Starting an arts career is like having a new lover – especially if you’ve hopped from one field to another, or if you’re me, from one insular community to another. And if there’s no interaction between the two worlds, the contrast becomes more marked, and thus more scary and exciting and irresistible all in one.
Last century – before textmessaging, when email was a baby – I was a fashion journalist, forever hungry to see my words in print, chasing magazine editors for my next commission (and meal). Fashion consumed me, invaded every part of my life, to the point where the only thing that mattered to me was being right there, right now, rubbing shoulders with the great and good of fashion if only to get something to write about for the papers. What did I care if I was deaf? I went to loud parties as so to lipread better; I slept right next to the fax so print-outs could tickle my cheek as they spewed out; I devoured the papers so as to be more knowledgeable than my hearing peers.
