1. What is the first creative moment you remember?
Painting a picture using a shoebox filled with paint colored marbles
2. Was anyone there to witness or appreciate it?
I’m sure there was, probably my nanny, Lorraine
3. What is the best idea you’ve ever had?
Cutting unnecessary stress from my life in the form of distancing myself from certain people who caused it.
4. What made it great in your mind?
I put myself first and realized in the process that I don’t have to make everyone happy. Also that my other friends and loved ones actually respected me more for making such a choice.
5. What is the dumbest idea?
Making a life decision based on a boy
6. What made it stupid?
I knew in my gut the reasons for my choice, but I lied to myself to make it seem like I had different motives
7. Can you connect the dots that lead you to this idea?
Unfortunately, yes. I was a teenaged girl in love with a teenaged boy. It’s oh so heartbreakingly cliché.
8. What is your creative ambition?
To be able to create without fear
9. What are the obstacles to this ambition?
My intense self consciousness, perfectionism, and need to please everyone at all times
10. What are the vital steps to achieving this ambition?
Practice, and letting go of the above laundry list of issues
11. How do you begin your day?
Waking up to some happy music from my iPod, getting ready, then reading a chapter of my current favorite book before heading off to class.
12. What are your habits? What patterns do you repeat?
I have a lot of little habits, some good some bad. I can’t sit still, so I do things like pick at the dirt under my nails or crack my toes constantly. I also, when trying to keep my focus during a long class session or a speech, tend to spell out the words that I am hearing out at my side with my hand in sign language. I have too many to even list…most of which I hardly ever notice.
13. Describe your first successful creative act.
My first ballet class. I was two years old but I immediately told my mom that I wanted to “do ballet forever.”
14. Describe your second successful creative act.
The first poem that I had published in a literary journal when I was up at Duke. I had to do it anonymously, but I still conquered my fear of putting myself out there.
15. Compare them.
Both were big moments for me and came years apart. I guess that the similarity was that I opened myself up before both could happen. I only went to ballet because my cousin went; I wanted to be just like her. But it took me three or four tries to actually get into the studio. I made my mom turn around and go home the first two times, then the next I just wanted to watch. It was the same with my writing: I always did it because I liked it, but I never showed much to people. I didn’t even try very hard when I wrote papers for school, because if I didn’t try, then I couldn’t’ look foolish. But putting myself out there in both situations has resulted two great creative outlets for me.
16. What are your attitudes toward: money, power, praise, rivals, work, play?
Money: I like it! I have quite the shopping addiction, so it definitely comes in handy. However, I don’t define myself by it. The career path I am choosing will have me at about a public school teacher’s salary but with twice the hours in the office, so I will either have to marry rich or live without it.
Power: I like control, and I never want to be powerless over my own life. But I don’t crave power. I don’t need to collect more of it.
Praise: I am a people pleaser but am self-conscious, so praise both elates and terrifies me.
Rivals: I hate having them. I am competitive and always have to win, but I abhor conflict and can’t stand to have anyone not like me. Friendly rivalry is great, like the one that I have always had with my best friend (Maureen) because it pushes me (academically in that case). And beating someone who deserves to be beaten is satisfying, but I don’t want to become embattled in a rivalry.
Work: I need it to keep me grounded
Play: I love it, but I also love downtime: sitting quietly with my kitten and a book.
17. Which artists do you admire most?
I could go on about this forever. But the first three that come to mind are:
1) The beautiful prima ballerinas who paper my walls. They make something so difficult look so effortless day after day and I can’t help but tear up every time I see a ballet performed.
2) High fashion models like Coco Rocha. I know that most people don’t think of these leggy beauties as artists, but I love the artistry of fashion design and have come to appreciate those that are the canvass to show off the clothes. Not all of them are artists, but there are girls like Coco that do amazing, imaginative things with their faces and bodies while still looking beautiful and making the clothes look their best that blow me away every time.
3) Authors. Especially those, like JK Rowling, who create entire worlds full of new creatures, places, names, languages and customs…all from their imagination.
18. Why are they your role models?
Because they do things with their minds and bodies that amaze and entertain. They manage to fascinate me every time I watch them/look at their pictures/read their stories and they all make it look so simple.
19. What do you and your role models have in common?
That’s a tough one. I was tempted to say “nothing.” But I would have to say that we love to see beautiful things and make things beautiful ourselves.
20. Does anyone in your life regularly inspire you?
My friends do. I don’t have siblings, and I have a large group of acquaintances and a group of very close friends. That group is like my family and they are all wonderful people who inspire me to be better.
21. Who is your muse?
My first gut instinct was my mom. She died years ago, but I have memories of her of my own and countless ones from others. She was loved by so many and I want to be like her some day.
22. Define muse.
Someone who inspires you, who makes you want to create. My mother is my muse because I want so badly to live up to her legacy and to make her proud of me.
23. When confronted with superior intelligence or talent, how do you respond?
Unfortunately, with insecurity most of the time
24. When faced with stupidity, hostility, intransience, laziness, or indifference in others, how do you respond?
With impatience and frustration.
25. When faced with impending success or the threat of failure, how do you respond?
As I respond to most things: with a lot of analysis. I think through all of the possible scenarios, good or bad, and try to create the best possible outcome. My friends have even bought me a “decision making pad” that has spaces for “worst case scenario” and pros and cons and all of that to facilitate my process.
26. When you work, do you love the process or the result?
It depends on which work. If it’s choreography…I have no idea. Writing, I live for it to be finished so that I can just STOP editing, but afterwards I acknowledge that the process was cathartic. Dance is about the process and the result for me: I love dancing itself, in class and in rehearsal; and seeing a piece come to fruition and to perform it in front of an audience is awesome.
For my preparation for work work, then I would say I prefer the result. In my internship or in mock trial I love the win: seeing a bad guy go to jail or getting that best attorney trophy.
Actually…I take that back. I enjoy the process of the legal research and putting the case together for my internship at the State Attorney’s Office. However, I think that with anything that you want to devote your life to, you have to love it all. Even the hard work.
In mock trial, I do love those little moments of victory in the planning stages, the ones where I know that I have found a great loophole or anticipated the other side’s argument perfectly. However, the stress of the time in the weeks/months before a competition in general is not fun, though the adrenaline rush that I get during the trial itself is a high only comparable to the one that I used to get on stage before I was injured.
27. At what moments do you feel your reach exceeds your grasp?
Every time that I dance
28. What is your ideal creative activity?
I don’t know if this is what the question means, but I would love to be able to perform somewhere amazing: be Juliet at the Globe, Elphaba in the Girshwin, a Rockette at Radio City, Swanhilda at the Paris Opera House…the list is endless.
29. What is your greatest fear?
Losing someone I love.
30. What is the likelihood of either of the answers to the previous two questions happening?
The first one is highly unlikely, and the second has already happened to me and it WILL happen again. I just hope that it is not so far before their time as was my first loss.
31. Which of your answers would you most like to change?
23. I wish that it weren’t true. I know that it’s not a good thing to admit about myself, but at least I can admit it. It would be better to learn from things rather than shrink from them.
32. What is your idea of mastery?
To be able to do something without effort, without even needing to think about it.
33. What is your greatest dream?
To become someone like my mother: someone remembered by everyone who knew her as a person who did something to make their life better in some small way. It amazes me.
