A question designed to derail
Oh, hi friends!
I was filling out an application for a fellowship at The MacDowell Colony and this question stopped me:
“Please list your five most important artistic experiences or achievements, beginning with the most recent, and include dates.”
Uhhhh. Hmm.
“Please list your five most important artistic experiences or achievements…”
What is the definition of important? Something resume-worthy? Award-winning?
What is the difference between an artistic experience and an artistic achievement? Is an experience one that is personally meaningful to you, and an achievement is meaningful in the eyes of other people? Critics? Followers?
“Please list your five most important artistic experiences or achievements…”
Can you answer this question off the top of your head? Does it make you aware of how much you’ve done—or how little? Does it make you wonder whether all your work has been in the wrong bucket, in the “unimportant” one? Does it make you question whether you recognize your own achievements for what they are? Does it make you feel like answering “everything I haven’t done yet, but will do, hopefully, probably”? Does it make you aware of the large gaps between your major achievements, and wonder where all that time went and wonder what you did and who you were and how you got from there to here and back again?
Does it make you wallow in your past?
Or does it make you hopeful for your future?
Because maybe all you’ve done signals your potential—what you can do, might do, will do.
Maybe it’s just one more question on a form.
Or maybe it’s a push.
I don't know.
I had to answer though. It was required. Maybe you can answer it for yourself, too.
“Please list your five most important artistic experiences or achievements, beginning with the most recent, and include dates.”
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Photo by David Clode on Unsplash
Get through this week and I promise you can sleep like koala all weekend.
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I asked him what made a good editor. (I can't remember his answer!) He asked me how I would cover the Oscars if I had an unlimited budget and all the reporters that I wanted—and I didn't have a very clear or clever answer. That was my first clue that I didn't want to continue being a culture editor after all. (I want to win Oscars, not cover them!!!) Uncomfortable moments are the best teachers.
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Thanks, as always, for reading.
Love, Kara