In this adaptation of her commencement speech, Goddard MFA Program Director Elena Georgiou challenges us to think about the pricelessness of our imaginations.
“When I walk down the street in jeans and a T-shirt, I’m hiding. When I wear these costumes, I am being honest about who I am.”
Goddard MFA alumna Katrina Barnes asks, “At what point is a person at their wit’s end? And how does one reach this destination?”
Goddard MFA faculty member Michael Klein gives us permission to share his poem Harmonium. Here’s a taste: “Peace is revolutionary—that hasn’t changed / but intelligence is less popular now. And inspiration. / There’s no money in it. Some of us have been possessed by a more fearful version / of who we are and aim the camera at ourselves to make sure we are living.”
I knew—gay club–when I heard it on the radio. Florida: old mistress to the Right, corrupt, stolen-election, multi-lingual, and one of the gay capitols. All at once.
Goddard MFA Faculty member Micheline Marcom recalls what Schopenhauer said: “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” She wonders how we might, in our “Information Age,” see better.
Goddard MFA Faculty member Victoria Nelson talks about literary life tests: the ones you face out there in the world after you graduate. “Pay attention to the outside cues…”
The same tomorrow you have thought about these last days and months and that you may be thinking about right now.
The tomorrow that is your life.
Because of my own struggles with writing my play, I was relieved to find out that constructing Looking for Normal had not been an easy task for her. She said it began as a comedy sketch but, after some maturity and many drafts, it turned into something much deeper.
I had the honor of meeting Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist who wrote passionately and beautifully on behalf of both civilians and soldiers caught up in the brutality of the war in Chechnya. In 2002 PEN honored Anna here in LA. Almost exactly four years later she was murdered in her Moscow apartment building. She was 48 years old.