Time and again, we are forced to make choices...

"I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."

-Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Making choices is difficult. I don't think I'm very good at it, even though in the past I've made decisions without looking back. For example, I've never agonized over whether I should have gone to Scripps. And I've definitely made decisions that were not necessarily right, or the best, but stuck with it stubbornly because of some sense of loyalty to the decision.

But when it comes down to what I want to devote the majority of my life doing, I start to doubt myself. Should I study international affairs? Should I have dropped everything and gone to art school? Sometimes I think we're all born with infinite amounts of potential. Our potential is embedded within, like little seeds that need to be cultivated. In daily life, we make a myriad of choices that cultivate different aspects of that potential. But one day, does it come to a choice, at a point of no return? If we choose to cultivate one single aspect of our potential, do the other plants wither and die away from neglect?

At her talk last semester, Angela Oh gave us some advice. She said, don't worry about what you choose. Make up your mind and choose one thing, anything, and it will not matter in the end. I believed her partially. Maybe it doesn't matter what you choose, as long as you pour your soul wholly into all your endeavors. Then, everything you've touched, everything you complete, will reflect your deepest passion, the essence of oneself. Maybe the essence that is a person's reason, life-source, identity...only springs from some fierce, intense devotion.

But like Esther's character in The Bell Jar, I'm trapped by greed, I want only the best of everything in the world that I've ever known without the grief, the mundane, the weariness. I don't know how to make the right decisions. But from now on, I will make more conscious choices. I will listen to my feelings. I will follow the rare and exhilarating feeling of liberating joy and openness, and never settle for less than being whole.

what in fact I keep choosing/are these words, these whispers, conversations...

...from which time after time the truth breaks moist and green.
-Cartographies of Silence, Adrienne Rich

I've been thinking about why people make art. There are so many reasons why people would write, paint, make music, create. Perhaps some do it for fame, money, or the illusion of future fame and fortune. Some people do it to survive, as their only means to earn a living. Some do it for survival because they would die a metaphorical death without art. And for some it's both.

People create with a particular objective in mind, to expose injustice and to politicize (For some reason Ayn Rand comes to mind, perhaps because her description of the human condition is so lyrically beautiful that I'm compelled to forgive her politics). And perhaps people create because it's inexplicably beautiful. Art for art's sake.

I create because I see a piece of myself and my experiences in every piece of art that I appreciate. This sounds like narcissism, but I find comfort in seeing myself reflected in others, especially when I feel like my life is a mess and that I've lost that sense of self (So I gather the identifiable pieces from other people's work and attempt to piece together something recognizable?). As Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project resolves, "Think about myself so I can forget myself." Art allows me to reassemble the broken pieces of myself. Good writing rearticulates my thoughts perfectly when I'm too crippled by confusion and emotion to do so myself. So I write in the hope that I may replicate that feeling, that sense of connection with someone else in the audience, if the audience exists.

I create because I am secretive and being too direct and rough with my words and emotions seems too painful. So I circumvent the issue, hope that someone will mistake my sentimentality for originality. Wanting to be original, innovative, and yet understood by everyone, yet terrified of being understood. Wanting mutually exclusive things at once (that are burning up when they are bottled up and will explode when they aren't reconciled) and wanting to make sense of the complexities of a world that encompasses so many contradictions. Wanting to say things a certain way because it's impossible to say them any other way.

Of course, I create because I want to make something beautiful.

(And I have romanticized the idea of art as a life or death matter, a matter of survival, I suppose.)

But are any of these reasons either-or, mutually exclusive? Is there a commonality that encompasses all of these reasons, besides the human element?

Maybe the capacity for art is a part of humanity, and to maintain our humanity we must tell our stories with some desperate hope for understanding and connection. History books say that all the great civilizations must have acquired some sort of capacity for language. But these standards for qualifying civilizations is according to our modern, extremely linguistic and visual culture. Though, it would be extremely difficult for us to conceptualize a great civilization that didn't prioritize language, visual art, or representation (because it would be lost to our tools of interpretation?).

Maybe in order for art to be politicizing, its message doesn't have to be obvious. The very act of storytelling can be empowering because it allows someone to reclaim their humanity by redefining a representation of hirself. In a world infiltrated with violence and coercion, art can be a subversive force. For all of society's attempts to silence voices that have stories to tell, there are those who will rebel. For a woman like my grandmother who has told stories despite the wars waged to keep her silent, her art has power.

Why do you create art?