As I recall, there was no grand speech at the ceremony, and unless you count the earnest, advertiser-friendly pontifications on teen-oriented network television, I have never been privy to a commencement address.

Enter YouTube. Amongst the laughing babies, late night confessions, and pop star wannabees are, of course, commencement addresses. I have found them to be a perfect remedy for uninspired moments.

What I love about a great commencement address is that it is grounded in biography: and who doesn’t love a great story with lessons well-learned?

Here’s one of my favorites. I first discovered it on YouTube, but am posting a cleaner copy from Harvard Magazine. I think of bits of this speech often…

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

It seemed to be a larger-than-life city of endless possibility, romance, and inspiration; a city that inspired endless artists and writers.  I was a little dazzled in that court yard and, perhaps with a pain au chocolate in hand, I imagined how my life would unfold.

Paris is a place that always pulls me back into those youthful imaginings.  I have gone back, many times, and each time I fall into an unexpected spill of self-evaluation. Comforted by the aforementioned pains au chocolate and the beauty and charm of a city that should be too much of an romanticized cliché to deliver, yet always does, my visits are always enlightening.

I still revel in my  starry-eyed notions of the fairy-tale version of this city. As I weave together my new collection, I am thinking of that lighted place.

Ah, Paris…”happily, I think on thee.”

Years later, I still love the drama of a weighty consideration of the creative process. The conversations don’t happen as much as they used to, and frankly, while I am fine with leaving unfortunate hair accessories and bubble gum pop behind, I do miss these talks.

This week, I am madly preparing to show my spring collection. I am busy finishing up pieces–trusting that the tangle of sterling chain, pearls, jump rings and random baubles on my work table will emerge as coherent, wearable jewelry. Every time it does, I am a little bit amazed. And so I was happy to stumble on this talk by the much celebrated, Elizabeth Gilbert. I think of it every time I take a little leap of faith and start a new piece:

“Stay Hungry; Stay Foolish”
Steve Jobs

For years, I’ve kept notebooks filled with ink sprawled musings; glue-stuck pictures; torn event tickets; and favourite quotations. These notebooks look like a blur of paper and ink and paste: their covers propped distressingly open by their thickly coated pages.

The pages have always been a place to think and plan; doodle and rant; epiphany and journey. Mostly they have been a place to capture that lost childhood activity: play. But they have remained private: stacked in the attic or under the bed, silent. And they have been sporadically crafted: Often put aside for months and then years while I have been busy getting on with the serious work of to-do lists and daily life.

I started working on these pages again relatively recently and with the pages came both a new medium: jewelry design and a new endeavor: CLAM.

So now, I am taking one of those leaps and expanding my messy pages from their comfortable packed away spots, to the messy, chaotic, very public shelves of cyberspace. Ovid wrote, more than a few years ago,  “In our play we reveal what kind of people we are.” So, here goes, as they say in reality TV-speak, the big reveals…