flops are good.

The English department recently took a trip to Rollins College in Orlando to see the poet, painter, playwrite, writer Derek Walcott. He read several chapters from the book he published in 1990 Omeros, one of my favorite quotes from the section he read being: "Why did I never miss you until you returned."

But I think the most influential tidbit that I left the reading with was that we (as artists, as people,) have to take risks; we have be put ourselves out there and if we fail then we can say to ourselves "hey, so what you failed, you tried." One of the works that he was the most proud of was a flop, he made it to the "big time" with a paul simon score, but the show didn't do well; it was a "flop," but he could be proud of himself, because he gave it a try. In his opinion, "there are not only a sequence to flops, be a reason," he concluded with this: "the artist is the ulitmate judge of a work."

What I'm saying is: we should do everything with all our might, because in the end, we have to live with the things we've accomplished, or didn't try for.