A Word for Living Creatures

Fiction is different than life, because in life there is no order or meaning, while a story must have both. Art is really about giving meaning to that chaos we call reality. Although I have not myself experienced a terror attack, a few years ago it was happening a lot around me, and it did affect my everyday life and feelings. But sudden, brutal deaths are actually around all of us, anywhere, anytime—not just in Israel.

Young artists today walk into the art world on their own and do what they want to do. It’s the making of the career that’s hard. They can’t find the shiny path that seems to be what successful artists have. The conflict between what happens in the studio and what happens on the outside is still there—the public wanting things to go a certain way and the artist wanting things to go another way in terms of a career. Figuring out what a career is, how to work, when to work and what to work on—that’s the dilemma you talk about with younger artists.