Beauty Q&A With Becky Tuch
It precludes language, defies logic, and touches us in a space that transcends material reality. What is it?
Becky Tuch is an award-winning writer, creative writing instructor, editor, and publisher, and the person behind Lit Mag News, the ultimate resource to the literary magazine world here on Substack.
Dear Beautiful Friends,
Say hello to the amazing Becky Tuch!
The first day of Spring deserves the sweetest of treats, so that’s what you get. Prepare to have your brain cells blown about like cherry blossoms in this Beauty Q&A with Becky. Becky is an award-winning writer and the person behind Lit Mag News here on Substack. I had the good fortune to be in conversation with Becky and her community earlier this year. She’s a deep and agile thinker, we’re very lucky to have her.
Becky writes so exquisitely about Beauty, using real-life stories to bring her answers to life. You will surely leave this conversation with something new and fresh to consider, which is perfect for today. Ready? Let’s go!
Q: What is your definition of Beauty?
Becky Tuch: I’ll answer this with an anecdote, if I may.
In college, I studied Art History and Visual Art. One day, I was in a crit in my painting class. The student presented her work. We all stood staring at it, saying nothing. The professor was irritated. She chastised us for not saying anything and just looking at the painting. I spoke up to tell her I didn’t think we were being bad students. We were just trying to gather our thoughts. Sometimes it takes a moment to translate from a visual language to speech. She agreed that was fair. And after looking at the artwork for a few more moments, people did start to talk about it.
I think about this moment a lot, and I think this is the closest way I can define beauty—it’s not tense conversations with professors! Rather, beauty is that moment that precludes language. A moment that defies logic and understanding. It is nonverbal, maybe preverbal. It’s a feeling, a sensation, a tingle in your jaw, an overwhelm of your senses. It is something that takes you time to find language for, if there even is language at all that can sufficiently wrap itself around the thing.
It can be a painting. It can be the perfect song at the exact right moment. It can be a forest, an ocean, a baby’s giggle.
Really, it’s not what a thing is that makes it beautiful, I think, it’s how you experience it in a certain moment, something that touches you in a space that transcends material reality and places you in a kind of non-cerebral, non-rational state of pure wonder.
As a writer, teacher, and lit-mag guide, what role does Beauty play in the work you do?
If I think about beauty when I’m writing, it’s not on a conscious level. I know I want my words to sound good. When I read text that is poorly written it is like hearing off-key musical notes, a kind of grating on one’s inner ear. So I strive for musicality and rhythm in my work–the clash and clang and collection of words colliding, building to a larger meaning, coalescing.
As a subject unto itself, though, I’m not sure I think much about Beauty. Maybe I should!
For lit mags, I find so many of them utterly beautiful. It begins with the covers, which often feature exceptional art, and could make your mouth water they’re so pretty to look at. Then there’s what’s inside, which can be anything from a type of storytelling you’ve never encountered before, a wrenching personal essay, a witty little poem.
The fact that literary magazines are so under-appreciated in our culture, and yet so many people spend hours creating them, making editorial decisions for them, discussing the work within, laying out the design and structure–that is also beautiful to me.
It’s beautiful to see so many people care about wanting to create, to make platforms for the artwork and writing of others.
[It’s ] that moment that precludes language. A moment that defies logic and understanding. It is nonverbal, maybe preverbal. It’s a feeling, a sensation, a tingle in your jaw, an overwhelm of your senses. It is something that takes you time to find language for, if there even is language at all that can sufficiently wrap itself around the thing.
Q: Can you tell us about a recent moment of experiencing beauty?
There is a figure-skating video I’m obsessed with. It’s both a recent experience and not-so-recent. (I’ve probably watched the video a hundred times since I first saw it years ago).
There is something about this video…And that’s the thing about encountering beauty. It’s so often hard to articulate what it is that captures your attention, other than to say “there’s something about it…”
I’m simply awe-struck each and every time I watch it. The expressions on their faces, the raw passion and struggle, the sensuality, their muscularity, the way their bodies move in perfect tandem, the build of the song and its passion, its anger and energy, the stunning athleticism of the skaters’ bodies, the fact that you know how many hours upon hours of intensely demanding work and sacrifice led to this moment…It’s perfect. It’s beautiful.
The Sounds of Silence. Vanessa James and Morgan Cipres (on YouTube).
Tell us about an experience that was really hard, but you can look back on it now and see its beauty.
That’s tricky. “Beauty” is not really something I associate with hard moments. Such moments force you to grow as a person and to find inner resolves of strength and possibly communion with something higher than yourself. But I’m not sure I would describe such experiences as beautiful.
I will say, there can be surrounding moments of beauty, and maybe those surrounding moments are enhanced in contrast to the pain.
The last year of my father’s life was really, really hard. He had many health problems that compounded all at once. For a while I dreaded the sound of my phone ringing because it was always news of some new issue that needed tending to or some new impossible decision I had to make. I was very close with my dad, too, so the whole experience was emotionally and psychically brutal.
My dad lived in Florida, so when I went to visit him I would make a point to go to the beach. I love beaches. They’re kind of sacred places to me. I spent hours walking on the beach near his hospital. In one beach the water was so warm it was like a bath–something I’d never experienced. I just floated in there and lost track of time until the sun went down. Then I’d wake up really early to watch the sun rise over the water the next day.
Would I have appreciated the beauty of the sand, sky, water, sun, palm trees, if everything else in my life was smooth and happy? I’m sure I would have. But in these moments the beach held a special power. I didn’t just admire the beauty; I needed it. I clung to it.
So, again, it’s not that the hard time itself was beautiful. It was not. It was excruciating. But the pain of it forced me to position myself in the path of beauty more purposefully, more desperately.
How do you turn toward Beauty during challenging times?
Like I said above, I think beauty provides a way to commune with something larger than oneself–higher, timeless. During challenging times, I think we need that, a way to position our own experience into a larger lineage of human struggle, or even the timelines of our own private ebbs and flows.
Sometimes, quite honestly, I’ll just look up at the sky, let my eyes soak up the clouds, search for the sun somewhere, let it rest on my face for as long as possible.
I don’t have a car, so I don’t get to get out of my city as much as I would like to. But small dips into the sky, glimpses of the moon, finding patches of green in parks and gardens–all this helps. Places that calm, that remind you that you’re a teeny part of a much larger orbit, help.
Also, music. Turning toward the sky and listening to some great, great music–that helps a lot.
What is something delightful and surprising you’ve discovered about human nature?
People’s desire to get along with one another.
We live in such polarizing times, and if your whole life is lived on the internet you would think all people want to do is find reasons to hate other people and scream about politics twenty-four hours a day.
But once you get out into the world and talk to actual people, my experience is that most want to get along. They want to share a laugh, commiserate about one thing or another, feel seen and heard, tell their stories, get advice, feel less alone. Most people don’t want to live in a perpetual state of battle.
There is a lot of wisdom to be gleaned in small daily interactions, and a lot of wisdom to be gained from chilling amongst all kinds of people, without expectation or demand.
You and I recently talked about the struggle and blocks that occur as a writer. Do you see any beauty in those struggles and blocks, and if so, can you address one?
I don’t really see beauty in the struggles themselves. I think that can lead to romanticizing difficulty or elevating suffering to some kind of mystical battle and then perhaps subconsciously inviting more of it.
If there’s any beauty there, it’s in the surrounding moments, the contrasting experiences. How maybe struggling with your work can make you appreciate the ease of other things–enjoying time with your friends, a great conversation with a family member, that crisp walk that clears your head, the moment the block ends and you’re working again.
The struggle perhaps lets you appreciate those moments of non-struggle all the more. But I would not say there is beauty inherent to the blocks. It’s not a good feeling, and it can be very hard.
What inspires you these days?
The thing that has been inspiring me most lately is something not on this list, and that is weight-lifting. I’ve recently gotten sort of obsessed with resistance training.
There are a few groups I belong to for people who train, specifically with Caroline Girvan’s programs. People are often asking questions and genuinely supporting one another. Many are also frequently posting Before and After pictures of themselves, and it’s incredible to see the transformations.
But it’s not just the physical transformations. People will often share things like, “This was my first year weight-training since my husband died. We used to work out together in our basement. I wasn’t sure I could do it alone. I did.” Or, “My parents laughed at me when I told them I was lifting weights. I was so devastated by their lack of support that I was in bed for three days. But I forced myself up, and now I’m training anyway. I want to feel good about who I am.”
There are pictures of people in their seventies who got jacked and look amazing! There are young people who’ve recovered from injury and all kinds of health issues. A lot of people use weight training not only to build muscle and look great but to learn how to carry heavy loads, to cultivate the mental, emotional and spiritual strength that is necessary in this life.
Seeing people all over the world, of all ages and backgrounds, push past fears, grief, failures and feelings of brokenness, in order to take care of themselves and be strong–You cannot tell me that isn’t beautiful!
Naturally, this inspires me everywhere–in the gym but also with my work, in the way I engage with others, in the kinds of stories I want to tell, and the way I understand ambition, progress, setbacks, community and success.
Also, the right music helps. My playlists are wild unruly all-over-the-place mixes featuring Chappell Roan, AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, Dolly Parton, and Beyoncé. Take from that what you will.
What do you have to say to all the writers and artists making their way in the world right now?
Trust your own voice.
I’ve been getting a lot of submissions recently for Lit Mag News. I publish guest contributors each Thursday and so people are welcome to submit for that column. Several submissions this past month were clearly written or heavily edited with AI. The style is blatantly evident to me, and it makes my skull ache when I encounter it.
It also breaks my heart because these are clearly writers who don’t trust themselves enough to write in their own words. I told them all that I liked their submissions, but I wanted something from them, not AI.
I think most editors feel that way, if not most readers. I would so much rather read something a bit raw, imperfect, scratchy but unique, than something polished to a crisp sheen, clearly spat out from a machine, and that sounds like so much other “content” we see everywhere.
Writers: Trust your voice. That’s your greatest strength, even if it’s hard to find it, even if finding it is a lifetime of work. It’s yours.
What is a great reason to be alive today?
Well, we’re here! So we might as well do our best to . . . just do our best.
Becky Tuch is the Founder of Lit Mag News, a best-selling Substack dedicated to demystifying the world of literary magazines. Her short fiction has been honored with a MacDowell Fellowship and First Place in Moment Magazine’s Karma Foundation Fiction Prize, and has appeared in STORY, Gulf Coast, Salt Hill, Post Road, Literary Mama, and Best of the Net. She lives with her family in Philadelphia, PA. Learn more at www.BeckyTuch.com.
