Last week I had coffee with one of my oldest friends at Duke. I met him on the second or third day of Orientation Week at an “Arts at Duke” info session. He was fresh from a summer spent on a sculpture project, and I from one of intermittent dancing—the highlight of which was rolling around several trees outside the Durham Performing Arts Center to the tunes of a 50-minute instrumental soundscape. When he and I met that day in the Nelson Music Room, we acknowledged each other according to the neon flyers that color-corresponded to our artistic interests. They bespoke our identities at that point—I “dancer,” he “visual artist; musician.”
Between jittery sips last week I told him about my current capstone project in Documentary Studies, and he told me about a recent work he’d made involving spray paint. He started expressing his dissatisfaction with graffiti art’s “literal” qualities, but could hardly finish his sentence before a robotic voice from the ether (or, Siri) issued forth, uninvited and unafraid:
“I don’t suppose you do.”
We laughed (and laughed), dazzled by the absurdity of his cell phone’s spontaneous contribution. But as someone trying simultaneously to make art, write about the importance of art—especially on this campus—and find (paying) jobs in the arts, I couldn’t get that cheeky voice out of my head, even several days later. I don’t suppose you do. It stepped in for that nagging skeptic, that anxiety of creation that’s perched on my shoulder each time I sit down to edit audio, extend my leg into a demi-arabesque or suspend my fingers above the keyboard to write an Editor’s Note.
I often tell people that I joined Recess because I wanted to see dance more represented in The Chronicle. What I don’t always say is that I assumed I’d be that singular voice, writing about it better than anyone else could. I thought that even if no one read my articles, I’d at least be servicing Art, paying dues to that which supposedly encourages us to lead more intelligent, fruitful and examined lives. It was with this detached understanding that I willed myself to believe my writing would mean more people seeing the value of the arts on this campus. When I pitched articles to a small staff one year later as Arts Editor, I stumbled through this anxiety each time I mentioned a “local theater company” or a “multimedia performance.” There was always the intense fear that no one would care.
“I don’t suppose [they] do.”
This is an extremely insufferable way to live, not to mention experience and make art.
My second-ever article for Recess was a feature on the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, who came through Duke Performances on their farewell tour. John Cage, who was both Merce’s life partner and artistic collaborator, adapted a list titled “Ten Rules for Students and Teachers” from artist and teacher Sister Corita Kent. The list hung for many years in the Cunningham Company’s studio and was distributed to students who took classes there.
Rule 1: “Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for a while.” Rule 4: “Consider everything an experiment.” Rule 8: “Nothing is a mistake. There is no win and no fail. There is only make.” Helpful hints: “Always be around. Come and go to everything.”
I’m someone—and I think a lot of Duke students are, too—who tends to consider every possible outcome before I do anything. Given this approach to life, I marvel that I started writing for Recess at all. I further marvel sometimes that in the space of two years I’ve made myself do enough things in the context of this publication that have made me see and approach the arts, this university and people in a different, more engaged way.
Made, made, made—always in the past-tense, with the same resigned tone as Siri’s remark. I urge you to consider, with me, that there is only make, and especially at a place like Duke, right now. The most crucial thing I’ve learned studying various types of art is that art means noticing something very closely and calling it out as important. Writing for Recess means noticing the arts, as a whole, very closely and calling them out as important and thus worth our attendance, participation, energy, funding, newspaper coverage, etc. I struggle sometimes because I don’t know if Duke has fully recognized this importance. At the same time, as I said in my first Editor’s Note last year, I don’t think a monocultural “Duke” actually exists. Our culture is composed of several thousand people who are all living artistically in some way. Claiming we’re “not into art” doesn’t really work if we press play on our iPods after class. The dancer in me would call out this movement as daily choreography—but I realize not everyone thinks that way. In that sense, I would say:
Take art personally on this campus, and anywhere. Take it so personally that you have to tell people about it, about why it compels you, about why it’s worth preserving. Tell your film professor why you can’t stop replaying that one scene; tell your lover about a verse in an Adrienne Rich poem that reminds you of her worldview; tell your mandolin-playing roommate about hearing Chris Thile’s riffs live—or, better yet, take him or her with you to the show in the first place. Dare to make a documentary about ultimate frisbee, to hold a dance performance on Biddle’s back patio, to stage a protest as theater, to put your words—be they explicitly about art or about something else—into the public with the full knowledge and intention that they be received by interested ears. The future of this university is made up of people who care enough to listen to each other’s passions, to use the many resources we may only have right now to create spaces, situations and communities where these passions can be framed, shared and played with. This, to me, is conscientious artistry. This is part of what these Editor’s Notes have tried to accomplish.
Living artistically at Duke, and anywhere, is not a matter of what we’re willing to give up but rather what parts of our identities—colored flyers and all—we’re willing to contribute to create community. With this understanding, there is no way an arts community at Duke can’t, or doesn’t, exist. I spent a lot of time here griping about how I couldn’t find my own, until I realized “my own” was, and is, Recess. The essence of art is this type of connection. Really, all you have to do is only connect.
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