Eternal Summer

I suspect I will walk the seawall every day this week. 

"Artist." It is such a weird word. I tell my students never to use it because it is meaningless when used alone. When a student whom I know self-identifies as a visual artist tells me she is an artist, I like to say, "Are you a choreographer?" I say that because I love the provocative tense.

But it is a meaningless word and to use it is an insult. If someone cares enough about you to ask what you do, why would one answer with a vague and meaningless word? I tell my students to say, "I am a painter." Or whatever is appropriate, more specific and meaningful. 

But it's a title many covet. So is being a writer, and these are titles people love to give themselves. And as I matured, I saw so many artist and writer wannabes with loud self-congratulating voices, I never used either word to describe myself. In fact, I have never given myself a title. 

I have had titles. I've been a Managing Director and an Artistic Director and a Marketing Manager and teacher, but never any of those things for very long. Creating design and writing were tools for me, not titles and I was entirely mercenary in my practice, far more the entrepreneur than an artist.

In my mind there is an altar with a banner bearing the phrase "A place at the table." It is where I have always strived to be.  I use the phrase to express my satisfaction with a project. With Knock Knock, for example, its greatest outcome for me was the feeling it moved me closer to the most important table of all — where actors eat. 

But now, with Presentation House producing my script, HoMe, and the partnership I that Warren (an actor about whom, I am passionate) and I have formed to create Uncle Gus' Monkey, I feel not only at the table, but in the light. It changes my every day because I am an artist and a writer. I know it because  the titles are coming from others, not from me. 

Every day now, I feel fulfilled and proud and satisfied. This is so new a different for someone who felt "outside" and without a table all his life.