Martha Graham on Doom Eager

There's a wonderful Icelandic term: "doom eager." You are doom eager for destiny no matter what it costs you. The ordeal of isolation, the ordeal of loneliness, the ordeal of doubt, the ordeal of vulnerability which it takes to compose in any medium, is hard to face. You know when this thing is coming coming on to you. You know when you walk the streets by the hour. When the restlessness comes, when you are sick with an idea, with something that will not come out.

Robert Edmond Jones, a visionary designer and director, who taught at the Neighborhood Playhouse, would begin his first lecture to his students by slowly, silently looking at each and every one, back and forth, almost with the pacing, inevitable rhythm of a lion in a cage. And then suddenly he would cry, "I am studying you very carefully because I know only a few, who are doom eager. . . doom eager to be an artist." And the artist is doom eager, but never chooses his fate. He is chosen, and anointed, and caught.
-Martha Graham, BLOOD MEMORY pg 118