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“It’s not about power. It’s about allowing more people to sample knowledge because it’s baked in a delicious chocolate cake.”
– Jon Stewart
Toward the close of her chapter on articulation, Bogart asks, "Why not describe the big dreams?"
"If you can describe what you imagine, I believe that the universe will begin to find the shapes to contain your dream. The effort it takes to image an action in the world or a project of a dream house is the first step toward its realization. Describe it.
"At a dinner party in Manhattan I found myself seated next to the Canadian filmmaker Francois Girard, in New York to raise financial support his next project The Red Violin. I had seen his previous film 32 Short Films about Glen Gould several times and admired his artistry and radical methods of storytelling. At one point during the dinner, he turned to me and asked if I wanted to hear the story of The Red Violin. Flattered and thrilled, I agreed. 'A great craftsman, a maker of violins, loved his wife immensely,' he began, 'and when she died unexpectedly he, in his grief, painted the violin he had been working on with her blood.' Girard went on to describe, step by step, this violin's journey through time and space, from one person, from one country and one century to the next. Breathless, I hung on to every word. I noticed that he watched closely and made adjustments in the telling in response to my listening. Later on in the evening, I realized that I had become part of what made his work possible. There was nothing special about me that made him want to tell me the story; rather, this was precisely how he realized a project. He turns to the person next to him, whoever that might be and wherever he is, and begins to speak the project into existence. He develops the story by telling it and by noticing how it is received. Not only was he working on his screenplay, this was also the way to garner financial support. He literally talked his film into existence.
"I once considered fundraising an obligatory activity divorced from the artistic process. I have come to understand that fundraising can, in fact, be part of the creative act. Fundraising is an action that can help to speak a project into existence. Francois Girard helped me to grasp this notion.
Due to the withdrawal of government subsidy in the current political and cultural climate, finding support has become a more time-consuming necessity. But you can also see it as the opportunity to describe and redescribe a project. Fundraising is action. Consider the pursuit of support and raising money as a part of your artistic process. It is not a burden. It is a way of meeting people, building community and articulating ideas, concepts, and intentions. Envision fundraising not simply about raising money but as part of both a cash and noncash economy. Anyone who contributes to the realization of a project is part of the community of sponsors. In doing this you will find the people who will become connected to the root system of your work. How extended can the root system of your work be? In the many interactions, you will find an actual basis of support and an ongoing development of an initiative."
Emotions, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness,” “joy,” or “regret.” Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, “the happiness that attends disaster.” Or: “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.” I’d like to show how “intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members” connects with “the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.” I’d like to have a word for “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants” as well as for “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.” I’ve never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I’ve entered my story, I need them more than ever. I can’t just sit back and watch from a distance anymore.
Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex
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