Tomorrow marks the first day of my fourth and final year doing the Rising Star Project, an all-student production of How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying put on by the 5th Avenue Theatre on the 5th Avenue Theatre’s stage. The program is tuition free and anyone aged 14-19 can apply. The entire cast, crew, orchestra, administrative, development, and producing teams are staffed by students with individual mentors.
Tomorrow we go into Tech week, and my part of the task begins. I’m part of the stage crew, an automation carpenter. That means I sit in the basement, watch the stage on tiny monitors that this year are actually HD, and push buttons to make automated things move onstage. This is my second year in this position.
The first year I did RSP, I was Automations Carpenter for Music Man. The second year, I was Flyman for Spamalot. The third, Sound Tech for Carousel. Now Automations Carpenter for How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying.
I’ve met a lot of wonderful people in RSP, both mentors and other students. Some of them know my name. The mentors treat me like an adult, like I am competent and like I can learn a lot very quickly. This isn’t something a lot of programs for teens and high schoolers do. It’s an odd feeling, to be one of the older participants, and suddenly a lot of the other students are fourteen and fifteen. Only a couple people in the crew, and a few in the cast, have done the project with me in previous years. When I helped out at the Cabaret this year, the first time I was able to attend, the mentors treated me as if I knew what I was doing, as if I actually knew everything I was doing. It was great. I felt like I might be able to adult, that I might be able to have a job eventually and be competent at it.
The last four years I’ve turned my family’s schedule upside down to do RSP. My mom helps me get there. Especially this year when I have to commute between Olympia and Seattle nearly every day so I can still go to class. I’ve planned a year in advance, applied and interviewed and learned and been exhausted and let the hygiene of my room to go to shambles trying to get my homework done while getting enough sleep.
Learning everything I can in two weeks backstage with a mentor.
The next two weeks will be insane. Every moment will be spent in at the theater, commuting to the theatre, in class, or sleeping. And it’ll definitely be worth it!

This is a rough draft of material to use for an article thinking about art that I want to write from this base. I’m going to change some things, and put some insight and new ideas I’ve gotten from some videos, the book Art&Fear and some other sources and notes eventually. But a work in progress that started with Thursday’s discussion.

Both my parents are artists, but very different kinds. My father is a writer, a photographer, a filmmaker, and he’s told me that he considers video advertisements a form of high art. You have thirty seconds to make someone do something that they otherwise wouldn’t have before they saw that advertisement. It’s very difficult to do, and it definitely requires meaning to be made from it. My mother draws, she’s a painter, and most of her work is abstract. I was taught from a very young age, not to put meaning in her work where there wasn’t any. Don’t try to make it into something when it isn’t suppose to be anything. Just appreciate its beauty, absorb it, and feel what it makes you feel when you look at it. It can mean something to you, but it won’t mean that to everyone else. Hold the meaning it gives you for yourself, don’t take the chance that you might ruin the meaning it has for someone else with your interpretation.
So I grew up knowing that art could take many forms, and that all of them were valid in their own way, and that you could make whatever kind of art spoke most to you. You can make art that works for social change, that provides commentary on the times, you can make art that means something, or you can make art that makes you happy simply for the reason that it makes you happy, that the colors are beautiful or that you want to capture that moment of beauty or decay.
Both kinds of art can exist at the same time without discounting the other. They can exist within one artist, and that artist can have vastly different reasons for making one piece of art than for making another.
That artist’s intentions when they’re making that art are important, but only so far as they are important to the artist. Because once what they have made is passed on to the audience, it doesn’t matter what their intention is, the audience might see a different intention in their interpretations. The artist can’t control how the audience responds to a piece of art. Those response for the audience, are just as valid and meaningful as the intentions the artist had when they were creating it, and as long as everyone understands and respects that these interpretations and responses and intentions can exist at the same time without lessening each others meaning, they can exist at the same time.
The artist makes their art for their own reasons, whether that reason is because they want to or because they want to create meaning. The audience sees and reacts to the art for their own reasons, through a political lens perhaps, or through the lens of appreciating art without thinking about its context. All of these have merit, and all are valid, if they are true to self.

I was riding in the backseat of a green Volvo station wagon, driving along the old highway between Discovery Bay and Sequim.
It was a gorgeous day. The sun was bright and the water was blue and looking out the window gave me one of the happiest feelings you could have. I was breathless and blown away.
Maybe I was nine. Maybe ten.
The muffler in the car was broken and it roared down the road. There was a Heron in one of the tide flats.
My family spent the day in Sequim, or some of the day. I held onto that feeling I’d had in the car earlier that day. When we got home, I wrote it down.
It was the first time I’d ever written anything down for the purpose of writing it down. Writing had up to that point been a sort of side function. Something that went along with drawing, or posters, or maybe a school assignment or an odd little badly scrawled story in a sloppily kept, fifty cent notebook.
But this time when I sat down in front of an old Gateway laptop that had been my dad’s before mine – it had absorbed his recalcitrant personality, and would eventually become a royal pain in the ass as it died a slow and painful death – it was for the specific purpose of writing something. I was using an old version of Word Perfect, a program that I would become very attached to over the next few years before it finally became too out of date to run on moderately new computers.
I tried to recapture that feeling I’d had that morning as I wrote. I didn’t pay attention to punctuation or paragraphs. At the time I didn’t even understand the concept of paragraphs. It confused me so much because when it was explained to me, I thought the indent was on the right hand side of the page, and I couldn’t figure out how you perfectly place your words to make an indent on the right hand of the page. I figured I could put in the punctuation later.
My typing didn’t include things like periods or capitalizations or the enter key. So I just wrote. I wrote a block of text. I remember it being almost a half a page of solid text, but I haven’t looked back at it in years. Who knows how long it really was.
I think I set out to write a poem about that feeling, I don’t think it was supposed to be a story. But even if it wasn’t the intention, it was certainly the result. At least some form of poem.
I probably showed it to my parents before I did anything else to the block of text. I don’t remember their reactions, probably good.
Later, when I was finished writing, the same day or a few later maybe, I went back to put in the punctuation, or maybe just to read it.
It was an incredibly painful experience, trying to figure out what I had been trying to say from a solid block of text with no punctuation, no capitalized letters, no indication of anything except letters and words that hopefully were all spelled right, in the right order, and not missing any odd words.
Except they weren’t all spelled right, in the right order, and there were definitely words missing.
Little by little, the block of text was separated out by lines, by periods and comas, by capital letters and whatever form grammar takes in my mind that lets it come out alright in the end.
I was proud of that poem. My first one. My first intentional writing, I think. It was weird and not quite perfect and I was proud of it.
Every moment I was trying to make it make sense, I was promising myself that I would never again write without taking the time to punctuate the sentences, or hit enter. It was too annoying, too painful to ignore it on the first go round.

I relish a reaction scene.
Those little things in life that surprise you.
I don’t remember the times that I am surprised by good things in real life. But I remember the feeling of watching a movie, or reading a book there’s a well done reaction scene. The moment the villain realizes they’ve been outsmarted. The moment someone realizes who is behind the mask. Those moments make me happy, I supposed in a strange way.
That feeling of knowing something interesting that someone else doesn’t has followed me pretty much as far back as I can remember. When I was little I remember the things that strangers told me most was that I had pretty blue eyes. When I was little I took great joy in proudly asking them if they knew what my name meant in Greek, then telling them it meant life. It became almost a game in my family to see if anyone could guess how old I was. Everyone always thought I was older than I was.
The only person who ever guessed correctly was a strange guy, I remember him as being very tan and he had an accent, maybe Australian, more likely German though. I was twelve. It annoyed me that he could guess correctly, because he attributed it to the fact that I rolled my eyes in a way apparently particular to twelve year olds. A habit I had acquired from reading the Stephanie Plum novels, at least a year before I had turned twelve, but probably almost two.
Three days before county fair when I was eight, I broke my arm. It was setup day and we were getting everything ready in the goat barn. The Costco tents that shaded the showing area in the field hadn’t been put up yet and their tops were lying on the ground.
That 4-H club was small, for the goats, and there was only two other kids my age in the group. They were brothers that were a year younger and a year older than I was. They were okay I supposed at the time. Toward the end of the day we were chasing each other around the tent tops. I might have been chasing them, or they might have been chasing me, but we were running full speed around those oblong tent tops, on damp and slippery grass.
Coming around a corner my foot slipped. I think my leg twisted underneath me, and I landed backwards on my left arm. The angle of the fall made my arm snap straight. The force made it feel as if it was bent backwards. I might have screamed when I hit the ground.
I was winded and I was in pain. Terrible pain. I was crying and trying to get air. Soon enough there was quite a healthy dose of rage mixed in, because those little bastards were laughing at me. They were doubled over laughing at my pain, and it made me absolutely furious. But I was in pain, there was nothing I could do.
We left soon after that. Because we had put in our time, or because I hurt my arm, I don’t know. But as we left, I wanted very badly to get revenge on those idiot boys who laughed at me.
I could move my arm. If I moved it a certain way it would give me a shock of pain. The next day I went to someone’s birthday party I think. It still hurt that day. If it hurt the next day, we’d go see a doctor. It shouldn’t be broken though, you can still move it. Probably nothing to worry about.
It still hurt the next day and we went to the hospital. I got an X-ray, just in case.
They were back with the results eventually. You broke your growth plate. It’s an unusual break. We can’t put your arm in a cast, or your elbow will freeze and never move from that position again. But we’ll put your arm in a sling. You should move it a little, but be careful. Eight weeks.
My sling was navy blue with a white strap. I had broken my arm. We had waited a day to go to the hospital. And now we were going to the first day of the fair.
When we got there, I was smiling widely. I was walking along the side of the barn. I couldn’t wait for the boys to see my sling. The word revenge kept floating around in my mind, even though it wasn’t really the right word.
They rounded the corner of the barn together, and when they saw me their faces just dropped. It was perfect. It was a grandly perfect moment. I had my revenge, I was smiling hugely. Their faces were exactly the right mixture of surprise and startling realization. And with that matter settled I could get down to the business of the fair. Herdsmanship, showing the goats.
I was going to get to ride the mechanical bull that year. But then my arm was broken. My only chance was traded for the priceless looks on their faces. At least I got to race in the odd weighted peddle tractors. I might not have won, but I think I was second. And there’s a picture of a girl in a navy blue sling driving a mini tractor.

I’m homeschooled. I grew up on a farm. I grew up off the grid, without running water or electricity. They let me solder silver jewelry when I was seven. They let me grind my own cabochons. I can show you how, if you want. That looks means that adult told you the same thing I just did, doesn’t it?
I’ve written a children’s book. I’m writing a novel. I’ve written a novel. No, I’m not sixteen. I’m not seventeen. I’m not fifteen. At least two years younger, every time.
I’m in Running Start. I’m sixteen. Why do I know what the answer to this question about the tide on our lab worksheet? I read the book. Didn’t you? I’m seventeen. I’m not going to graduate through the high school. I don’t need to do the high school requirements. I’m going to graduate with my associate’s degree and my high school diploma from Olympic College. I’m eighteen.
They call for students graduating through Running Start to stand at the ceremony. I stand. Everyone beside me is surprised.
I have my associate’s degree. I’m not living in the dorms, I have an apartment.
I’m a Junior. You’re not necessarily the youngest in the class. Not necessarily. Yes. I turn Nineteen in about four days.
I’ll graduate next year. I’ll be twenty. I’ll graduate with a bachelor’s degree before I could legally drink. If all goes well.

I do treasure these moments when I do something that someone doesn’t expect. When others learn something about me that they weren’t expecting. Maybe I like these moments of surprise too much, maybe it makes me proud. There’s plenty though, to remind me I’m not perfect. And the motivation to keep these little surprises happening, is good motivation to do better. Not for everyone, but for me in this bit of time.
Maybe that makes me secretly a terrible person. But it doesn’t feel like it. It just feels like I’m living up to my name, and finding amusement in little things.

I once compared Jane Eyre to stale roadkill.
In the complete wisdom and frustration of my approximately thirteen year old self, I wrote that comparison into a note that I wrote to the Teen Coordinator Librarian at my local library.
I do regret handing her that paper, because I’m sure there were far, far better ways to have handled the situation, but at the time I was quite fed up with the woman and her insistence and demand that I read the book.
She had told me every time I had seen her that I needed to read the book because it was fantastic and had changed her life and would change mine. I ignored it for a while, and then I was in a situation where there wasn’t much else for me to do other than lie in bed and read for several months on end, I decided that if I read the book I could tell her I did and not have to hear about it anymore.
I think I managed between forty and sixty pages before I gave up on it. It had struck me as a particularly depressing story written in a manner that was not particularly captivating. My comparison to stale roadkill came from my feeling that it was a dry exploration of horrors that I felt no connection to, and in my mind, especially at the time, I thought that reading about roadkill might have been more interesting, and thus the book was stale roadkill.
I don’t think it’s likely that I’ll ever try to read Jane Eyre again, in part because it was one of the only books that someone else demanded I read in my young life, being a home schooled kid whose parents allowed her to read whatever she wanted. In part because of that early experience with basically despising the book, and because it’s linked with a memory that I’d really rather not dwell on in particular.

I truly hope that that rude thirteen year old didn’t lessen the importance of Jane Eyre to her. I hope she doesn’t remember that note as well as I do.
When I look back, this experience seems to highlight for me how important and different people’s interpretation of art and literature can be. It wasn’t any particular experience that taught me this, but a collection of events throughout my life to this point that has taught me and reminded me of this; my situation with Jane Eyre included.
I did not, and probably never will, see Jane Eyre in the same way she did. It wasn’t an important book to me, personally. But the way I relate to that book has no effect on how another does, and on whether that book was an important literary work to literature itself.
There have been quite a few times when I have read something, or watched something that’s supposed to be a brilliant eye opening masterpiece that absolutely everyone raves about, and talks about all the meaning they see in it, and when I see it, I don’t understand. Maybe I see something that’s okay. Maybe I’m just confused by it.
I don’t know whether this is a fault of my mind, or whether it simply doesn’t mean that much to me in that moment. Sometimes I wish I could see and understand what others do. But then, I think I would miss the things I do find meaning from. I would miss the little connections, intended or not, that string through excellent novels and movies, I would miss the way an abstract painting of my mother’s can make the hair on my arms stand up and shivers run down my spine.
A few days ago I was thinking about this, about how people interpret and interact with literature and art. And I think maybe I can finally put to words something I’ve thought for what seems like a long time.
When I see posts on social media from fans making really arcane but plausible connections in novel series, or pointing out minute things that only show for mere seconds in TV shows, I can’t really know whether those connections or tiny things were on purpose, whether the author meant for those connections to be made. But to some extent whether it was intentional or not doesn’t matter.
Each person will find something, some connection or theme or something. Whether it was an intended something or not doesn’t matter because that person has found it and to them it is part of the meaning of the work from that point onward, or until something else is noticed that changes the perspective of the first thing.
Authors and creators have a vast amount of control over their works, and many things that are done in literature are done very purposefully. But I don’t think it’s possible for an author to anticipate absolutely every possible interpretation because you cannot know what experiences and focuses that every single person brings with them in reading and experiencing a work. Thus in my mind, to a certain point, interpretation is created by the readers more thoroughly than the authors in some cases, especially when the readers are specifically looking for a deeper meaning.
I have always loved books that you can read multiple times and still notice something that you hadn’t noticed before. Those books are rich and complex. You can read them lightly and still find them wonderful, or you can read them deeply and notice so much nuance and they are just as wonderful.
I love people discussing the little details and how everyone sees everything. I love finding out how many interpretations there can be, how many connections and details there are.
Except, when those discussing the book are trying to suss out the one true meaning, or the meaning that the author was specifically trying to impart. Those boring as hell book clubs that failed at my library, those misguided high school English courses where the sometimes misguided teacher is the all knowing all powerful authority on what the author really meant, or what the book is really about. Those pursuits of the one true meaning, they make it hard for multiple interpretations to exist at once, they remove the room for nuance and thought and the creation of something that exists as a mixture from the author and from yourself.
The trick lies, I think, in discussing without aiming to find one meaning, and without exactly aiming to change anyone else’s interpretation. To allow another to have their own interpretation, to know that their interpretation will not directly harm your own. To not force another to have the same interpretation as you do.
I think it must have been a very good thing that I did not attend public school. The way I handled one instance of someone demanding that I read a particular book was such that if I had been in public school, I would have either gone mad or, perhaps more likely, made all the teachers want to murder me.
I once compared Jane Eyre to stale roadkill.
Today I have the experience to recognize that one person’s stale roadkill is another’s fine art. And today I have what is hopefully wisdom to know that both interpretations can exist without harming the other. At least they can if you’re not demanding that a rude thirteen year old sees the book the same way you do, and if a rude thirteen year old finds a better way to vent their frustration at the demand.

(Note that I hold no ill will toward Jane Eyre fans, and I hope I have not terribly offended anyone. It was not the intention.)

Yesterday was my nineteenth birthday.
Much of the day spent in class. Interesting of course. But not the place you want to be on a birthday, cooped up in room with a lot of strangers. I came home exhausted. No energy to maintain any kind of celebratory mood. A little homework. A bite to eat. Then lie down, frustrated but unable to stay awake any longer.
The first birthday that I’m away from my family. And I don’t have the energy to ask if any friends on campus want to hang out. Feels lonely here, amongst the clouds in my mind.
I’ve never been good at keeping friends very long. I’ve always lived far away from everyone I know, and then after a while, I start to wonder whether they actually like being around me, or if they just tolerate me. The thought paralyzes me every time I think about saying hello and then I don’t.
It feels like too much effort to try and set up a birthday celebration. It’d be cool to do this with these people. But the scheduling, the coordination, the cooperation of the universe. I’ll think about it later and then it’s the next year.
I like the number nineteen. I feel like the year should be a special one. I feel like I should do something. I should go camping. I should take some day trips. I should travel with friends or family. I should try harder to publish my writing. I should make a blog and keep up with it better this time. Things should go my way. That would be a nice change.
But save my tenth birthday, there’s been no click at each birthday. Nothing changes much. Gradual changes, but it feels the same. I miss the feeling I’d finally achieved last quarter, but when I lost it partway through, confidence is lost too, and the little bubble of competence. Now it feels more like just trying to keep going, to keep my head above water until I can get back to somewhere better.
It’s not to say that yesterday was a horrible day, or even that nothing good happened. I got to talk to my family. I got to eat lunch with interesting people. Friends said happy birthday to me. The magazine that’s published three of my essays in the past responded to my last submission; it looks like it will fit in the August issue. And a professor from my first college, my favorite professor there yet a professor I never ended up actually taking a course from, who I admire very much, wrote a really wonderful Facebook post about me that pretty much made my day. I had a leftover meal from my favorite restaurant that I ate for dinner, I watched some funny YouTube videos, I read a book of my own choosing, instead of a book for school.
I’m glad that I had these little things. I’m glad I have good people around me, even when my mind doesn’t want to believe it. I hope that this year turns out to be a good one. I hope the gradual change is good. I want to know what’s next.