What's been your most gratifying at Columbia?
My most gratifying moment at Columbia was academic. I mean, there, it's funny, I've had so many large, "what's been your (fill in the blank) moment at Columbia?" where the answer would be like, Non-Sequitur, or the answer would be some anecdote about going to Koronet's at 3 in the morning or whatever you know, like there are those questions. But I think that the most gratifying answer was something that I came to Columbia to do, which had to do with my writing. I got to a point in one of my workshops where I wrote a piece in a nonfiction class, that was incredibly personal, that, I've never really done that before. I've always had a bad habit of looking at some of my workshop pieces as assignments when that's completely losing the perspective of why I'm there to do that in the first place. But I wrote this piece about parts of my family, and my most gratifying moment was coming in the day of the workshop and hearing people respond to my piece, and hearing people say back to me the things that I was really trying to get across in the piece. And they just kind of said it back and I was like, "oh my god, I can't believe that that actually really came across." It so satisfying, it was such a satisfying moment, where I felt like, wow you know maybe I'm not finding my voice as a writer yet, like that's just always gonna change, but at least I know that I have a grasp on what I'm doing. And it was really, not only were people responding in a way that they were like, "oh yeah, you were saying this that and the other thing," and you know I really you know responded to that. But they also really liked it, which was something that, I don't know I kind of went out on a limb to kinda do this piece, and I just kind of wrote it and didn't really look back, and I sent it to the class. And to hear that kind of response was so, so gratifying. Like that's the word I would use to some up that experience. It was just amazing, and it was a really nice motivation for the workshops I'll have in the future and beyond workshops.
What would be a good surprise right now?
Um, a good surprise. I want to be more eloquent! A good surprise right now would be... Um. I'm waiting on some news about stuff regarding summer in New York and I know some of the logistics, those have been worked out, but I'm looking forward to being there this summer, and I'd love to hear something like, "surprise, you are actually also going to be paid!" That would be really nice. Or I don't know, a surprise about, I don't know, I always think it's really awesome when you're looking forward to something, and then something to do with that happens that makes it even more exciting. Like, oh, you're going to be in this place over the summer? Wow, there's also this really amazing concert that's going to happen, or something like that. Yeah I was in New York last summer, it was kind of on my bucket list of things to do and just happened to be that one of my favorite people - Lianne La Havas - she was playing over the summer for free, and I wept. I physically wept through the entire show. It was just a transcendent experience. She's flawless, she's so flawless. I mean, so far over the past few weeks there have been some nice surprises that have come up in terms of just where things are going to land in the next few weeks or next few months and it's been really amazing to kind of see how things have been playing out, so just kind of hoping that the trend continues.
Technically Batman. But if I had to choose maybe a person, I don't know I always go to two, I always default to two, who were my high school teachers. And they're not heroes in the traditional sense of doing something amazing and, you know, overcoming some immense obstacle. But there were these two teachers in my high school that were married, and they both taught different english classes, and if you were on a certain track you would have one of them, and then by senior year you would also have the other one. And they, just their ability to change how I have thought about myself and the world and literature and just thinking in general is amazing to me. That in itself is a massive feat, and I always think about them. You know it's that sort of thing where it's like, oh people name their child's middle name after their heroes, and I always want to name my kid after their last name, just because I had both of them, and for them both to be so incredible was unreal. So I, I kind of, I mean obviously my family, I think of all of them as heroes in different ways, but, um, personally I just, I think there's something to be said for the fact that they just always pop up whenever I think about this question.
What gets you out of bed in the morning?
Well I mean that reason, the explanation for that has changed since I've been here. There's a, there was a period of time for the first month where getting out of bed in the morning wasn't necessarily a really large struggle, but I felt so out of my comfort zone that the motivation to get up and get doing things on my own was lacking, in a way. But as the weeks have gone by I've really realized how wrong of a perspective that is, and so what gets me out of bed in the morning is the fact that I have so much at my disposal, right now in Paris, to explore and to see and to do, that I feel if I don't get out of bed in the morning for that reason alone then I'm not taking full advantage of what's going on here. Cause there's so much at any given point, and the more that I go out around here, the more that I see it and the more things I write down to revisit later and it's, I mean it's a whole bright brand new environment of things to get lost in.
(Madison's website can be found here, along with a collection of her writing)
