You may not believe this, but I...SHOCK!!

[Parsifal]

One playwright wrote on a forum: "I'd rather submit my play 'blind' because I feel that, since I don't have an MFA from a prestigious school, the people screening at most institutions will eliminate the play without reading the play. And I understand it, they probably get so many submittals (one program said 'we got 950 plays!' - who could read that many plays?) So MFAs seem to be a short-hand marker for pre-determining quality."

If it is anything like science, it is not what institution you have the degree from, but who your adviser was. There is a strong bias for a student or protege of your pal.

[Parsifal]

To return to the original topic, you may not believe this, but I...once shared a stage with Suzanne Vega. (Well, we didn't play at the same time.)

Not such a shock, I guess.

[kishnevi]

...once wrote a four sonnet libretto based on "The 4 Elemets" for soprano and piano, but the words were considered too sexually suggestive - don't know if it was ever picked up by the composer who asked me to do it.  I was surprised to say the least, as it was never my intention to have it linked to carnal activities...I still have copies of Earth, Air and Water, but have lost the Fire, story of my life...!

...gave up the violin when I was 8 in favour of Batman on TV.  I wouldn't mind so much, but it was the Adam West Batman!  ...

...keep thinking it is 1998...

Anything from anyone else?  Come on, own up!

I have a tendency to keep wishing it was 1998.

And Adam West was the best Batman....

[Karl Henning]

And Adam West was the best Batman....

I can see this!

[Brian]

For my part, I also studied composition, and it turned out to be the only thing I'm actually good at, but I now seriously wish I'd done something else. Not because of the whole exposing my personality thing—I don't have enough of a personality for that—but because my compositions never live up to my own standards and I appear to have no original ideas whatsoever. If only I had been forced to practice the piano as a child; I could have been equally good at that, except original ideas aren't required and indeed aren't desirable (you play what's written on the score, and nothing besides), so arguably more successful. :| Instead I decided practice was boring and I'd rather compose, so I poured my hard work into something I'm mediocre at.

I have a lot of friends our age who are starting to feel this way - is this the 'quarter-life crisis'? A friend who's an actress is panicking that she's simply not creative enough to do anything other than follow a director's orders (which, fortunately, she's good at - but that just heightens her anxiety about the creativity thing). An engineer friend has insecurities that she's a bad engineer. A consultant borderline broke down to me saying he has no idea why he's in that field. The only people I know who seem 100% confident in their chosen path are attorneys, but that's because you need an ego of steel to be an attorney

Interestingly, the "don't have enough of a personality" thing seems to be a common thread among (sane) creative people. I think the goal we have is to be outshined by our creations - to make something that's way the hell more interesting than we are. (I'm coming at this from the point of view of a writer, where we're using our rhetorical skills to make us sound smarter/cooler/more interesting than we are in real life, e.g., this post.) Maybe our expectations are distorted by all the mentally ill composers running around through the halls of history? Here's Peter Sellers: "If you ask me to play myself, I will not know what to do. I do not know who or what I am." "To see me as a person on screen would be one of the dullest experiences you could ever wish to experience." Cary Grant: "I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person. Or he became me." Steve Carell: "I'm a total bore."

...anyway...

[jochanaan]

Ouch!   0:)

Me—and no reflection on our (poco) Sfz—I was going to say that the last I heard "off-off-off-off-off Broadway," it was a fancy way of saying Wilkes-Barre.

I was thinking, rural Nebraska. (I grew up there; even the folks who still live there call it "the middle of Nowhere." )

[jochanaan]

Actually, there is a case to be made that an MFA is a guarantee of crap!   

Many moons ago, my professor of Byzantine History stated that a culture is in trouble, if its scholars are also the artists.  Professors, in general, should not be your writers, poets, painters, or composers, although there have been exceptions.

Bartok and Vaughan Williams come to mind.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I have a lot of friends our age who are starting to feel this way - is this the 'quarter-life crisis'? A friend who's an actress is panicking that she's simply not creative enough to do anything other than follow a director's orders (which, fortunately, she's good at - but that just heightens her anxiety about the creativity thing). An engineer friend has insecurities that she's a bad engineer. A consultant borderline broke down to me saying he has no idea why he's in that field. The only people I know who seem 100% confident in their chosen path are attorneys, but that's because you need an ego of steel to be an attorney

Interestingly, the "don't have enough of a personality" thing seems to be a common thread among (sane) creative people. I think the goal we have is to be outshined by our creations - to make something that's way the hell more interesting than we are. (I'm coming at this from the point of view of a writer, where we're using our rhetorical skills to make us sound smarter/cooler/more interesting than we are in real life, e.g., this post.) Maybe our expectations are distorted by all the mentally ill composers running around through the halls of history? Here's Peter Sellers: "If you ask me to play myself, I will not know what to do. I do not know who or what I am." "To see me as a person on screen would be one of the dullest experiences you could ever wish to experience." Cary Grant: "I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person. Or he became me." Steve Carell: "I'm a total bore."

...anyway...

There are two separate issues here, both interesting. As for the "quarter-life crisis" thing, a lot depends on personality of course, but I suspect these ups and downs about one's creative potential occur all through life. The other night I saw a "teen chef" eliminated from Chopped on the Food Network who started bawling that he never wanted to cook again. In the early 1950s the elderly Stravinsky broke down after completing The Rake's Progress, fearing he had nothing left to compose (and then he gave us Agon and the Requiem Canticles). Personally, I've had many, many days when I've wanted to give up completely (it doesn't help when you get all these phony "rejection letters of encouragement," or when an actor you thought of as a friend stands you up for a meeting). And then I've had days where I've completed a whole 10-minute play in a single day and some people have told me they loved it (except of course those goddamned theaters with their contemptuous silence or worse, phony "rejection letters of encouragement").

As for your second point, one can only agree. Those of us who like to think we're creative, and even those who truly are, all want to think we're making imaginary worlds beyond our boring existences. Think of JK Rowling parking herself in a café in Scotland and scribbling furiously; who knew she was creating Harry Potter and all his friends? I suppose I have as much right to speak of my own creative work as Karl, Luke, or COAG, and so I'll mention my little play in which a would-be artist who makes his living driving a hearse threatens to kill himself (with an Exacto knife) unless a gallery shows his work, because he wants to sell just one painting in order to "justify my fucking existence." And in my full-length play about classical music, I introduce a skinny misfit 17-year-old would-be composer who dyes his hair a different color each day and at one point speaks of how "writing music is the only thing I ever cared about, and if they take that away from me, I'm just this dumb kid with orange hair and an earring who looks like a salamander and can't get a girl to save his pathetic life."

[(poco) Sforzando]

I was thinking, rural Nebraska. (I grew up there; even the folks who still live there call it "the middle of Nowhere." )

Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off Broadway are legal and contractual terms applying in New York City not to geographical areas but to house capacity. (The Vivian Beaumont at Lincoln Center is a Broadway theater even though it is outside the traditionally understood theater district, while the Laura Pels within the district is O-B.) These classifications have implications for actors' Equity salaries, trade union agreements, advertising, and such matters.

[jochanaan]

Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off Broadway are legal and contractual terms applying in New York City not to geographical areas but to house capacity. (The Vivian Beaumont at Lincoln Center is a Broadway theater even though it is outside the traditionally understood theater district, while the Laura Pels within the district is O-B.) These classifications have implications for actors' Equity salaries, trade union agreements, advertising, and such matters.

I learn something every day. And I meant no disrespect.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I learn something every day. And I meant no disrespect.

I know.