“What are you working on?” asked Anis Shivani, a Texas poet, novelist, pundit and provocateur. “A story called ‘The loneliness of the arts writer’,” I replied. “All artists are lonely,” he shot back. “Maybe so, but arts writers are the loneliest,” I said.
When a writer pitched a story about an actor leaving Texas I immediately said, “No thanks, I need to focus on those staying.” Although, now I can't help wondering what would have been in that exit interview.
I spend a lot of time outside of Texas, for work, family, but mostly to keep up with my home artform: Dance. Nothing makes me happier than running into Texas dance artists doing work outside of Texas. So when a friend came up to me during my time at Jacob’s Pillow asking me if I knew that a Houston dancer was performing with the renowned choreographer Jonah Bokaer, my response was a proud, “Why, yes I do!”
Houston Ballet is throwing a little holiday get-together, at least that's what it looks like from my seat at the front of the rehearsal room as the company enacts the famous party scene from the Nutcracker.
During an email exchange with Jessica Lang about her collaboration with architect Steven Holl for Tesseracts of Time, I realized that I could hear the sounds of construction of Holl’s new Glassell School, part of the new MFAH campus, from my desk as I was typing.