{"id":33583,"date":"2025-11-10T21:38:20","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T21:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/against-the-cartesian-myth-of-work-life-balance-andre-gregorys-extraordinary-letter-to-richard-avedon-about-the-nature-of-creativity\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T21:38:20","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T21:38:20","slug":"against-the-cartesian-myth-of-work-life-balance-andre-gregorys-extraordinary-letter-to-richard-avedon-about-the-nature-of-creativity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/against-the-cartesian-myth-of-work-life-balance-andre-gregorys-extraordinary-letter-to-richard-avedon-about-the-nature-of-creativity\/","title":{"rendered":"Against the Cartesian Myth of Work\/Life Balance: Andr\u00e9 Gregory\u2019s Extraordinary Letter to Richard Avedon about the Nature of Creativity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Half a millennium into our recovery from the civilizational wound Descartes inflicted by severing the body and the mind, we are bleeding with a Cartesian cleft of our own making \u2014 the damaging divide between life and work. The notion of a \u201cworkaholic,\u201d often worn as a badge on the lapel of the modern ego, presupposes someone who makes work the central axis of life at the expense of living. The very question of \u201cwork\/life balance,\u201d inherited from the industrial model of labor, asks us to live in parts \u2014 a portion of the person doing the working, another doing the living. But culture is not made the way cars are made. We create \u2014 anything that is not mechanical, that is not a commodity, that touches anyone else in a meaningful way \u2014 with everything we are: every experience we have ever had, every book we have ever read and every place we have ever walked, every elation and every shattering. The simplest poem pouring from the poet\u2019s pen, the smallest wooden spoon taking shape in the carpenter\u2019s hand, is the work of a lifetime.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Andr\u00e9 Gregory<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On the cusp of turning seventy, as his lifelong friend Richard Avedon<\/a> was dying, legendary theater director Andr\u00e9 Gregory took up drawing to his own surprise and found himself returned \u201cto some very early state, a time before loneliness, abandonment, and fear\u201d \u2014 that lovely feeling of breaking the template of oneself, leaving the comfort zone of competency on which reputations are built, and venturing into the vivifying firstness of something new. Such seemingly unproductive pastimes<\/a>, Gregory realized, feed the life that is the raw material for the work, though we never know what will sprout from each lived seed. <\/p>\n

Shortly after Avedon\u2019s death, Gregory wrote to his friend the letter he \u201calways intended to write but never did,\u201d addressing their divergent views on life and work \u2014 the \u201cone deep source of disagreement and friction\u201d in their profound friendship. (Everyone who has lost a loved one knows that the conversations continue, knows what Hemingway knew<\/a>: that \u201cno one you love is ever dead.\u201d) <\/p>\n

In what might be the mightiest defense of the creative spirit since William Blake\u2019s<\/a>, Gregory writes:<\/p>\n

\n

Let\u2019s face it \u2014 artists are always working, though they may not seem as if they are. They are like plants growing in winter. You can\u2019t see the fruit, but it is taking root below the earth.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>
Art by Balint Zsako from Bunny & Tree<\/em><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In a passage evocative of Kurt Vonnegut\u2019s magnificent poem-parable about the Shelter Island billionaire and the measure of enough<\/a>, Gregory holds up a mirror to his departed friend \u2014 one from which every living person who wouldn\u2019t know who they are without what to do averts their eyes:<\/p>\n

\n

You owned that exquisite house in Montauk, one of the loveliest I have seen anywhere, on the cliffs overlooking the ocean. You designed it yourself. But you almost never went there. Did you yearn for another kind of life? Yes, you had friends\u2014almost all driven and workaholic artists\u2014but never a community. You saw each of us alone. In those lovely rooms of yours, over superb dinners, the talk would always be of work, work, and work. <\/p>\n

Each time you stopped, you would descend into a depression, believing that you had hit a wall and lost the ability to work, that you would never work again.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The contrast Gregory paints is a miniature manifesto for the fundamental indivisibility of the self and the combinatorial nature of creativity<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

You chose work. I have chosen the life<\/em>. The work and<\/em> the life. <\/p>\n

At least I have done so in the last 30 years. Doesn\u2019t the work on the self inform the Work<\/em>? When we inch closer to ourselves, to who we originally were, who we\u2019re meant to be, doesn\u2019t that serve the work, doesn\u2019t it connect us more deeply to others? Isn\u2019t there value in spreading laughter, love, and compassion to the people around us? \u2026 The work changes the life, and the life changes the work.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Couple with Benedictine monk and philosopher David Steindl-Rast on the relationship between play and purposeful work<\/a>, then revisit Lewis Hyde\u2019s classic meditation on work vs. labor and how to sustain the creative spirit<\/a>.<\/p>\n

HT Letters Live<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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donating = loving<\/h3>\n

For seventeen years, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian<\/em> (which bore the outgrown name Brain Pickings<\/em><\/a> for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant \u2014 a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation<\/a>. Your support makes all the difference.<\/p>\n

\n

newsletter<\/h3>\n

The Marginalian<\/em> has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week\u2019s most inspiring reading. Here\u2019s what to expect<\/a>. Like? Sign up.<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Half a millennium into our recovery from the civilizational wound Descartes inflicted by severing the body and the mind, we are bleeding with a Cartesian cleft of our own making \u2014 the damaging divide between life and work. The notion of a \u201cworkaholic,\u201d often worn as a badge on the lapel of the modern ego, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-life"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-25 19:14:45","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}