I go to a fellowship group every week with college students from all over the city, and while our primary purpose there is to have teachings and Bible study, you cannot meet once or twice a week every week with the same group of people without cementing some kind of a community.  A fair number of the kids in the group are artists, in some form or another.  Some of them go to fashion school, or Tisch, and a surprising number go to Julliard.  This has, in some ways, been immensely intimidating.  I can think of few things more impressive from someone of my own age than knowing that they got into Julliard.  That speaks of a level of skill and dedication of which I am in awe.  But it has also just been really interesting, to get to meet people who love so much the thing they have dedicated themselves to, and who are so ready to immerse themselves in their passion.  It is more like going to a school so populated with engineers than I would have expected, being around all these artists–the sense of purpose and the amount of work tend to be the same, though the societal expectations of the paths are extremely different.

It’s made me think, being so often around these people, how daring it is to pursue the arts.  I know a harpist, a pianist, a ballet dancer, a cellist, and an opera singer.  And I think it is incredible, the amount of training they are putting into the development of these skills.  But what I truly think is remarkable about these people, who are as in love with their arts as I am with writing, is how open they are, and how eager, for other people’s passions.  Last week, my friend Bobby, who is an opera singer and a senior at Julliard, played and sang for me a number of short pieces he’s been working on for a performance coming up early in December.  Last night, I showed him some of my poetry.  There were more intersections between the two than I would have thought.  We were each dealing with our own kind of craft, we were both interested in sound and verse and vocabulary and definition.  It was incredibly exciting, to talk about art, and listen to someone else talk about it, in a way that was personal and immediate and passionate.  I think the connection between our interests has been the most obvious, because his music is in some ways directly wrapped up in language, but I’ve found this connection with a lot of my friends.  And that’s made me think a lot about the way our culture looks at different areas of study.  There’s a lot of emphasis right now on STEM careers.  And I think STEM careers are exceedingly important, and that people can be just as passionate about them as I am about the arts.  I don’t want in any way to belittle the importance of engineers and doctors.  But I also think these other areas are important.  I watch the arts in every form fading from our schools, especially our public schools, and that makes me extremely sad.  There’s so much purpose and so much joy in art, and, further, art has, in my life, become a bridge.  It has so often, especially recently, been a way for me to communicate with other people, a way for us to understand the places in which we are the same, the things that matter to both of us, and I’m incredibly grateful for that.  In part, this is just the inspiration of Thanksgiving rubbing off on me: I want to bask in the things for which I am grateful, and to be grateful more often than I am.  But it is also a realization–I have been, in some subconscious way, pushing away from the arts.  I figure that I love math, and I love science, and that somehow compensates for my real passions.  Because I do love physics, and calculus, and I’ve been interested in learning about just about everything for just about as long as I can remember.  But I don’t want to think that the arts are something that needs compensation for, not after all they have done for me, and all, I think, they have yet to do.

This is something my Julliard friends have figured out.  Perhaps what they’re doing is not altogether practical, but part of what they’re learning is how to apply it.  They’re learning the passion and the practicality of their trades.  And I think I’ve learned, from them, that this is what matters to me as well.  Doing the things I am best at, and care most about, in some way (what way I am not yet sure) that has applications in the world, will do far more good, for myself and for everyone, than pretending I can live without these joys.