Another Word For Genius

I've been keeping a genius list. It started in June, not as a list so much as a series of mental notes. Over the last seven weeks, I've noted instances of encountering the word genius. I did this to figure out why the word annoys me. And to figure out why, even when I agree with the assertion that a certain artist or cultural figure is a genius, I still think another word would better describe what the person making the claim actually means. By now, my list is long enough that I'll forget parts of it if I don't write it down. It's also long enough to produce a few answers.

The Genius List (so far)

Danielle Evans + Basquiat and Alba Clemente (wife of artist Francesco Clemente) in front of the Odeon in 1984 + Amiri Baraka

• Ol Dirty Bastard: This is the genius that inspired this list. In a documentary about the rapper's life, Mariah Carey refers to ODB as a genius when discussing his contribution to the remix of her song Fantasy. Now, if you're a person of a certain age, possessed with particular tastes, there's a good chance part of you lights up when you hear ODB say "yooooooo New York in the house?" But is commanding attention and rousing affection with the sound of your voice a form a genius?

• Danielle Evans: In June, I decided to give up on reading Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. There's enough anguish and reasons for despair in the real world; I didn't need to go looking for more in fiction. When I stopped reading Ellison, I started reading Danielle Evans's superb and shocking collection of short stories, The Office of Historical Corrections. The book's dust jacket includes a blurb from novelist Rebecca Makkai, which reads, "Danielle Evans is a stone-cold genius."

• Kanye West: When I want to be reminded of songs I used to love, I shuffle my Spotify "Liked Songs" playlist. When I did this a few weeks ago, I heard Jay-Z open his song Lucifer with some high praise for the track's producer, saying, "Kanyeezy you did it again, you a genius."

• Toni Morrison: This one is indisputable. Toni Morrison is a genius. And yet, when I heard Zadie Smith refer to her as such while discussing The Bluest Eye, I thought the word diminished the real power of Toni Morrison's work.

• Keith McNally: I won't bore you with the details of how I ended up here, but I will tell you that in a Taste podcast episode from three years ago, the writer and former Vanity Fair editor Dana Brown called Keith McNally a genius. Keith McNally is a restaurateur in New York, probably best known for owning Balthazar in Soho. Dana goes on to say that Keith and his brother Brian "invented Tribeca" when they opened The Odeon restaurant in the neighborhood in 1980. Invented!

• Hanif Abdurraqib: This one is technically accurate since Hanif, a poet/essayist/cultural critic, became a MacArthur "genius" Fellow in 2021. But during a reflective conversation about music and writing, the writer Jacqueline Woodson (also a MacArthur Fellow) tells Hanif he's a genius and she doesn't mean it because the MacArthur Foundation said so.

• Stevie Wonder: In the intro to a podcast episode about Art Rivals, one of my favorite curators, Helen Molesworth, calls Stevie Wonder an American genius. No notes.

• Black Genius

  Last week, I visited the Guggenheim's exhibition of Rashid Johnson's work. The show takes its title from an Amiri Baraka poem so they’re both called A Poem For Deep Thinkers. The wall text explaining the exhibition title and Johnson's affinity for poetry says, "Describing African American poetry as an undeniable form of Black genius, Johnson often takes poetry as the starting point for his visual art concepts and series."

• Black Genius/Sly Stone: On the Saturday after the musician Sly Stone died, I watched the documentary drummer and music enthusiast Questlove directed about his life. The documentary is called Sly Lives Aka The Burden of Black Genius and in the first few minutes of the film, Questlove asks his interviewees, "Can you tell me what Black Genius is?" The camera shows D'Angelo, Chaka Khan, and Nile Rodgers, musicians you'd be safe to assume have had the word genius applied to their work, considering but not answering the question. To the viewer's knowledge, the only person who offers a response is Andre 3000, who says of Black genius, "I love when it happens." Tres elusive. I found it frustrating that a documentary would build its premise around a term it refused to define.

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So here we have a range of genius: the casual, the actual, the possible, the former, the qualified, and the developing. Within this list, genius is thoughtfully considered, handsomely rewarded, and casually applied. Within this list, you can see genius used to lift an element of culture up high enough so that everyone can see its undeniable brilliance. But in doing that, lifting the genius and their work gets further away from where it belongs, right here, with us.

What I've realized from making this list is that when people use the word genius they are alluding to feelings but rarely addressing them. The word hovers over emotions without forcing the speaker to land on a specific one. And maybe that's because, sometimes, the feelings associated with genius are so simple that it makes the use of the word seem ridiculous.

Feelings like the low-stakes regret I experienced after having a sip of my sister's Balthazar hot chocolate on a cold November morning and realizing I should have ordered my own. Or the caged wildness I feel when I try and fail to mimic Sly's scream in If You Want Me to Stay. Or the effusive glee I felt while explaining the plot of one of Danielle Evans's stories to a friend. It's sooooo good! I said again and again. And then there's the selfish gratitude you likely know. When you let yourself indulge in the irrational thought that you have a wholly unique relationship with a book, a song (it's usually a song isn't it), a painting, a place. That whoever made this thing did so because they knew you'd need it one day. That you'd use what they made to find friends or hope, to find a misplaced or undiscovered part of yourself, or maybe just to find the will to keep looking. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it shouldn't take a genius to let us know we're alive.

Question:

Is there a word that people use to describe art or artists that bothers you?

Thanks for reading!