I want to be the brilliant friend
Living > documenting
I want to be the brilliant friend. The one whose life is so well lived that others seek to document it.
Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet depicts a friendship between Lenu and Lila, two girls from a poor neighborhood in Naples. The first novel, which came out in 2011 and has been listed as one of the best books of the 21st century, is titled My Brilliant Friend.
Which of the friends is brilliant? They both are. They take turns stealing the spotlight, each admiring the other for qualities that one perceives to lack. Although both are intelligent, Lenu’s parents let her continue her education after grade school while Lila’s make her work in the family shoe business. Lila is naturally beautiful and enticing, but Lenu grows into her looks and charm over time.
After reading the novels a decade ago, I remember comparing my friendships to Lenu and Lila’s and wondering which one I was. Was I the whip smart, brave, and reckless Lila? Or instead, the timid, dedicated, and bookish Lenu?
In certain pairings I was Lila, but in most of them, Lenu. I envied my friends who I considered more brave. I wanted to be Lila. I wanted to be naturally brilliant, gorgeous, and perhaps cruel in my ability to entice and manipulate others. Yet I felt more attuned to Lenu, the one who was always trying to keep up.
Every friendship contains a Lenu and a Lila. We love and compare ourselves to each other with admiration and longing.
*
I’ve recently wanted to live my life much more than I want to write about it.
Lenu is the quartet’s author. After hearing that Lila has disappeared in middle age, Lenu chronicles her story. Lila is the subject that Lenu documents.
We learn early on that Lila is a writer, too. She writes a story in childhood that Lenu recognizes even then as containing literary value. Lenu envies her friend for her brilliance.
But it’s Lenu who becomes a writer. Lenu gets to continue school, excels, and rises above her social class into the worlds of academia and art. Lila stays behind, though rises in her own way. She becomes an entrepreneur. She becomes wealthy. But she does not write.
*
There is a glacial lake an hour south of Anchorage that recently froze thick enough to skate. You can cross the lake from the parking lot and stand in front of the glacier.
Skating on wild ice is inherently dangerous. And skating on wild ice at the foot of a glacier that could calve at any moment, particularly so. Not everyone is comfortable being on ice that creaks and cracks and hovers atop deep frigid water.
Oh it's magnetic, isn't it?
The sense of something underneath the surface
When you're lying on thin ice
Just a little bit masochistic
-MUNA
But the freedom is unparalleled. It feels like cheating. Moving so fast across a substance we humans cannot usually cross.
*
The irony in my considering Lila to be the brilliant friend is that it’s Lila who calls Lenu brilliant. Lenu is the writer and the scholar.
*
Instead of writing, Lila channels her brilliance into everything she does. Her work. Her body. Her political beliefs.
I can only hope to be so pure. Skating in perfect form across a frozen glacial lake. Effortlessly beautiful and clothed in garments tailored to the day’s demands.
What is this need to document a life beyond simply living it?
Standing in front of a glacier, its beauty is apparent. Snow condensed into ice and flowing downward under its own weight. Red light trapped inside so that the whole thing glows blue.
The beauty is in its existence. Not its retelling.
I’m starting to realize that I will only produce valuable work when my ingredients are ready. When I, the vessel, am living a brilliant life.
Nothing I've ever done right
Happened on the safe side
-Metric
I am becoming Lila. Unsure if I’ll ever publish a book and no longer attached to that goal. If I do write something, I want it to emerge as distilled experiences that accumulate like snow and condense into ice.
I want to be Lila because I want my brilliance to infuse every aspect of my life. Once it does, I won’t care about whether anyone perceives it. Like a glacier, my existence is proof enough.
Let me soar across frozen water until my particles dissolve into air. Disappearing like Lila and leaving only memories behind.
The thing is, Lila envied Lenu. She wished she could have gone to school. Instead, she was forced to labor and marry and be trapped in the life that Lenu was able to escape.
Lila’s life was less a choice so much as a necessity. She was uneducated and without the time or resources to pen her own work. Instead, she channeled her brilliance into her daily tasks. She wrote her life as art so that another could one day capture it.
When I say I want to be Lila, I mean that I want to free myself of the need to make something beyond my existence. To be brave and beautiful and wild every day. To leave nothing behind.
It’s a purity I see in my idols. People who would have been good at anything and just so happen to become recognized for the sport, instrument, or vocation they choose.
These people exist. I’ve known them. I’ve seen their brilliance in real time.
They are the Lilas of my life.
*
We are all Lilas and Lenus. The dichotomy shifts and reveals mutable natures some might prefer to ignore.
Even as I write this, Lenu creeps in. She looks elsewhere for inspiration.
Lila came with me to the frozen lake. She skated and soared and momentarily lifted off of the earth into sky and dust. She learned we are porous and fleeting.
I want to leave nothing behind.
I loved how this piece slowly unwinded to reveal a little more about yourself. The photo of Portage Lake is like from another world.