out what makes things tick.
RL: I try extremely hard to get where people are coming from. That’s a big part of my interest in fiction. Exploring the motivations of each character.
I: And yourself?
RL: And myself.
I: Fruit of the Dead is also, in part, about a fierce mother. Do you find yourself—now that you're a mother also—more empathic to fierce mothers?
RL: Yes, I do.
I: Is it safe to say—I’m not sure how to put this—because, you and I knew each other when we were in our early 20s, and—
RL: Are you trying to ask me about my mother, Isaac?
I: Yes.
RL: When you become a parent—at least this has been my experience, and the experience of many people I’ve spoken with—your relationship with your parents changes in so many different ways. My relationship with my mom has become so much more solid and loving and relaxed than it was, you know, 20 years ago.
I: Which makes sense.
RL: When I was writing Cory, though, I was really interested in that late adolescence, early adulthood phase of life that you’re talking about.
I: 20 years ago.
RL: That phase of resistance and individuation, alongside that super critical relationship between a daughter and her mother. When I was in that time of my life, I had a lot to be angry about, and I was carrying a lot of resentment.
Now that I have kids… well, on one hand I realize what a pain in the ass I was being—and I realize that I, too, am now gonna deal with this at a certain point. But, also, I understand now how fucking difficult it is to be a parent. It's really, really, really, really hard. So it’s easier for me to be more forgiving of my parents, these days.
I: You understand the instinct to protect your children—
RL: That deep desire to protect them, which can come out in warped ways sometimes. Our desire to protect and love someone doesn’t always translate into loving and patient words, right?
I: Or actions.
RL: Or actions.
At my house we have a step stool, so my son can help with cooking. But the other day my daughter—who isn’t even two yet—she climbed up on the step stool and had somehow gotten ahold of a knife, which she was starting to drag across her hand.
I: Oh shit.
RL: So I flipped. Loudly. Immediately.
I: “Put that knife down!”
[Editor’s note: I yell this rather loudly, and a few people walking by look over to see what all the fuss is about. I wave as if to say, “All clear. No knives here.”]
RL: Right.
I: You’re just trying to keep her safe.
RL: But on her end, she’s thinking, “What the fuck? What’s happening?” It's this emotional moment of fear and miscommunication.
But you’re filled with that fierce desire to protect your child—mixed with not having the time to explain to them that dragging a knife over their hand is dangerous. So there’s this emotional moment of fear and miscommunication.
Do you mind if I ask how you're doing, Isaac? I know your mom died recently. I'm so sorry.
I: Taking it day by day, as cliché as that is. It’s hard. Fucking hard. A mother—it’s a wholly unique relationship, right? Like we’re saying. And now that relationship is gone. Or not gone, but—
RL: Paused? Like someone hit the pause button, without realizing the play button is broken, and now you're stuck only with what you had? Like you never get to finish the story?
I: I mean, perfectly put. But it’s also… There’s no story to finish, right? That was it. That was the end. There’s no extra tape to try and salvage. So all I’m left with are attempts at reinterpreting the parts of the tape I got to hear.
[Editor’s Note: For younger readers, the metaphor we’re referencing is a tape getting stuck in a tape deck. Here’s a video, if you’d find that helpful.]
Did you know that the mother character, Emer—your Demeter character—was going to be such a big part of the book from the jump?
RL: No. I didn’t.
I was pretty committed to writing the story solely from Cory’s perspective at first. Because in the versions of the myth I'd found, none of them included Persephone's perspective. The myths always made her sound like an object. “Persephone was abducted. Persephone was raped.” Everything happens to Persephone—it’s all passive verbs—she’s never making her own choices.
So at first I was sticking to Cory. But then, partway through, I was writing all this trippy prose, because Cory’s partaking in a new drug that Rolo is manufacturing, but hasn’t brought to market yet. She's high a lot of the time, and hungover a lot of the time—and that's not a stable narrative voice.
That’s when I started using Emer’s voice as well, to give the reader a vicarious POV from which to watch the events unfold. Also, I was becoming a mother myself—a profound change in my life that I wanted to write about it—so a lot of my own experiences, thoughts, feelings, and freaked worries got in there, too.
I: It allowed you to have more complex characters, which of course leads to a more complex story overall.
RL: Moral ambiguity—that’s what fiction is for, really. Right?
There’s this book I found on my father’s bookshelf that I really love, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience by Erving Goffman. It’s all about how framing can shift the way was see things.
I used Goffman’s ideas in Fruit of the Dead. Literally. Corey sees herself through two different frames. One of the frames if driftwood, and Corey sees herself wild, young, daring, and free. The other frame is solid metal. Heavy. Which is her mother’s frame, and through that frame—the permanence of that frame—she can see that she’s making multiple significant mistakes.
But that’s the literature I love to read and the literature I love to write.
I: The different ways we can view the world, and also the different ways we can view ourselves.
RL: The ways perspectives can so easily shift.
I: You mentioned being a really interior child. Do you think you felt a little misunderstood?
RL: As a kid?
I: Yeah.
RL: That's a hard question for me, to be honest.
I’m not sure “misunderstood” is accurate. I went to a school where everyone was very supportive—arts were a top priority both at school and at home. I was appreciated for my writing, for my violin, for my drawings. I definitely felt appreciated. Is that the same as being understood? I don't know.
I think it's more a question of understanding myself. Which is something I still wrestle with. I think I confuse representation of the thing with the thing itself.
I'm a storyteller. I'm a romantic. I have the image of the thing, and I write a whole narrative about it. But how does the thing really feel? Sometimes I don't know.
I: Do you think that art, music, writing, expression—all those things—might be a way of keeping actual experience at arm's length?
RL: Maybe.
I: You said earlier that you feel like you didn’t have a choice about getting involved in the arts. What do you think you would have done if you weren't a writer?
RL: For a brief time I thought about medical school, but that was short lived.
I think the way I was wired—my brain, my family, my school—all those factors were conspiring toward some type of creative life. Not in a bad way, or in a good way. It just is.
I: Do you find it fulfilling?
RL: Yes and no. What I do find fulfilling is the community of writers that I've met. I have a little writing group in Massachusetts, two other women who are working on really interesting projects. We meet every month and share work and talk about it, and it's one of the best parts of my month, every month. When I was in New York, I had a really awesome writing group. I'm still in touch with a lot of those people.
I don't think my satisfaction is dependent on writing per se, although I've learned to rely on it for my own mental health. But I don't know, maybe I would have learned to rely on seeing patients or doing surgeries for my mental health, if that's the direction I'd gone.
I: Do you still pick up the violin? Do you still draw?
RL: I don’t draw much anymore, although I've done a few illustrations around Fruit of the Dead. And violin is also super loaded for me, because I was very skilled as a young person—but now that I don’t practice as rigorously, I’m not as good as I used to be.
I do still pick it up every now and then. There’s all this emotion that comes with it. I love playing. I’m thinking about taking lessons again, and making time to practice more. I’m going to try and commit to playing more often, when my kids are a little older.
I: Is it a bit like a talented sports player who gets back on the field—they're still great and they enjoy it, but they're never as good as they once were?
RL: Totally.
It’s the same with writing—or anything, really. If you don’t write for a few days, or a few weeks, you get rusty. Like a muscle, you have to keep working on it. But it’s a lot less obvious than the physical muscles of your fingers. My violin skills go noticeably downhill every year I don’t play.
I: But you can still play?
RL: Right now I’m probably as good as I was in eighth or ninth grade.
I: Do you enjoy sharing the arts with your kids? Or are you trying to make sure they have the option to go to medical school—giving them Fisher Price doctor kits and toy stethoscopes?
RL: Oh, I don't care what they do as long as they're happy and can support themselves. But that's all still pretty far off. And contingent on the fate of the Earth.
I: What is your process now that it's not waking up hungover?
RL: I write when I can. The kids are in daycare and preschool during the day now, so I have a little time. I also write at night, which I never thought I could do before. Turns out I can.
But mainly I write where I can fit it in. I don't have a routine anymore. I have these little pockets of time, and I try to use them as best I can.
I: Do you find there are a lot more hours in the day now that you're sober? Or did that time get replaced by motherhood?
RL: Definitely replaced by motherhood. There are no hours left in the day. But you can make them—with effort.
Still, it’s hard. I had an idea earlier this week while I was driving—it had to do with structure, and where to place a certain chapter for this new book I’m working on. I planned on writing it down the moment I got home. But I didn’t.
I: Now it’s gone?
RL: Five days later I’m still trying to remember it. I know it’ll come back to me at some point, but by then it will be different. Not exactly the idea I had. The longer you leave the idea, the more it changes without you.
I: Do you relate more to your own mother—as a mom and an artist—in a way you maybe didn't fully grasp before?
RL: Absolutely. I had no idea how difficult it was for her.
I was a kid—self-involved in the way all kids are—so I had no idea how hard she was fighting to establish herself. Especially with two children who were born eight years apart.
I: That’s your younger brother?
RL: Right. So she was mothering young children for a long, long time, which must have been so frustrating for her career-wise. Plus she came of age creatively during a time when there wasn't much dialogue happening around motherhood and artistry. The art world was much more misogynist—I mean, it still is, but even more so in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
I remember whenever she would bring me—or me and my brother—to a gallery or an art opening people would give her dirty looks. “Get those kids out of here.”
I: “This is an adult space.”
RL: “This is not a space for children.” Which, or course, is shorthand for, “This is not a space for mothers.”
Also, so many of her friends and colleagues would say to her, “Every woman artist I know who had kids stopped making work. Are you going to stop making work now?”
I: Which was not what happened.
RL: It’s not what happened She's still showing. She's still making new and exciting work. It's incredible. But she still holds a lot of that ambivalence from her youth, even now. I feel for her, and at the same time I feel that, as her daughter, part of my project creatively, personally—even spiritually—is to recognize that ambivalence in myself and grow out of it. Or through it. To move past it, and examine it in my own work.
I: Take it out and examine it on the page.
RL: Right.
I: What about your dad?
RL: I take after my dad in a lot of ways. He's a writer by nature. He's someone who needs to sit down and write things out. That’s how he grapples with how he feels about things, what he really thinks, and I’m like that, too.
I: It really feels like writing is your way of figuring yourself—and this world—out. Which is true for your father. Widen that aperture to making art, and I believe it’s true of both your parents.
RL: That gets back to the idea of the second-generation artist.
I: How so?
RL: On the one hand, I have this feeling of, “I'm doing this on my own. This is my art. This is what I do.”
I: Which is true.
RL: But on the other hand, of course it's influenced by my mother and my father. My family is almost its own little artistic community.
I: So what were some of your favorite places in this neighborhood when you were a kid?
RL: Well, if I’m being honest I’d say my boyfriend’s house.
I: Nice.
RL: It was only a block away.
I: Even better.
RL: We went to Cobble Hill Cinemas a lot. That’s where we went on our first date, to watch the Little Mermaid re-release.
I: Awww.
RL: We were nostalgic little ninth graders.
I: “We must recapture the lost youth… of first grade.”
RL: “We're so complex and adult now. Jaded. Oh, to be seven again.” I still love Cobble Hill Cinemas.
I: Did you go into Manhattan a lot as a kid?
RL: I went to music school at Third Street Music School in Lower Manhattan. So I was there twice a week my whole childhood and teenage years. Sometimes more. Plus I had friends in Manhattan, so I’d go to visit them. I had a Rocky Horror Picture Show phase when I was in 8th grade.
I: Oh wow. A perfect phase for 8th grade. Which do you think shaped you more, the city or your family?
RL: I'm not sure I can separate the two. I grew up naive about certain things as a New Yorker. But I also think growing up in the city made me adaptable.
It’s why I want to bring my kids back here as much as possible. I want them to know how big the world is. I want them to learn that—the ability to make room in your life for a lot of different people being a lot of different ways.
But on the other hand, you can feel out of place, or like you don’t fit in once you’re outside of the city.
My dad worked at the Museum of Modern Art, and my mom lectured there when I was a kid. So I was at MoMA all the time. I grew up surrounded by these incredible works of art.
I was fascinated by Henri Rousseau's painting The Dream. What I mean is it’s a really unique childhood, which on the one hand is special, but on the other hand—
I: It’s different than most of the children in America.
RL: Exactly. I talk to my husband about his childhood, who grew up near where you did in Massachusetts—
I: It was different.
RL: When I talk to John about his experience growing up and my experience growing up, I can recognize that those are two different experiences. There were definitely special things about being a kid here in NYC. Valuable things about exposure and sophisticated consumption in terms of art.
But that's not all of life.
I: That’s not the whole story.
RL: There’s always more to learn.
Rachel has been pushing her almost two-year-old daughter in a stroller for the last leg of our conversation. After some time talking, we’d looped back to the waterpark at Pier 6 Playground and picked the child up from Rachel’s mother, who in turn went off with Rachel’s son.
The girl has been mostly quiet, observant, interrupting us only to point out a few things of interest: A butterfly. A flower. A large garbage truck.
Rachel has been able to reaffirm her daughter without breaking stride nor the flow of our conversation—an almost constant, ongoing magic trick. Eventually we pick up Rachel's son, too, and make our way back to the family’s house in Carroll Gardens. Rachel’s father, Chris, is heading out into the city on his bike, but stops to say hello.
Again, three generations, all together. All these different ways to understand one another.
Be sure to check out Rachel Lyon’s Substack:
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Glad to have Walk It Off back, Isaac!
I loved Fruit of the Dead SO MUCH. And this convo!