This year has been a year of exploration; chiefly, that through my development as a writer, I have learned more about myself.  I view this better understanding of who I am to be significant not only because I am graduating from college, and entering the adult world, but also because I of my aspiration to be a working artist.  In other words, because I understand myself more deeply, I have a stronger platform to create art.

 

How do I know that it is specifically because of my work as a writer that has allowed me to be in better touch with myself? Couldn’t it just be time and experience that has granted me this clarity?  I argue that time and experience doesn’t necessarily translate to a more transparent view of oneself.  While the experiences I’ve had taught me a lot, it was writing that allowed me to sort through my experiences to asses their value in my life.

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In my first writing class at the University of Michigan, I did

not really delve into subjects that I would later learn were

most important to me.  In an essay for English 125, I wrote,

“But arguably a pair is most often thought of in romance

(couples).”  This essay functioned as a word history analysis

of “miscegenation,” but it really dodged around personal

questions of intimacy and the struggles that often

accompanied it. Intimacy would become a central theme in

the explorative writing I would write farther along in my

studies.

    

That being said, it comes as no surprise to me that this

English 125 essay lacked a clear argument. Drifting

through topics such as Kim Kardashian and Kanye West (and even Mitt Romney and his black grandson?), their was no actual statement on mixed race couples being made.  So why write?  What was I trying to say?

 

Ultimately, I finished the essay by discussing same-sex marriage. In an essay about mixed race couples, this did not serve either case well.  Yet, I think that my decision to change subjects at the end hints to what I really wanted to discuss, but was clearly hesitant to do so blatantly.  The link that both mixed-race couples and same-sex couples face prejudice is totally valid, however this does not really effectively contextualize miscegenation in American history. I could have chosen to write this word history essay on a word that relates to same-sex couples, or homosexuality, but instead I chose a minority group I am not in and then hinted at the subject.  This leads me to wonder: Why not write this essay on a word that dealt with the issue I had more personal investment in? Maybe I picked a different minority group (mixed race) as a way of masking my association with my own minority group? 

 

My decision not to write about my own minority group reveals an unwillingness to put the “self” in the core of the writing.  This is the principle aspect of my evolution as a writer and as a person. This essay makes my pre-evolution state clear: I remained insecure and unwilling to get too attached to anything I wrote or said about my own life.

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When I seriously approached writing again (in my English 425 class), I was instructed to write about “the human condition,”—a super open-ended way of asking someone to do some soul searching.  This directly challenged me to figure out what parts of my “human condition” were worth writing about (or exploring).  To walk right into a cliché… I thought about my life, but this simple moment of stoping to think started the transition from dodging uncomfortable truths to facing them head on.

 

Now I think there is a distinction to be made here. Writing about one’s life is not necessarily a way for someone to learn about themselves.  I would argue it is an opportunity to learn, however really learning about oneself requires more investment and risk from the writer.  At first I took this prompt as another task (just crank out another essay), but when I sat down to write, I couldn’t help but explore serious intimacy of my own person (I know, this sounds hella creepy and masturbatory…)

 

I can define this “serious intimacy” which I explored through these three questions: What makes me most “human” or vulnerable? What am I really interested in?  What can I do with this information?

 

The product of this thinking is best showcased in a small collection of essays I submitted to the Hopwood Contest this year. In which, I wrote about my experience dating, sex life, and a past relationship.   No one explicitly asked me to talk about my unhealthy use of dating apps, my season of promiscuous sexual behavior, or my unsatisfying attempt at love, but that is the point.  No one in life really asks you to create matter about what makes you “you,” they just expect you to have your shit together and move along in the world.

 

Through writing the essays of my submission, I was

challenged to really think about my shit. I dove into

themes and topics I’d never been comfortable with,

instead of sweeping them under the rug and to keep

moving on. 

 

This yielded observations and analysis that I might

not have otherwise admitted to myself, some things

that I wasn’t necessarily comfortable with or proud

of. In one essay, I arrived at a new frame of mind

regarding how I approached dating, “Maybe I’ve been

thinking about dating from the wrong lens.  Maybe

dating wasn’t about what the other person could give

me, as much as it was what I was willing to give them.

Maybe I wasn’t as ready for a relationship as I originally thought.” This was a beneficial observation for me to make about my past, but eventually the analysis didn’t look so pretty.  

 

In another essay, I looked at some personal “ugliness” when I wrote about a period of time when I engaged in risky promiscuous sexual behavior,“…when I, as a virgin, arrived at college, I saw it as an opportunity for me to grow.  When this didn’t happen through the natural fruition of a boyfriend, my desire to experience all that I could only intensified. I longed for someone to date and to learn about sex with.  When this didn’t happen, I used Grindr to make up for the experience that I thought I had missed out on.” Both instances are conclusions I may not have come to if not for the writing. And specifically “writing” about these events made them more concrete to me for a distinct reason.

 

Writing distinctly offered me the opportunity to take authorship of what I’ve done. I gained a sense of responsibility, because through writing, re-writing, and so on, I gained a confidence in the experiences I penned. I wrote about them on my terms, and, even when things got ugly, I was in charge of that ugliness. When I owned what I wrote and shared it with others (strangers) it forced me to really cozy up to the uncomfortable pride that came with that.  

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I think the “authorship” aspect of my evolution as a writer and person is crucial to my development as an artist.  This is best showcased through my capstone project.  

    

In the project I planned an entire performance about “queer identity.”  I did this through the medium of a classical voice recital, and curated a program and produced and co-directed a short film showcasing a “queer narrative” that goes through four major themes of the “identifying” process: discovery, celebration, conflict, and acceptance. 

 

I mention this project because, I think, if not for all the self-explorative writing I did prior to the conception of the project, I wouldn't have the confidence to delve into the subject, nor the rhetorical technique to intellectually support the idealism of the project.  More simply: becoming a better writer gave me the bravery to wander through my imagination (exploration of the self), and then granted me the capacity to communicate my ideas with others.  

 

I think this is made clearer if I explain the conception of the project.  Phase one: I write a series of essays about my experience with sex and dating, thus solidifying my sense of worth as a sexual minority. Phase two: I start to ask questions about my experience in this sexual minority, “How has my existence within this minority shaped my identity?” Phase three: I research the topic to find some answers.  Phase four: I think of ways to communicate what I found.  Phase five: I remediate these findings into a genre that I know well, music and performance.

 

In hindsight, I think phase two was particularly significant in my evolution as a writer.  My growth to develop more interesting arguments and inquiries was really tested by asking more intellectual questions.  After all, trying to figure out what “queer identity” means is so sensitive for many and (seemingly) irrelevant to so many more.  

 

I thought really hard about the ways I could contextualize this inquiry in a way that didn't trivialize the subject while also making it poignant.  To me, this balance is at the heart of my artistry.  It takes artistic intuition to translate this process into visual and audial mediums, and this is when I realized that all the legwork my writing

development had done for me.  In simpler terms, it gave my art (the capstone project) the legs for it to stand on.

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Apart from capstone, writing has also given clarity to the directions I want to take musically and artistically in the future.  Through my music writing, I have formed the knowledge to discuss music intelligibly. In an article I wrote for the University Musical Society, I discussed their featured artist Cecile McLoran Salvant, ”Salvant explains that her goal is to sound as natural and unaffected as possible. This combination of training and creative ingenuity has resulted in an emerging virtuoso who proves to be just as capable as the legends that preceded her.”

 

In addition, I also learned how to speak to my interests as far as my own artistic vision and career.  In a cover letter for an internship for the upcoming summer, I speak to this clarity, “Now that I call myself a trained singer, my approach to the genres I’ve grown up with has been formed with an appreciation for artists who take very singable melodies and contextualize them in musical fabrics that are exciting, innovative, unexpected, and fun.” 

 

Ultimately my evolution as a writer has led to me realizations about who I am as an artist…but more importantly who I am as a human being.  I’ve evolved to learn what I have to say about life through music-making and performance based art.  

 

And despite all this evolution, I feel like the fun has just begun.  Writing doesn’t have to stop with my educational journey, nor the learning.  Holding on to the rhetorical techniques I’ve learned through writing will help me learn and grow for the rest of my life.  I think that realizing this is my true evolution.