If you’re like me, every week contains a moment of evaluation, particularly since my literary analysis classes: is the way I’m living my life worth it? Are all these responsibilities ones I want to keep? For how long? What do I want my life to look like when I am grown up and outside this college?
Tuesday I had an evaluation moment. I thought about the homework I have to do over this summer: finish a research paper, write a story, read six books, read a magazine. I needed to clean the house, I needed to find time to finish a few pieces of new art for a coffee shop in Lebanon, Pa. I wondered if my post-college life would continue on this same pattern: work all day, come home, work for several hours, allow a little reading or baking cupcakes, a little talking with Greg, and then sleep to begin it all again.
For the past month I’ve been house-sitting, and to get to the house, I drive on some very country roads. It’s a beautiful route, but a little scary around dusk or after dark. In every field there are deer, including baby deer that panic and careen across the road when they see my headlights coming. All the deer work to keep my eyes trained on the landscape, and I notice things:
The tree at the corner of Alpat and Chesnut Grove roads which has a forked hollow at its base, through which you can see the sky, and inside someone humorous placed a small garden gnome. The horizon line through this gap is so much lower than anywhere else — if I knelt there, the grass could be a tiny sea and the sky limitless.
Late-afternoon sun resting on fields and leaves, a golden glow that seems like another dimension lurking at the corners of our vision. It calls out unexpected hollows and curves in faces and the earth’s surface.
It made me think: the real sin in assignments, in responsibilities, in filling your life with things like “The Best American Short Stories,” research papers, or assigned reading is letting them narrow your vision of the world. If you cannot take time at least once in your day to take in your surroundings and observe the minutiae of daily routine (or deviations from it), then you are oblivious to the fabric of real life, its silk-fine or linen-thick threads, the sheen of a square foot of plain-colored fabric.
Of this summer, will I note only enough details to write, “There once was a man, he lived and he died, the end”?
There are plenty of people and organizations quite willing to give anyone responsibilities, tasks, assignments (including self-created assignments). And the desire to complete all of these assignments well and in a timely manner is admirable. But is it worth it?
No. Not if there is not time to contemplate a little, every day.
College coursework has given me a lot of knowledge, the examples of wise professors and a few surprisingly wise classmates, and self-discipline in abundance. So as I begin the part of my life where I am completely self-determined, my self-created assignment is this: learn to do less. Depth of craft and internal dialogue with wisdom cannot happen in a frenetic life.
The end.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Friday, June 20, 2008
Dear Mr. James Elkins,
Last night my fiance and I walked into a local gallery to look around. It was open extended hours because of Jubilee, a street-fair type shindig in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania (where we went because we wanted funnel cake after our strawberry-picking expedition. You should try both sometime. It might make you more optimistic).
We're both artists, both trained at the same liberal arts college. His interests lean more towards graphic design and illustration, commercial and "low-brow" art. My interests are definitely more oriented towards high art, although not in the "ideal media" as you describe them in your book, "Why Art Cannot be Taught." (Those two elements of the art world which you talk about as if they are completely separate and irreconcilable.)
We walked through the gallery and frankly were not impressed by anything there (especially not the naked ladies badly photoshopped into exotic locations).
Then one print caught our joint attention -- sharply angled animals and people described by sweeping ink strokes. The dynamism of the lines, the quirkiness of the way they created figures and animals with expressive control and a minimum presence on the page -- everything about it was GOOD, head and shoulders on a mountain above everything else in the gallery. The skill of the hand that made it was undeniable and overwhelming, the subject and style both engaging.
Can you tell what I'm going to say next? Among the Yosts, Yoders, and hosts of possible high school students (I hope for their sakes, anyway, that they are continuing their education), here, claimed the small paper placard tacked to the top of the free-standing wall, was a Picasso.
I loved this experience, because the quality of the piece appeared undeniable to us, although it didn't strike us as particularly Picasso-like, and we thought it had been made by a local central Pennsylvanian. (you might argue that our education conditioned us to respond a particular way to a member of the canon -- but I would refute the accusation on the grounds that it was not the typical Picasso, and so not the kind of Picasso we were educated to appreciate).
This experience and others like it lead me to the conclusion that there is such a thing as a fact of quality in the world of art. It is nebulous, it differs from style to style, but it exists on a more than purely subjective level. It can be recognized by large groups of people over varying periods in time.
This leads me to my primary criticism of your book.
It seems to me that the elephant in the room of your argument is a question of quality. You say that art cannot be taught. That is an OK generalization, but you make it implicitly clear throughout your book that what you think cannot be taught is good-quality art. Mediocre art is made all the time, you say; it is the staple of art academies. It's only good art that you do not see being taught in art academies.
And while you take care to define teaching carefully (a definition which I do not completely agree with, but that's another argument), you do not take the time to define "art" ("I don't think we need [a] definition of art," you say, "since 'art' is whatever we end up talking about in art school. Its definition is fluid, and it changes along with our interests") or "quality." And how can you say it can't be taught if you aren't sure what you're not seeing?
Let's talk about the Picasso again. Its great qualities were its control, the obvious mastery the author showed of his medium, the perceptiveness toward form and spirit that allowed the author to choose so few lines to describe his subject so vividly, and the expressiveness of the lines (both of the author's state of mind and the spirit of the subject).
Can those things be taught? By your own arguments throughout the book, mastery of a medium's technique can absolutely be taught in an art academy or college. Control can be taught and perceptiveness can be taught ala the Bauhaus's methods (which you, oddly enough, seem ambivalent about). Expressiveness is a little bit trickier -- you can teach someone what marks express certain things, you can teach them to recognize certain forms of expressiveness in various media, and you can foster expressive mark-making and expressive work when you see it, but perhaps you cannot teach expressiveness entirely. The responsibility for that may lie primarily with the student and not with the teacher.
So why can't art be taught? You can't teach depth of thought? Witness liberal arts colleges. They do their darndest to teach depth and creativity of thought in every discipline (and in large part succeed). Do we lack engagement with the world beyond our ivory academic towers (which you claim is one thing holding us back from making quality art, i.e. art which expresses some part of our larger contemporary culture)? That's something that can be modeled by teachers and so taught to those that are willing to learn. Look at families raising children who are social activists, or the ways in which children are strangely aware of the unwritten rules of their community through observation and modeled behaviour. If students are taught to pay attention, then they are being taught to engage with a world that doesn't revolve around art history or self-reference.
The other thing you have not addressed in your book is the partnership between student and teacher that must be formed in order for effective teaching and learning to take place. You describe teaching as if it only happens in one direction, although you do make a nod to the fact that some students are unreceptive, and others more teachable, indicating that they must have some place in the process of teaching other than as a passive vessel.
So all the elements of good-quality art can, in fact, be taught. Why do I not go on to simply say "students can be taught to make good art"? As it is, I sound like I fall neatly into one of your categories.
Well, here it is: teachers and students can teach one another how to make good art, but it will inevitably be a strange hybrid between the teacher's style and the students's attempts to internalize that style in a way that makes sense to them. It is in a post-academic atmosphere in which the student seeks to harness all those elements of good art in service to their own voice, that indefinable element of good art as we understand it in the modern & postmodern age, and which is not really effectively taught.
And if that's all you're worried about teaching to students, take some lessons from Peter Elbow and Paulo Freire, who have pioneered pedagogy aiming to give students their own voice and hence empower them. . . .
Does that make sense?
Sincerely,
Mackenzie Martin
We're both artists, both trained at the same liberal arts college. His interests lean more towards graphic design and illustration, commercial and "low-brow" art. My interests are definitely more oriented towards high art, although not in the "ideal media" as you describe them in your book, "Why Art Cannot be Taught." (Those two elements of the art world which you talk about as if they are completely separate and irreconcilable.)
We walked through the gallery and frankly were not impressed by anything there (especially not the naked ladies badly photoshopped into exotic locations).
Then one print caught our joint attention -- sharply angled animals and people described by sweeping ink strokes. The dynamism of the lines, the quirkiness of the way they created figures and animals with expressive control and a minimum presence on the page -- everything about it was GOOD, head and shoulders on a mountain above everything else in the gallery. The skill of the hand that made it was undeniable and overwhelming, the subject and style both engaging.
Can you tell what I'm going to say next? Among the Yosts, Yoders, and hosts of possible high school students (I hope for their sakes, anyway, that they are continuing their education), here, claimed the small paper placard tacked to the top of the free-standing wall, was a Picasso.
I loved this experience, because the quality of the piece appeared undeniable to us, although it didn't strike us as particularly Picasso-like, and we thought it had been made by a local central Pennsylvanian. (you might argue that our education conditioned us to respond a particular way to a member of the canon -- but I would refute the accusation on the grounds that it was not the typical Picasso, and so not the kind of Picasso we were educated to appreciate).
This experience and others like it lead me to the conclusion that there is such a thing as a fact of quality in the world of art. It is nebulous, it differs from style to style, but it exists on a more than purely subjective level. It can be recognized by large groups of people over varying periods in time.
This leads me to my primary criticism of your book.
It seems to me that the elephant in the room of your argument is a question of quality. You say that art cannot be taught. That is an OK generalization, but you make it implicitly clear throughout your book that what you think cannot be taught is good-quality art. Mediocre art is made all the time, you say; it is the staple of art academies. It's only good art that you do not see being taught in art academies.
And while you take care to define teaching carefully (a definition which I do not completely agree with, but that's another argument), you do not take the time to define "art" ("I don't think we need [a] definition of art," you say, "since 'art' is whatever we end up talking about in art school. Its definition is fluid, and it changes along with our interests") or "quality." And how can you say it can't be taught if you aren't sure what you're not seeing?
Let's talk about the Picasso again. Its great qualities were its control, the obvious mastery the author showed of his medium, the perceptiveness toward form and spirit that allowed the author to choose so few lines to describe his subject so vividly, and the expressiveness of the lines (both of the author's state of mind and the spirit of the subject).
Can those things be taught? By your own arguments throughout the book, mastery of a medium's technique can absolutely be taught in an art academy or college. Control can be taught and perceptiveness can be taught ala the Bauhaus's methods (which you, oddly enough, seem ambivalent about). Expressiveness is a little bit trickier -- you can teach someone what marks express certain things, you can teach them to recognize certain forms of expressiveness in various media, and you can foster expressive mark-making and expressive work when you see it, but perhaps you cannot teach expressiveness entirely. The responsibility for that may lie primarily with the student and not with the teacher.
So why can't art be taught? You can't teach depth of thought? Witness liberal arts colleges. They do their darndest to teach depth and creativity of thought in every discipline (and in large part succeed). Do we lack engagement with the world beyond our ivory academic towers (which you claim is one thing holding us back from making quality art, i.e. art which expresses some part of our larger contemporary culture)? That's something that can be modeled by teachers and so taught to those that are willing to learn. Look at families raising children who are social activists, or the ways in which children are strangely aware of the unwritten rules of their community through observation and modeled behaviour. If students are taught to pay attention, then they are being taught to engage with a world that doesn't revolve around art history or self-reference.
The other thing you have not addressed in your book is the partnership between student and teacher that must be formed in order for effective teaching and learning to take place. You describe teaching as if it only happens in one direction, although you do make a nod to the fact that some students are unreceptive, and others more teachable, indicating that they must have some place in the process of teaching other than as a passive vessel.
So all the elements of good-quality art can, in fact, be taught. Why do I not go on to simply say "students can be taught to make good art"? As it is, I sound like I fall neatly into one of your categories.
Well, here it is: teachers and students can teach one another how to make good art, but it will inevitably be a strange hybrid between the teacher's style and the students's attempts to internalize that style in a way that makes sense to them. It is in a post-academic atmosphere in which the student seeks to harness all those elements of good art in service to their own voice, that indefinable element of good art as we understand it in the modern & postmodern age, and which is not really effectively taught.
And if that's all you're worried about teaching to students, take some lessons from Peter Elbow and Paulo Freire, who have pioneered pedagogy aiming to give students their own voice and hence empower them. . . .
Does that make sense?
Sincerely,
Mackenzie Martin
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
so you thought you were done with academics, eh?
Crazy, bizarre, insane -- all these things run through my head as I realize that the most interesting thing I've read all summer is written by James Elkins, and furthermore is titled "Why Art Cannot be Taught." (an idea I at least 75% disagree with.)
James Elkins is one of the very, very few contemporary art theorists in the United States (in fact, he's the only one anyone could name off hand, as the rest are primarily artists or professors rather than theorists). He's been a staple of my art curriculum here at Messiah, appearing in my intro to art history course first year and my senior seminar course this past year. Usually he's ridiculously academic and I fervently disagree with him. And I swore I would never read him again.
Until I picked up this book in Borders and flipped to the end, where I began to read his critiques of classroom critiques. Fascinating!
I've tried to get my hands on the book ever since, but I believe our library's copy is currently checked out by a professor, as it has been missing for months without going overdue. So I interlibrary loaned a copy. I'm only 1/3 of the way through at the moment, just past the dry historical summaries of art education before the late 20th century, but already I can see it will be a worthwhile read. . . .
If nothing else, Elkins always pushes me to define what I think in comprehensive, concrete terms. And what could be more perfect for me to read than a book all about the current mode of teaching in art academies (keep in mind 'current' for this book is 2001) that forces me to define what I think about the purpose of art education? Since I want to be an art professor and all. I'll need to define the ways in which I think art can be taught, the ways art instruction is most effective.
Studying under a lot of professors caused me to evaluate the characteristics of deportment which make one an effective professor, or at least the ones I want to emulate. I feel like this is a good book to argue back with, to begin determining the purposes of curricula that I think are worthwhile and the ways in which they can be most effectively structured.
And since critiqueing is one of the key elements in any studio course, I'm particularly eager to read his analyzation of critiques. It's the crux of studio learning in so many ways -- it contains elements of brainstorming, discussion of formal elements, forces students to analyze and react to artwork as well as articulate their purposes and refine the language they use to communicate those purposes (both verbal and visual). If a professor could develop a consistent pattern to their critiques that maximized teaching of all those things, they might just be a really freaking awesome professor.
This is what I'm hoping to learn from -- ironically enough -- James Elkins. I'll keep you updated. I can already feel some point-by-point rebuttals percolating in my brain, but I'm waiting to see what his conclusions are, first. I never thought I'd say this, but. . . there's an Elkins book out there that might be worth owning. (?!)
Does anyone else have recommendations about pedagogical reading? Preferably about pedagogical methods used in other classrooms than the English classroom (although Peter Elbow, Paulo Freire, and James Elkins would probably have quite a good pedagogical -- I can't help it, I love that word -- conversation together).
James Elkins is one of the very, very few contemporary art theorists in the United States (in fact, he's the only one anyone could name off hand, as the rest are primarily artists or professors rather than theorists). He's been a staple of my art curriculum here at Messiah, appearing in my intro to art history course first year and my senior seminar course this past year. Usually he's ridiculously academic and I fervently disagree with him. And I swore I would never read him again.
Until I picked up this book in Borders and flipped to the end, where I began to read his critiques of classroom critiques. Fascinating!
I've tried to get my hands on the book ever since, but I believe our library's copy is currently checked out by a professor, as it has been missing for months without going overdue. So I interlibrary loaned a copy. I'm only 1/3 of the way through at the moment, just past the dry historical summaries of art education before the late 20th century, but already I can see it will be a worthwhile read. . . .
If nothing else, Elkins always pushes me to define what I think in comprehensive, concrete terms. And what could be more perfect for me to read than a book all about the current mode of teaching in art academies (keep in mind 'current' for this book is 2001) that forces me to define what I think about the purpose of art education? Since I want to be an art professor and all. I'll need to define the ways in which I think art can be taught, the ways art instruction is most effective.
Studying under a lot of professors caused me to evaluate the characteristics of deportment which make one an effective professor, or at least the ones I want to emulate. I feel like this is a good book to argue back with, to begin determining the purposes of curricula that I think are worthwhile and the ways in which they can be most effectively structured.
And since critiqueing is one of the key elements in any studio course, I'm particularly eager to read his analyzation of critiques. It's the crux of studio learning in so many ways -- it contains elements of brainstorming, discussion of formal elements, forces students to analyze and react to artwork as well as articulate their purposes and refine the language they use to communicate those purposes (both verbal and visual). If a professor could develop a consistent pattern to their critiques that maximized teaching of all those things, they might just be a really freaking awesome professor.
This is what I'm hoping to learn from -- ironically enough -- James Elkins. I'll keep you updated. I can already feel some point-by-point rebuttals percolating in my brain, but I'm waiting to see what his conclusions are, first. I never thought I'd say this, but. . . there's an Elkins book out there that might be worth owning. (?!)
Does anyone else have recommendations about pedagogical reading? Preferably about pedagogical methods used in other classrooms than the English classroom (although Peter Elbow, Paulo Freire, and James Elkins would probably have quite a good pedagogical -- I can't help it, I love that word -- conversation together).
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Peary Manilow visits our office.
Today I have a few great things to bring to you. One is Dan Custer's latest blog post, which is full of puns I happily aided and abetted.
The second is a website called The Morning News. It's a widely varied online magazine -- some things funny, some things wildly inappropriate but funny, some things serious, some personal essays. Very interesting. The kind of thing that makes me want to write a lot of profound or funny things, which makes it a sort of success.
Summer strikes me as good practice for being out in the real world. It's a normal 8-5 job. I'm practicing those skills that will hopefully allow me to keep making work even when I'm grown up and am no longer prompted by project deadlines set by professors. The only thing regulating my development is my own internal drive for either balance or perfection -- equilibrium or change. Weird.
"My little show in July," as I'm calling it (sounds so anti-climactic after "senior show"), is just that -- a cafe in Lebanon, PA, in partnership with the Lebanon Arts Factory, hosts solo exhibitions of local artists every couple of months. They were looking for participants, so Greg & I volunteered to jointly produce 10-15 pieces, which we're hoping to install July 3. We'll have a reception on July 10, but I won't be around because I'll be on family vacation.
I'm taking my ideas about senior show and doing a little twist -- I've been wanting to do figures, lately, I liked printing on clear things, and I found these amazing old photographic slides on glass. So I'm combining all these things at the intersection of shadow boxes -- glass in wood frames about 2.5" from the wall. I'm doing portraits (with Greg as my model) in a really linear fashion in linoleum cuts, and printing them in various shades of transparent colors & grey. Does that make sense? I'll post more information as I have it available. I already have five of them mapped out, which is a great relief. Now I just have to get a move on and produce a lot of things. We'll see how that goes.
And now, I'm off to my regularly scheduled programming (I mean work schedule).
The second is a website called The Morning News. It's a widely varied online magazine -- some things funny, some things wildly inappropriate but funny, some things serious, some personal essays. Very interesting. The kind of thing that makes me want to write a lot of profound or funny things, which makes it a sort of success.
Summer strikes me as good practice for being out in the real world. It's a normal 8-5 job. I'm practicing those skills that will hopefully allow me to keep making work even when I'm grown up and am no longer prompted by project deadlines set by professors. The only thing regulating my development is my own internal drive for either balance or perfection -- equilibrium or change. Weird.
"My little show in July," as I'm calling it (sounds so anti-climactic after "senior show"), is just that -- a cafe in Lebanon, PA, in partnership with the Lebanon Arts Factory, hosts solo exhibitions of local artists every couple of months. They were looking for participants, so Greg & I volunteered to jointly produce 10-15 pieces, which we're hoping to install July 3. We'll have a reception on July 10, but I won't be around because I'll be on family vacation.
I'm taking my ideas about senior show and doing a little twist -- I've been wanting to do figures, lately, I liked printing on clear things, and I found these amazing old photographic slides on glass. So I'm combining all these things at the intersection of shadow boxes -- glass in wood frames about 2.5" from the wall. I'm doing portraits (with Greg as my model) in a really linear fashion in linoleum cuts, and printing them in various shades of transparent colors & grey. Does that make sense? I'll post more information as I have it available. I already have five of them mapped out, which is a great relief. Now I just have to get a move on and produce a lot of things. We'll see how that goes.
And now, I'm off to my regularly scheduled programming (I mean work schedule).
Monday, June 09, 2008
today i learned that some people book their honeymoons through costco.
It made me chuckle a little, but actually made a weird sort of sense. Sort of. Maybe I'm just becoming used to costco's weirding ways.
Andrew & Meredith got married! Wooh! Congratulations again, guys! I feel like we will probably be congratulating you for months. Maybe we should aim to congratulate you for as long as you've been dating? =)
Also, OUCH. Summer is in full progress, and I am subsequently the owner of a painful sunburn. Not the worst I've ever had, but pretty bad. While my face, shoulders, & arms got a little burned, it's my legs (which never, ever see the sun) which fried. I guess that's what I get for wearing shorts to mow the Forsythe's lawn. So today I'm all about the aloe vera gel and wearing a skirt to avoid the added friction of jeans or even slacks. And vowing never to let the evil sun near me again.
Also, I am vowing to NOT STRESS OUT. NO MATTER WHAT. I spent too much of the school year stressing out. Now I'm done. =) It helps to not stress out that I have now started making things for our little show in July! Yay! So has Greg. So that's a good sign, a very good sign.
Hmmm. . . maybe I should've investigated the BBC for something fun to share with you before I posted. =) can't think of anything more to say. But it's OK. I'll do better next time.
The End.
Andrew & Meredith got married! Wooh! Congratulations again, guys! I feel like we will probably be congratulating you for months. Maybe we should aim to congratulate you for as long as you've been dating? =)
Also, OUCH. Summer is in full progress, and I am subsequently the owner of a painful sunburn. Not the worst I've ever had, but pretty bad. While my face, shoulders, & arms got a little burned, it's my legs (which never, ever see the sun) which fried. I guess that's what I get for wearing shorts to mow the Forsythe's lawn. So today I'm all about the aloe vera gel and wearing a skirt to avoid the added friction of jeans or even slacks. And vowing never to let the evil sun near me again.
Also, I am vowing to NOT STRESS OUT. NO MATTER WHAT. I spent too much of the school year stressing out. Now I'm done. =) It helps to not stress out that I have now started making things for our little show in July! Yay! So has Greg. So that's a good sign, a very good sign.
Hmmm. . . maybe I should've investigated the BBC for something fun to share with you before I posted. =) can't think of anything more to say. But it's OK. I'll do better next time.
The End.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
yesterday i found out you can order coffins online from costco.
I just laughed a lot, although maybe I should have been appalled.
Greg & I were having a discussion the other day about what things make us feel like we're living a healthy life. For him, healthiness involves a lot of exercise. And I do mean a lot. Walking a mile every day is just the beginning. For me, eating well (taking my time cooking and trying new recipes, using fresh ingredients), sleeping a lot, and having enough time to read, digest, and reflect equal healthiness. Summer is affording us more time to do all of that and even play some video games besides. . . unfortunately it isn't very motivating to me to work on the show pieces for July!
Stephen King, in "On Writing," describes how when he was teaching English his novel-writing nearly came to a halt because so much of his creative energy was taken up by teaching. Whereas when he worked in factories he would write like a fiend in all his spare time. To a lesser degree, I sympathize with him. I like my job at the publications office a lot, but it certainly uses up a lot of my creative energy. It is hard to motivate myself to work on artwork in the evenings, although if I could impose a regular schedule on myself it would probably be better.
Maybe I could steal a sandwich from Lottie over lunch and walk down to the warehouse to spend 45 minutes or so every day working. That would at least help.
Does anyone have suggestions about how to get yourself into a routine, how you slip your work into the cracks in your actual job?
Greg & I were having a discussion the other day about what things make us feel like we're living a healthy life. For him, healthiness involves a lot of exercise. And I do mean a lot. Walking a mile every day is just the beginning. For me, eating well (taking my time cooking and trying new recipes, using fresh ingredients), sleeping a lot, and having enough time to read, digest, and reflect equal healthiness. Summer is affording us more time to do all of that and even play some video games besides. . . unfortunately it isn't very motivating to me to work on the show pieces for July!
Stephen King, in "On Writing," describes how when he was teaching English his novel-writing nearly came to a halt because so much of his creative energy was taken up by teaching. Whereas when he worked in factories he would write like a fiend in all his spare time. To a lesser degree, I sympathize with him. I like my job at the publications office a lot, but it certainly uses up a lot of my creative energy. It is hard to motivate myself to work on artwork in the evenings, although if I could impose a regular schedule on myself it would probably be better.
Maybe I could steal a sandwich from Lottie over lunch and walk down to the warehouse to spend 45 minutes or so every day working. That would at least help.
Does anyone have suggestions about how to get yourself into a routine, how you slip your work into the cracks in your actual job?
Monday, June 02, 2008
Stephen King's "On Writing":
Turns out the parts that are actually about writing are a lot more boring than the parts that are about his coke addition or alcoholism or in-general-crazy early life.
Does that sound bad? That sounds bad. Let me start again:
It's summer. I'm house-sitting for a very pampered cat and very pampered gardens in a large and beautiful house. I'm trying to plan a wedding, which is turning out to be both less and more complicated than you'd think. I have a wedding dress (sort of, in the way that you "have" anything you've ordered that will not arrive until September) which is not very bride-like but which suits me perfectly. I have not updated in a long time. I have been tackling that gigantic, 73-page (12 pt font Times New Roman) reading list I received from Writing Seminar.
Stephen King's "On Writing" is the first from that list to make it into my hands. And. . . I'm not impressed.
Possibly because I've realized that at heart, I will only ever be a dilettante (dabbler, trifler, amateur) writer. (A trifler makes me think of someone who eats lots of flan. Because a flan is the closest I could ever come to envisioning a trifle.) Sure, plenty of people have said I'm good at it, and I've learned to work hard at it, but. . . I'm always thinking of ideas for artwork. All the passion and enjoyment seems to be on the side of art.
Do you think that's OK? If I'm never any more than "good at writing in college," will I regret it? But I suppose I can always write my first novel at fifty if I decide I want to do that instead of teaching art (which is hopefully what I'll be doing). I still intend to write, on occasion, but I think it's time I 'fessed up and went whole hog for art -- and quit beating around the bush and trying to be perfect at everything.
Sometimes, you've just got to say no to something really beautiful and important, to get to the thing that really suits you. Maybe?
Pontificating, even though I am merely 21, makes me chuckle a little. But I'm also serious.
The rest of summer seems. . . nice. Nice in the way that it's too quiet and I sort of expect it to leap out and strangle me right around the next weekend (I mean bend). I guess I'm still used to the semester. =) So far, though, summer has kept its hands in the air and refrained from making any aggressive moves.
Which I'm OK with.
Does that sound bad? That sounds bad. Let me start again:
It's summer. I'm house-sitting for a very pampered cat and very pampered gardens in a large and beautiful house. I'm trying to plan a wedding, which is turning out to be both less and more complicated than you'd think. I have a wedding dress (sort of, in the way that you "have" anything you've ordered that will not arrive until September) which is not very bride-like but which suits me perfectly. I have not updated in a long time. I have been tackling that gigantic, 73-page (12 pt font Times New Roman) reading list I received from Writing Seminar.
Stephen King's "On Writing" is the first from that list to make it into my hands. And. . . I'm not impressed.
Possibly because I've realized that at heart, I will only ever be a dilettante (dabbler, trifler, amateur) writer. (A trifler makes me think of someone who eats lots of flan. Because a flan is the closest I could ever come to envisioning a trifle.) Sure, plenty of people have said I'm good at it, and I've learned to work hard at it, but. . . I'm always thinking of ideas for artwork. All the passion and enjoyment seems to be on the side of art.
Do you think that's OK? If I'm never any more than "good at writing in college," will I regret it? But I suppose I can always write my first novel at fifty if I decide I want to do that instead of teaching art (which is hopefully what I'll be doing). I still intend to write, on occasion, but I think it's time I 'fessed up and went whole hog for art -- and quit beating around the bush and trying to be perfect at everything.
Sometimes, you've just got to say no to something really beautiful and important, to get to the thing that really suits you. Maybe?
Pontificating, even though I am merely 21, makes me chuckle a little. But I'm also serious.
The rest of summer seems. . . nice. Nice in the way that it's too quiet and I sort of expect it to leap out and strangle me right around the next weekend (I mean bend). I guess I'm still used to the semester. =) So far, though, summer has kept its hands in the air and refrained from making any aggressive moves.
Which I'm OK with.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
