The Reward

News this afternoon that my drama guys had got the result we all wanted, and they had thoroughly deserved, made it a particularly good day. It's not possible to be complacent about this sort of thing; I've experienced too many not entirely coherent decisions in relation to work I've been involved in, and the work of others, to ever assume a foregone conclusion is a foregone conclusion. The vagaries of taste can be quite astonishing even at the highest levels, and we don't pretend to be there. On the lower rungs it's sometimes a case of anything can happen.

This is the fundamental reason I don't have much time for the whole notion of grading works of art or entering them in anything resembling a competition. The reward of a work is simple and obvious - it's the experience of the work itself, either in the making or receiving. All else is secondary, even for those poor souls who need to make a living from their creations. This is not to say that somehow everything that is produced is somehow wonderful; but the proper place for criticism is proper criticism - the real thing that emerges from real audiences meeting real works.

I've had a good day, helped along even further by nasi lemak and the presentation of a silly birthday cake in the evening, but I have a nagging suspicion that quite a few young people on this island who didn't quite get what they wanted are feeling a bit let down today. And that's sad - not that I think we're simply entitled to whatever we want by virtue of wanting it badly. But I suspect their work was full of a sense of life and joy, and a little of that will have quite unnecessarily drained away. I hope enough of the real rewards they will have experienced survive to fill their cups.