Spiraling Into Control

A photo I took of Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty" during a lightening storm.

One of my favorite works of art of all time has to be Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty". This earthwork sculpture consists of a 1,500' long, 15' wide dirt and rock spiral jutting out into the Great Salt Lake not far from where I live. The entire landscape is surreal, like it was formed out of a Salvador Dali painting.

A Salvador Dalí study for Alfred Hitchcock’s “Spellbound”

I have visited the site countless times. I have walked all over it and the surrounding area, camped there, photographed it, experienced it at all times of day and night (sunrise and sunset are the best), all times of year, and once in a lighting storm that was nothing short of epic. Yet, somehow, the Spiral Jetty never loses its magic.

One reason it never loses its ability to seduce, inspire, and entrance, is that it seems to have a charismatic soul of its own. I think it embodies the kind of art Kandinsky's quote was referring to in my last post: Art that "acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being." Robert Smithson was at the center of its inception; it grew in his mind like a baby in utero, he must have felt it quicken in his sketchbooks, and then it was finally born out of the earth itself.

A page from Robert Smithson's sketchbook.

Photo: David Robb

Once formed,  the Spiral Jetty continued to take on an identity and personality of its own. It dove beneath the waves of the Great Salt Lake for thirty years, crystallized itself in salt, then was reborn brilliant white and beautiful in a way that Smithson probably never imagined. It continues to grow and change with the seasons, the lake levels, the color/amount of the algae in the water, and even its interactions with people.

Photo: David Robb

For a long time I had a hard time letting the writing/artwork tell me what it wanted to be. I wanted to control it, plan everything, make sure the reader/viewer thought and experienced exactly what I wanted. It's as ridiculous as trying to pre-plan exactly how your child will look and behave and how their whole life will play out before they are even born. This is all nonsense, of course. I realized it one day after months of trying to write a short story that took place at the Spiral Jetty. The story kept trying to grow into a novel. It felt like my whole plot was spiraling out of control and I kept telling it, "No way! I can't write a novel. That's crazy. You're going to be a short story and that's final!" After months of fighting, I finally admitted defeat and the short story became a novel. When I realized it was a novel, everything fell into place. It was never spiraling out of control, it was slowly curving into it's center where it had been trying to lead me all along.

A page from my journal.