Perpetually Curious

I've had Barbara Kingsolver's High Tide in Tuscon: Essays from Now or Never  sitting on my To Be Read pile for, oh, five or six years now. I picked it up after reading her essays on farm life,  Animal, Vegetable, Mineral,  but then it got shuffled into the stack and sat there, waiting. As usual, the Universe knows the right timing. When you start advocacy, you need to have a pretty clear idea about exactly what it is you're advocating for. When it comes to increased support (financial and otherwise) for artists, I've long been back and forth in my thinking, not really certain what tactic was best. I mean, do we focus on the "arts for arts sake"? (And really what does that even mean?) Do we show how the skills you develop pursuing any of the arts help you no matter what your career path? Or do we talk about the return on investment for municipalities in their artists and arts businesses? Because I'm so close to it, I can argue many different angles about

I'm a sucker for non-fiction books about women's friendships, or compilations of letters, or North Carolina history. So this book hit all three. March 1974 "The Observer dropped my column several years ago. They wanted the space for a staff member to do a how-to column. He calls me to ask the answers to the questions. I was heartbroken at first, because I found to my amazement that a weekly column is the most delightful way to write. You don't have to hold yourself down to any lengthy subject but you can go into whatever interests you at the moment. Then I learned so much, by being asked about so many things I didn't know, and having to find out. And the instant response is so stimulating; I would go to St. Peter's at eight, and someone would already have read the morning paper, and would comment or disagree, or have something to add." ~Elizabeth Lawrence I couldn't help but chuckle when I read this passage in 2 Gardeners: A Friendship in Lett

If you want to get better at your art, you need a master practitioner to give you critical feedback (a "personal dramaturg" is what one friend called this person, to frame this relationship in a positive supportive way. Mentor, coach, etc etc). If you want your art in front of a lot of people, you need a personal champion. A lot has been written about the former: the student/teacher relationship. Within the context of the "10,000 hour" rule, the sometimes-overlooked half of that is "with a master teacher" portion. You become a master not simply by doing something a lot (but that's important) but by doing it a lot with someone who is better than you giving you insight, support, and correction. I've read less about the notion of a champion. The pervasive myth is comprised of bootstraps, and DIY, and the "overnight success," at least in America anyway. Especially within the past twenty years, when the means of production and distribu

1990 doesn't seem like that long ago. I can remember that far back.  Twenty-five years ago seems like forever. I can't remember what I was doing twenty-five years ago.  I'm working on a book about the history of independent theater in the Triangle of NC, roughly titled "Like Mushrooms on a Log: 25 Years of Independent Theater in the Triangle, NC" (catchy, huh (Don't answer that. I said "roughly.")). I've bracketed my research from 1990 to 2015, for numerous reasons which I'll illuminate later. As with most research of historical incidents, nothing stays that neat.  I'm going to blog about interesting things I find along the way: tidbits about the area, things I don't know actually fit into the book but I don't want to lose, insights and questions I have about myself that arise. Maybe even one day I'll publish actual portions of the writing here. I just need another place to get stuff out of my head.  But back to

I totally forgot to mention I wrote an article back in December, '15 for the Triangle's Indyweek newspaper . It was supposed to be a response to their choices of Indy Arts Awards winners , none of whom were theater-related. At first, I was mad about that, because I get irate every time theater is left out of a discussion. But the more I sat with the madness, the more I realized, dammit, they were right.  So, here, then, is my response . I received the usual portions of praise and criticism.

, And I'm in the throes of an "do I or don't I" quandary. Decisions are easier to follow when they're somebody else's responsibility to make. Perfection paralysis. Second guessing all the possible outcomes. Each answer has a catalog of additional questions that go along with it. If you're lucky, if you've cultivated the right relationships with people you trust with your decision, you can ask for advice. But if you're the one-in-charge, it's still your decision. You can take input, you can build trees, you can create iterations, but the decision is still yours to make. "How to be" productive or successful articles talk all the time about removing low-level decisions--what to wear, what to eat for breakfast--so that you open your decision-making bandwidth to the high-level, change-the-world decisions. Be commercial and take investors or stay nonprofit and cultivate donors. Give your product away versus charging all the mark