Another Question

"So What?"
I was asked this question recently.
I didn't know what to say.
I said nothing.
If I am asked again, I would say;
'If a gardener plants a nut, that grows into a tree,
does a squirrel ask so what?"

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The most difficult question for me has been simply, why do you make art?
I am not sure if there is an answer. It cant be, because I like to, or because its cool, or fun. When I was younger I thought I would pursue architecture, or biology, herpetology, or professional skateboarding. I thought it would be great to raise birds or turtles; which is somewhat of a creative process, but there is something that I was born with that forces me to interpret the world through my hands and eyes. It is somewhat of a condition or disease that I cannot really escape. Regardless if I have to be a brick mason, I will go home completely exhausted, hardly able to move and I will draw and fabricate the objects that I have been thinking about all day as a means of escape and obtainment.

Questions

My hardest question (which has come both from others, but most often from myself), is similar to what others have already posted thus far: Why do I do what I do? Five years ago, I was asked this question before a fiction reading--I said, "I just like to tell stories, I guess." But if that was ever true, it isn't anymore, and that has made the question much harder to answer.

Because I don't like to tell stories. I like words. It isn't the story, the what happens next of it all, that fascinates me, it's language--sound and rhythm and the un-fixedness of meaning. So I write because I like language? This has always seemed insufficient (and perhaps linked to the problem of saying "I am a writer" rather than "I am an artist," because really, who among us isn't a writer, in the sense that we are able to write, and exercise this skill?). Really, I don't know the answer to this question. I would like to say it is because I was destined to, I can't do anything else, but I suspect deep down it may be because I make myself do it, because hard as it sometimes is, and much as I sometimes don't want to, there are questions I still haven't answered, and ones I haven't asked.

I forget this often in graduate school, when the next deadline or assignment is looming, when I have 24 freshman research papers to grade. And it's hard sometimes, to make myself. But I always come back, again and again, because the one thing I think I know is that I don't want to stop.

Hard question

I've been thinking all week about what I would write for this post, and I think in the end it's really a question of honesty, both with all of you and with myself. This first year of grad school has been rough stress-wise and challenging work-wise. It has made me question myself and my goals, and has led me to the following hard question: Does being a costume designer make you happy?

Hard to say. Sometimes the show can break your spirit. Sometimes it's all the outside stuff that happens with living and going to school that does it. I'm certainly not ready to throw in the towel on theatre by any means, but I would say I'm still working on the question of what I want to be when I grow up. If I had to answer that question, I would say I just want to be happy. So I guess I'm still working out if theatre is the path that will lead me there.

I had one professor in my undergrad who said that theatre design is pretty much hell on earth, and if you could see yourself doing anything else in the world, you should probably do that. Hmm...

Then again, he was a bit jaded. I think maybe the thing to consider is that I can't wait for life to present me some great revelation about my future, but rather to make it happen myself. With that in mind, it is another piece of advice that came out of 'MFA Kabarett' that I will remember dearly for a long time: You have to fall in love with the show. If you don't, your design will suffer.

So, I figure there's nothing like being in love to make you happy, and maybe that will be the key next year and forever.

Hardest Question

Can you see yourself being happy doing anything other than music?

I spent many years pondering this question which now seems easy. No. The desire to make more money and have a more "normal" lifestyle could not trump the spiritual and intellectual rewards of performing and teaching music. Because of this realization, I decided to start work on a doctoral degree here at OSU.

Hardest Question?

I think we were supposed to post something like the hardest question we were ever asked. There have been many, but here's one:

If you could wake up tomorrow one of 3 things: you could wake up as a director of a film and have to face the challenges of organizing your crew and calling all the shots to make sure that everything gets done properly or if you could wake up as an actor on the set of a film and have to face the challenges of preparing for your role today - mentally getting into the place you need to be to deliver your dialogue and get into your character and taking direction about what worked and what needs to be fixed or if you could wake up as an artist and face the challenges that would come to you in the studio - deciding how to go about working on something, how to talk about something, or how to begin or finish your newest work...which would you choose?

Trisha Brown Rep- Sololos

Sololos showing schedule:

May 27th @RPAC 12:30pm

May 28th @OVAL (Rain Date) 11am

MAy 30th @ Sullivant Hall Atrium 10:30am

Wish to see you there!

YF