Many voices, many songs

After this morning's soccer game (a hardfought 0-1 loss in which the Arrows played very well), several of us in my extended family went to a Raleigh street fair, Artsplosure. We ate street food--always a favorite activity of mine--and wandered slowly through the many arts and crafts booths.

As you might expect, some of the art worked for me, and some did not. To be completely truthful, most of it was not to my taste. That said, I uniformly admired the passion and dedication of the artists who braved the heat and, probably more importantly, the vast indifference of most passersby to display and hawk their treasures.

That indifference is a foe all artists must face. For many years, I fought an internal war over writing, unable and unwilling to give it up, but also so sure that I would be embarrassingly bad at it that I could scarcely make myself do it. In the course of the over two decades of this struggle, I produced and sold about a dozen stories, a pitiful output for all the time and heartache. Finally, about two years ago I decided to write at least a little bit every day, because by this technique I would no matter what be creating something daily.

I still carry on the same internal struggle, and I remain convinced at a very deep level that I'll never write anything truly worthwhile, but now I have one novel done, another in progress, and a few new stories and story rewrites in print. I intend to keep writing no matter what.

A poster in the music room where my kids used to practice said something to the effect of "if the only bird in the forest who sang was the one with the prettiest voice, how sad the woods would be." In art as in all things, no single arbiter exists, so even saying which voice is prettiest is, I believe, impossible. Despite that fact, every artist I've ever known wrestles with some mutation of this problem.

So I have come to admire all the Artsplosure artists and craftspeople, as well as all the artists and craftspeople who toil daily at their passion no matter the reception, for keeping on singing their own songs in their own voices. The forest is large enough for us all.

And now, a quiz: At one point in the afternoon, we stopped at a purveyor of good chocolates, Peche, so some in our group could indulge in sweets and all of us could rest in air conditioning. My daughter, Sarah, particularly enjoyed her stay there. These two pictures are both from today's Artsplosure expedition; can you spot my daughter?

(Hints: She's the one with the smaller nose, and she's sufficiently beautiful that I know you're wondering if I'm really her father. I am; the sense of humor resemblance tells the tale.)