why do i do what i do?

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I am a deeply principled and passionate person. When I believe in the value of something, when I recognize a necessity for something to exist, I am ready to fight tooth and nail in order to bring it into existence. My personal love for the arts blossomed when I was a child, a deeply strange and precocious child in fact, who found the world of story and fantasy vastly more relevant to me than anything reality had to offer. Reality at that time mostly involved the Herculean effort of trying to sit still and be quiet during evangelical church services.

Engaging with art, theatre, music, and storytelling was my personal refuge from the dull and confounding lessons about how to be 'normal' that I was receiving from everywhere else around me. I didn't realize it at the time, but what I was doing was using art to teach myself how to question the status quo; how to advocate for own personhood; how to employ critical thinking to better examine the world around me. I was learning how to fall in love with the world. 

I grew into a motivated, contemplative, and self-possessed adult. In my adulthood, my personal belief in the social necessity of the arts has only grown stronger. I believe that every attempt to make or love art by any person constitutes a public good. I believe that every culture needs the arts as a method by which to critically examine itself. I believe that participating in or appreciating any artistic practice, no matter how small, is a necessity of the soul; the soul of an individual and the soul of a nation.

Without the arts, we are the blind leading the blind. And in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. In other words, without the arts as a tool for public discourse, not only are we quieting the parts of ourselves that make us human, but we're increasing our susceptibility to oppressive modes of thought.