Yes. Today has been really stressful. We had a workout this morning. It went okay. And then just that five and a half hour wait or something. I was just shaking, could barely nap. I've just never felt like this going into a competition before. And I tried to go out here and have fun. And warm up in the back went a little bit better. But then once I came out here, I was like, "No, mental is not there. So I just need to let the girls do it and focus on myself."
When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
What happens when we die?
Death & what remains
Question
Which book are you ashamed not to have read?
Taste & recommendation
Question
What would you like to be remembered for?
Death & what remains
Question
Who most deserves an apology from you, and why?
Failure & regret
Question
How would you describe yourself in three words?
Identity & self
And when things get tough, this is what you should do. Make good art. I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn’t matter. Do what only you do best. Make good art.
134th Commencement, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, University of the Arts (uarts.edu), via the Internet Archive, 17 May 2012 source ↗
Others on this question
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Simone Biles
United States artistic gymnast
Recorded
Post-competition press conference, Ariake Gymnastics Centre, Tokyo Olympics, Rev, 27 July 2021
source ↗
Yo-Yo Ma
Cellist
While I’m on stage, you are all my guests, because that’s sort of the unsaid agreement. While you’re my guest, if something bad happens on stage, I often think of Julia Child, “Oh, the chicken’s fallen on the floor! Yes. Oh, well pick it up and put it right back.” And you know what? Everybody’s with you. […] So whatever you practice for on the engineering side that fails is all right, because we have a greater purpose. The greater purpose is that we’re communing together and we want this moment to be really special for all of us. Because otherwise, why bother to have come at all? It’s not about proving anything. It’s about sharing something.
Recorded
Krista Tippett, On Being, published July 2018, On Being (The On Being Project), 1 July 2018
source ↗
Margaret Atwood
Novelist, poet and critic
Don’t sit down in the middle of the woods. If you’re lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.
Brian Eno
Composer, record producer and visual artist
My favorite method is stopping everything for a moment. It’s amazing how difficult I find it these days to simply sit quietly.
Recorded
Max Dax, Eno's London studio, 2011, Telekom Electronic Beats, 1 January 2011
source ↗
More from Neil Gaiman
View profile →The idiocy of going to Skye from New Zealand in April 2020. All of a sudden, I’m turning on the news and hearing myself as an item. I have never been more mortified.
I like the idea of being atoms that other people can breathe in, and fabulous worm food.
I’ve never read Proust.
As someone who left the world slightly more interesting than he found it.
My soon-to-be ex-wife, Amanda. I wish I’d been able to do whatever would have been necessary all the way back to keep us as a unit. Probably the worst thing I did was not tell her how miserable I was, certain that I could turn this around somehow.
Imaginative, dull, amiable.
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