I posed the question on Connection Well about Katy, grades, and art.
Some of us have been posting a poem a day on Connection Well. Someone asked how each of us would grade our poems. How would we have written differently if we thought we would get a grade at the end of the month?
At first I felt a tightening, and then, I realized I would have worked harder, would have taken it more seriously. Grades are a reward, a discipline, a form, that may well motivate "better" work, and that is not to judge, and yet, we do judge. We do know when we respond to a work of art.
It is a great deal to digest this morning. I have been so wrapped up in it, I haven't had my morning coffee. I was raised with grades and seemed to respond well to them, and be motivated by them. Maybe I should put a carrot of personal grades out for myself. Maybe I'll use flowers, purple ones today.
In and out of chaos and form, judgment and not, discipline and freedom, freedom as discipline, discipline as freedom, we go.
The point, I believe, is to savor, the ride.
May this be so!