HowlRound: The first poem I ever read publicly was in the juvenile detention center in Austin, Texas. Over fifteen years later this has continued to have a lasting impact on my work: prisons, both literal and metaphorical, the boxes people try to put us in, and state violence are tropes that recur in my writing. Writing, in part, is my attempt to liberate myself from confinement, conventional rules, norms, and structures, an attempt to imagine freedom.
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I had the good fortune of seeing the production of blu pictured at UIL Texas State Theatre Competition in Austin this past summer, and having read this article I finally have a deeper connection to the work than I did when I first saw it. Upon my first viewing of the play, I recall being confused and bewildered at the nature of the text, saddened by the storyline, and unsure of when each scene or moment began and ended. Having read Grise's commentary on her own writing I finally understand the shifting nature of the plot and the sense of looping direction in the language which then puzzled me. More so, I think her commentary about the nature of time and the false sense of direct transition which so many writers create in their plots is highly relatable to the process of design. Recently in Basic Design, we've been having a lot of discussions about how we as designers seek inspiration, and how it can be harmful to our processes to assume that inspiration always comes to us from the same place or in the same way. The way Grise approaches her stories, as someone who has "never arrived anywhere in a straight line" and therefore doesn't "know how to tell a story that way," speaks to the way in which a designer must arrive at inspiration through a new process or route for each unique project. More so, that route is not always so clearly established from the beginning, and often consists of overlapping, backtracking, reworking, and countless questions, must like Grise's writing style. I think it can be easy as a designer to forget how other creative processes relate to our own. However, in realizing this, we can begin to take on the process of inspiration in a new and comprehensive way, thus helping ourselves to flesh out our ideas and blend our personal values with our works as artist like Grise do.
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