One woman shared poems that she’d written while at the colony — brand-new things. She’d written, if you could believe her, a couple dozen new poems in three weeks, and before they were even quite finished she decided to read some of them to us. She stood in a proud, contented way at the podium — actually a hijacked music stand — and told us that she was really psyched about the work. My desire for her to fail approached the level of prayer. It seemed so little to ask. I know so little about poetry that it was hard for me to know what was strong and what was weak, but I’ll admit that a couple of images have stayed with me — particularly the one about the rain running to the underside of the branches — and in any case she finished to hollering, foot-stomping applause.

Of course, you didn’t have to go to the presentations; they were optional. It was just that everyone else did go, and it was just that I had the need to see disaster strike someone, and every time it didn’t come it just increased the urgency that it come eventually. I had signed up to do a presentation myself, scheduled it for the very end of my stay, and it still seemed possible that someone would deliver a fiasco before it was my turn at the front of the room.

I painted, I’ll say, in a determined way — though almost like something larger than me was doing the determining. I lined canvases against walls and even began to lean other canvases on top of the early ones, two and three deep. I covered a drafting table with fashion magazines and oranges, oranges everywhere, and I painted them a half-dozen different ways.

Of course, you didn’t have to go to the presentations; they were optional. It was just that everyone else did go, and it was just that I had the need to see disaster strike someone, and every time it didn’t come it just increased the urgency that it come eventually.

The presentations continued — a man read a chunk of a novel that took place in Western Africa, and people peppered him with questions afterward; a woman showed us images of looming, affecting sculptures that looked carved from marble but were actually plastic and foam; another person played jazz piano in a way that led us to contemplative silence and then, inevitably, sober and earnest clapping. Was the choreographer any good? I wasn’t sure. Was the other poet too funny? I didn’t know. I knew that they were all loved.

My plan had been to show old work at my presentation; I had plenty of stuff on slides that had been shown in galleries, work that had gotten good reviews. By the end of my time there I knew, though, that it was impossible to get as much appreciation as these other people. I was not going to be the one true artist at the center of everyone. I decided to cancel my presentation, but while I stood at the calendar outside the dining hall, having trouble crossing my name off somehow, the man who shared his songs all the time saw me there and asked what I was doing. I told him, and he told me not to cross myself off. You should present, he said. Tell you what — I’ll do some songs before you, warm things up.

And so I did. First the man with the songs played two more — three with the encore — and people loved him very much. I stood up and went to the wall at the front of the room, where I had leaned five of my new canvases, facing away from everyone. There had been no time to make slides of them, of course, so to show them I just had to hold them in my hands awkwardly, try to get them into the light. One of the other artists jumped up and said she would hold them for me, and after thanking her with a real gratitude and surprise I stepped back to see my work myself. I tried to explain how the hot colors were coming in from the corners, and I built up to one of the paintings where it was all oranges all over the place — the one, in fact, that I was least sure about but which interested me the most. I looked around at everyone. It wasn’t the scene I had envisioned where everyone around me had tears on their faces after the first couple of paintings; they didn’t have tears on their faces at all. I did, though. I did, from the first painting on.

I finished talking, finished presenting. People applauded. It wasn’t more than other people had gotten, and it wasn’t less. They cheered me in the way that they had cheered everyone else. I sat heavily, a little stunned, on the nearest couch, as people started to come over to tell me nice things. I hadn’t failed. I hadn’t failed, and neither had anyone else. Everyone gathered around me. They told me, more or less, We are the same and We are the same and We are the same. I continued to weep. Those were the words I had always wanted.