Caroline RothsteinVerified account

#amwriting & #artist THREAD: A couple years ago, after I saw @LaLaLand, I had this craving to go home and listen to jazz. It was snowing outside in Manhattan (I lived in Harlem at the time), and I remember rushing home from being with my friends to put on John Coltrane and weep.

I wrote a dear friend a thank you note for having taken me to see Penny Arcade’s latest one-woman play at @stannswarehouse earlier that weekend or week, whilst listening to jazz, and crying, and realizing this: My greatest love affair in this life will be with my art.

I have been making art my entire life. Yesterday, I got a call from the #PennFund at @Penn, where I went to undergrad. The student volunteer calling and asking for me to make an annual donation asked me about what I did professionally and when I knew that’s what I wanted to do.

I told the student I’ve known my entire life. I’ve been making art since I was a kid. Writing stories. Crafting books. Making poems. Choreographing dances. Penning lyrics. Making up songs. There was never anything else I wanted or was going to do.

Now how this has all unfolded has been wildly different than I could have ever imagined or envisioned or thought. But the essence of it all, knowing I needed to spend my entire life writing and performing and making art: I’ve known this all along. And when I don’t, my life hurts.

So that epiphany, that my greatest love affair—no matter how many actual human partners or lovers I ever love—will be with my art, rings especially true today.

For weeks, I’ve been having what I am calling an “existential moment” around a series of projects that are all part of a particular writing modality. All things related to these projects and this modality have eaten me alive, many, many times.