Screenprinting

May not be my venture back into the art world. I'm learning to accept failure. I've almost cried every time in the studio as I get anxious with an exacto knife trying to get my stencils exactly right. I will get sweaty with anxiety, cover myself with ink, and compare myself to my classmates, before it's all over. Talking with Aldwin today from Paris!, I realized that both of us will always doubt our decisions. I've been doubting being here since I first set foot on Columbia's campus- every day I go through a rise and fall of emotions about whether or not I can actually do this and not fail at it. Or whether I can survive this city in the summer- it's magical, it has every art museum imaginable, you could eat out every night and still not get to all of the restaurants, but it's also humid, grimy, and there's something about it that makes me cough and sneeze constantly.

Sufjan Stevens wasn't in Brooklyn last Saturday, or at least not where Maggie and Moses and I were walking. Nor was he at Vito's church. I think I'm looking for signs that will make this experience seem worthwhile on a daily basis, and I'm not sure I'm going to get any. I might say an intelligent thing in class but then seconds later, dissolve realizing that I haven't gotten through all of the readings for that day. But, like most artists, I'm learning to trust in the process more than anything else- to trust my professors when they say that this will all make sense in a week and I will somehow master screenprinting by "just doing it over and over again."