I Can Do Anything

February 13, 2009

            I really enjoyed watching this video on Theo Dorgan. He made a lot of great points that seems to be obvious, but is still extremely needed. I really liked that he started out the interview by saying that he would describe what he is currently doing as “de-confusing” himself. I find myself often trying to figure out where in the media world I would be able to fit myself into. Therefore, when he said this,  I was able to immediately connect with him for the rest of the interview. He mentioned that he also gets caught up in other things around him and isn’t able to write a lot continuously. I think that this shows great compassion for others and those around him. The fact that he is willing to come out of retirement and continue helping people in different art programs is very amiable.

            One thing that stood out to me was that he is not necessarily trying to make things better for the arts, but he is trying to make things better for the community where he lives. This also shows a lot about his character. Although he was a successful administrator and organizer, did well with writing poetry in Ireland, and was deemed to be a success in Ireland, he said that he would be able to work in business. One reason he thought he would be able to work in business is because he does not thing that he could make a living off of poetry, although possibly through writings. He wrote his first poem for a girl when he was on his way to picking her up from a dance when he was 18 or 19.   He said that the only reason he still writes poems is because they keep coming back to him.

I thought it was also interesting that he quoted Samuel Beckett who said “Fail, fail again, fail better.” He really took a lot from this quote. As a screenwriter, one needs to be prepared to fail and then be able to come back and try again and then fail another time, but for different reasons, and still keep going. I think that this quote is good for anyone in the entertainment industry because people get rejected a lot more than they get brought in.

He also was very concerned with politics and he wanted to make a difference using these skills in politics. When he was at University, he wrote a poem involving politics, and he was thrown out of the classroom and everyone was shocked that he would mix poetry and politics. Apparently, at this time, that was unheard of. The fact that he was able to stand out against the crowd and publicly state how he feels is something that all Catholics should be constantly trying to do. Standing up in the world and being the light and the example for all those around us might be the only way some people are able to feel Christ’s love for them..

One thing that Dorgan said that I can relate directly to is when someone asks “What needs to be done?” and then he responds “Let’s do it.” I definitely enjoy being told a problem and then either solving it myself or helping someone else solve the problem. I really liked that he mentions how he isn’t on art boards for just handing out money, but he is there in order to give confidence to those who he thinks will be successful in one of the industries that art encompasses.

I really liked that he ended by explaining that art is intrinsic to human beings and how language is, in and of itself, an art form. As simple as this statement is, I think that it definitely can be over looked sometimes. We use the language we speak to write beautiful stories. These stories remind us of how beautiful language is and how much we take it for granted sometimes. It is nice to be reminded of how wonderfully God made us that art is intrinsically in all of us.