Recent struggles with disciplinary norms prompted the authors to reconsider how they want their own careers and values to converge. Together, they identified their anxieties and blessings as well as elaborated their plans concretely. As accountability partners, they listen, explore, dream, assess, synergize, and help each other act. Here they share experiences that led to exploring possibilities to extend or reimagine the usefulness/visions/meanings of their fields. These are their evolving stories.

 

 

Parting Thoughts

We are part of a large, multilayered infrastructure of artists, activists, organizers, and thinkers. Both of us have talents to lend; the variety of our gifts is our strength as we move forward. As art historian and music educator, our sense is that a new beginning is on the horizon as we engage with real people who make real change. Through ongoing reflection about our rogue career paths and a recommitment to our values, we survey our work from the margins and see more clearly the landscape ahead. Our journeys are better than the alternative of thinking that the traditional model is the only path.