It’s often nerve-wracking to walk on stage to perform in front of an audience – even more so for writers, as we usually do it alone.

It was the opening night of the Midwest Artist Academy, where high school-aged writers, dancers, musicians, actors, and visual artists leave their families for a week to converge on the UW-Eau Claire campus. They spend their nights in the dorms and their days working within their disciplines and – this is the vital part – collaborating with artists from the other disciplines for an end-of-the-week performance.

But for opening night, the students had it easy. They sat relaxed in the seats of the Haas Fine Arts building’s Riverside Theater, with the pressure and the spotlight on the teachers to showcase their talents. Not only are expectations high with the “instructor” label, but it’s tough to follow the specialists from the other disciplines.

The dancers have the moves. The singers can belt out a song. The musicians can fill a theater with one instrument. Visual artists have tangible products to pass around. The actors can perfectly perform a memorized monologue. It’s a vibrant bunch. As the creative writing teacher, my art form is much more subtle by comparison – which could mean “boring” to a high school audience.

As I approached the mic, I reminded myself, It’s not a competition. Each art form offers a different lane to reach the same destination: better human connection and understanding.

I offered some words before reading my story, trying to connect the disciplines. I shared how writers attempt to utilize the rhythm of music, the imagery of the visual arts, and the drama of theater … all through storytelling to put a movie in the reader’s mind.

The students and staff responded kindly to my story and all the performances. They were equally supportive of each other throughout the week. These kids’ passions may be outside the norm in a public-school setting, but at this camp, these passions are the norm. This was evident during my writing classes – how writers conferenced with each other with encouraging enthusiasm. And it was audible in the thunderous applause that greeted everyone brave enough to perform at the campfire talent show.

The unspoken message was clear: walking into the spotlight is scary, but the audience was made up of fellow performers who would be there for you – every time.

• • •

A little more than halfway through the week, as I was really finding my groove with the Midwest Artist Academy, I experienced the wrong kind of showstopper. After teaching my morning class, I drove home to change shoes for the long day of walking ahead. A sharp pain hit my back, then wrenched my abdomen, and I dropped to my bathroom floor. My wife drove me to the ER. The hospital staff ran assessments and insisted that I spend the night. I went from being immersed in the arts to being hooked up to an IV and immersed in the sciences. During my week-long stay, they took me through a series of tests to diagnose the source of that painful episode.

The medical staff is not there to entertain; they are there to diagnose and prescribe. To save lives. To ease pain. To operate and repair and remove and replace and rehabilitate. The building is filled with specialists working together for a common goal, and their passion – their canvas – is the human body.

We are not on solo journeys. At our best, we form a collective efforts that leads us, one by one, back into the light.

And the two worlds overlapped in other ways. The hospital is loaded with local artwork to prevent the ambiance from feeling too sterile. Vibrant paintings brighten every room and every hall. During my claustrophobic MRI, the music of the Steve Miller Band accompanied me on the hospital headphones: “Keep on a rockin’… rockin’ me bay-ay-bay.” That was far better than silence. And when I was up past midnight forcing myself to drink a gallon of polyethylene glycol-electrolyte solution for colonoscopy prep, the film Castaway with Tom Hanks kept me company on TV – both of us isolated, scraggly, and desperate.

Art brings comfort and helps the healing process; science can back that up. But there’s another component to the medical field – the art of human interaction. Reading a CT scan is science, but translating it to a patient is art. Making a patient feel seen as a person, not just a medical problem, is an art. With their demeanor, hospital workers do what artists strive to do – to make people feel connected and known.

As they wheeled me into surgery to remove my gallbladder, I had to trust them to put me unconscious and to operate with skill, safety, and precision. As the nurse pushed me into the operating room, he reassured me: “Alright, you’re in good hands, my brother.” As an audience of one, that was what I needed to hear before I went under.

We are not on solo journeys. At our best, we form a collective effort that leads us, one by one, back into the light.