Identity

Keshet’s Carolyn Tobias asks: How do we water the seeds of failure to have that pain actually produce something valuable? Learning is a verb; an action; a continual process. Learning from failure is actively choosing to see each failure as the beginning, and not the end.

Instead of interpreting everything in order to feel like I have a grasp on what is going on, I am actively sitting back and looking and listening in the studio and playing with space. I’m learning, or unlearning—whichever way it goes. Isn’t this how we evolve as humans, artists and a nation?

I was a bookish, literarily-devout writing major. The type who read prose poems and flash fiction anthologies in the corner at parties, that sort of thing. And though I wouldn’t have admitted it then, one of the reasons I didn’t own a smartphone was because I was afraid of it.

The future looms large before us and it is our responsibility as artists to advocate for ourselves. We must advocate for our continued importance and relevance in such politically uncertain times. We must advocate for increased fusion of art and science, since an interdisciplinary understanding of the world has always been more thorough and enlightening.

There’s a saying you’ll hear all over the arts world that goes, “If you like anything else, do that instead.” It can mean whatever you want it to. For me, it meant, “If you do something else, it’s because you failed at acting.”

I’ll be honest, the simple act of listing what we’ve accomplished makes me feel pretty great and makes me excited to contemplate what we’ll achieve in the coming year and years beyond that. Because, to continue being honest, I feel a palpable feeling of overwhelm.

Women who found themselves marching with us joked about “being Indian for a day” and then got angry when we asked them to leave because of their disrespect.

Everything we touch and use in this world has been affected by the choices of businesses, governments, activist groups and individual people. The instruments we play our music on, our paints and canvases, the plays that we read from, the books that we publish.

A riddle: What is the point of doing something that someone else has already done before, probably better than you could ever possibly do it?

You no longer have to be with this person who has clearly been struggling with who they are. I would recommend that you explore, discover and decide who YOU are. You are not just a mom, a wife or an ex-wife.

Of course I want us all to “do the work” and I want us to avoid the ahistorical bullshit that is part and parcel of Making America Great Again. But I also want those who can be saved through art alone to be saved.

The intention of my self-imposed residency is to reframe motherhood as a valuable site of inspiration rather than an obstacle for making art. As I am in the midst of parenting two young children, I have found this pedagogical shift incredibly empowering.

I cannot remain silent when someone says “We need to get rid of the damn Muslims!” I will not be silent if I hear a family member bash immigrants, particularly when the basher themselves is a grandchild of immigrants.

As I slowly began to pick up the basics of computers, from simple things like working with documents, to photo editing and management, I was able to debunk some beliefs I had about myself and as a result, it has expanded my virtual and artistic horizons.

I once had a teacher tell me that I had a strong third eye, that I needed to manifest it more, make it sing, make it move. I didn’t understand what she meant but it was something that stuck with me. It propelled me. It did make me sing. It did make me move.

Not only did I think rock and roll foolish and immature, but I felt as if somehow I had let my son down by being a wastrel for all of my adult life instead of preparing for proper fatherhood.