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Hi, my name is Katie and I make things. I make a whole host of things–things like music, paintings, mistakes, children–not that the children are mistakes, I see how the syntax would imply that but no, just mistakes independent of the children, and in fact often in regards to the children because parenting is hard, but certainly not the children themselves. I make cookies, decorative choices, crafts of all sorts, phone calls to my mom and senators, etc. I can’t seem to silo one sort of creation over another; it all seems to feed the same deeply impractical beast, a strange and furry animal that is as nervous as she is driven.

I suppose the easier way to say it is I’m an artist, but that feels both pretentious and precious–who am I to claim a title like that? But is there a better way to describe what makes my little heart thrum? Probably not. I’ve always held it close like a nightlight, dim and small probably shaped like a seashell. 

My favorite book in high school was The Awakening by Kate Chopin–frankly still probably one of my favorite books, my evolutionary arc is not so great as to distance myself from a 17 year-old desperate to feel Important and Experienced–and in The Awakening, a wizened old woman tells a younger woman, disenchanted with her Wife Life and chasing that of a painter, that “the artist must possess the courageous soul.” And when pressed as to what it might mean, the older woman scolds her, “Courageous, ma foi! The brave soul. The soul that dares and defies.” I painted this on my bedroom door as a teenager, purple just like everything else in that room, a reminder that I had to be brave in order to keep doing what I believe I am here to do. I’m not sure what I’m daring or who I’m defying when I painstakingly hot-glue painted acorn caps together, but here we are. 

At the center of my practice is my music. It holds the most gravity, it’s the core around which everything coalesces. The songs tell the truth that I often have a hard time saying otherwise and they feel more…I don’t know, real. They are, paradoxically, more solid–little ideas given bodies and spirits, each one becoming a little world unto itself should it pass the test of my patience and courage. There’s that word again, “courage.” I suppose it does take courage to make something out of nothing or to trust a creative thought is worth processing out loud, in color, with company. 

I may quit everything tomorrow, that’s the reality. I’m thin-skinned and fragile and easily discouraged. I’m difficult and withholding in most ways except when I make things. So maybe that’s why I do it. I make things for connection, to remind myself and others that we’re really here, together. I’ll keep going.