BLOG 602 is the latest project from Keep Alex Weird, an effort to write a 900-word essay each day until Jan. 7. This is the fifth entry. We're still one behind, and trust us, we feel bad.
Today was one of those mildly-frantic “Christmas is right around the corner so we should probably go shopping and actually buy things rather than just walk around like we usually do” days. That was a good idea, so good that apparently everyone else with a car thought the exact same thing. Fort Wayne = pandemonium.
I spent a majority of the time book shopping. Bookstores have this effect on me, something about being around that much creativity gets the creative juices flowing. Usually I hang out in the magazines (cool fonts and pretty pictures!!!!!!!) but today I spent a lot of time with the art books (umm… cool fonts and pretty pictures!!!!). Anyway, the combination of creative juices and the approaching semester have proven to be a potent combination.
The closest thing to a day job I have is teaching COMM 210, Ball State’s basic public speaking course. The head of the COMM 210 program is amazing, and gives us graduate assistants lots of room when it comes to planning our individual classes, and while we have some basic guidelines, the way we accomplish the goals of the course are pretty much up to us.
Here’s what I’m thinking: what if you get rid as much of the traditional academic system as you can and replace it with a structure that encourages imagination and requires students to bring their own experiences into the classroom, rather than just memorizing a speech on why we should switch to solar power.
Let’s take the desks out of rows, and realize that doing that isn’t enough, if you’re going to create a sense of community, you can’t fake it, at some point you’ve actually got to create a community. Let’s ask big questions and not rush to trample over the silences that might just be the sound of thinking.
Rather than entering the semester preparing students to give informative and persuasive speeches over any old topic, let’s challenge them to tackle big issues and then spend the semester getting them to think about ways to go about it.
Let’s act like we work in a design studio, instead of a classroom. Let’s bust out the pipe cleaners and spend twenty minutes making twisty animals. Let’s discuss what Superman would have inscribed on the back of his iPod. Let’s plot out the world’s most interesting video game, or least interesting documentary.
Let’s give extra credit for toting around a notebook for writing ideas down, and more extra credit for writing things down.
Let’s accept the fact, please, that this is a class everyone has to take whether they want to or not and the least we can do is try and make it interesting. Let’s stop pandering to the least common denominator and remember that, regardless of what their application essays or SAT scores looked like, at some point everyone tied a towel around their neck and jumped off something or spread pots and pans on the floor and rocked the hell out.
Let’s consider the possibility that imagination can be revived in everyone, and that’s the key to good writing and good speaking. Forget everything else and remember what people look like when they’re explaining the great time they had over the weekend. Everyone’s a good speaker when they’re doing that, it’s something they know and care about. Let’s work to create that feeling as much as possible.
Let’s encourage coffee in class and silly hats and not raising your hand and Soulja Boy and admitting the fact that we’re only learning something because it’s on the final.
Let’s reward questioning everything; especially why this class looks nothing like anything else, especially any of the other classes students are required to take.
Sound like a plan? Sound like a not fully fleshed out plan? Good eye, skip. This is also a little short of my self-imposed limits, but I’m in a rule-breaking mode.
Peace.
Showing posts with label BLOG 602. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BLOG 602. Show all posts
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Friday, December 21, 2007
BLOG 602: Pass the Roles.
BLOG 602 is the latest project from Keep Alex Weird, an effort to write a 900-word essay each day until Jan. 7. This is the fourth entry.
Tonight was the annual boy’s basketball game between Bluffton and my alma mater, Norwell.
The whole crew went, which seems to be becoming a more regular occurrence these days, and the game actually didn’t disappoint. Norwell’s a little notorious for slowing the game down and playing a really really boring brand of basketball. Bluffton ran a fast-paced game though, and managed to keep Norwell frustrated enough to pull out a win.
Going to any high school event always makes me feel really old. I’m far enough removed from high school that I don’t know anyone at these things, and the fact that Graham is getting to that point is making my feel ancient.
Add to that the fact that I’m done with undergrad, and my place in the world is very, very confusing.
Watching high-schoolers hang out is incredibly painful sometimes. It’s a point where you think you’re the coolest thing ever, totally oblivious to the culture shock that is freshman year quickly approaching. The problem with watching high-schoolers isn’t that they’re obnoxious, though they may be, it’s that you can never be sure you weren’t just as obnoxious.
Undergrad’s something entirely different, when freshman year quickly forces you to re-examine your concept of self and come up with a new set of operating guidelines. The rest of the time, then, is figuring out exactly where that sense of self is going to take you.
Graduate school is interesting. Sitting at the game tonight, I realized that most of the people I went to high school with aren’t only done with undergrad, they’ve moved on to the real world, likely holding down something called a “job.”
Many of those people have settled a bit, into a steady job, paying either a rent or a mortgage, and likely into something resembling a real relationship. They’re definitely not dating eighteen-year olds.
Grad school is enabling me to extend my childhood and fight off the societal pressures of becoming more of an “adult.” I have no desire to be an adult.
Rather than holding down a regular 9 to 5 like most people my age probably are, I get to roll out of bed whenever I want two days a week, as long as I’m in the office by 6:30 p.m. The other days, I’m usually up by seven, but I have about six hours during the day when I can do whatever I want, including take a nap on the couch in the office. Rough life.
I’m also insulated from the real world because I spend most of my time on a college campus, a world I both belong in and am simultaneously not a part of anymore. My status as a grad student gives me everything I need to officially be a part of the system (student ID, employee number, paycheck) but because I have a degree, I’m removed from a lot of the drama. I’m not forced to go through gym class, I don’t have to take COMM 210, I don’t live on campus, and I’m not just adjusting to college life. In a lot of ways, I’m very much over college life.
Having said all that, being around so many people who are just adjusting to college is pretty awesome. It’s fun to be able to sit above all that and watch, not quite playing the role of an impartial observer and in some cases getting very much involved.
I’m legitimately friends with a couple of freshmen I've meant since being here, and they fulfill such a unique part of my life.
Their drama is huge drama, it’s drastic, life-threatening drama, and huge in a way those of us who aren’t college freshmen don’t experience anymore.
And some of them don’t have drama. Some of them just scoop great frozen custard.
So, I’m past high-school drama, past undergrad drama, not yet to real-world drama, and coasting here in grad school. It’s a fun place to be because, while there is drama, it’s the closest thing to “fun drama” I think I’ve ever come across.
Since grad school is such a short term experience, especially when you’re in a two-year master’s program, the promise of a chance to reset is right around the corner. Any situations I get myself in, I’ve got an automatic out in a year-and-a-half.
At least that’s how I used to think. Something’s been going on with me this last week or so, something I think that’s been brought on by trying to do this much writing, and I think I’m ready to get rid of the drama. The past few days I’ve been sending e-mails, making phone calls, and generally trying to let people know where they stand in my life. It’s a confusing process, it’s an uncomfortable process, but it’s a healthy one, and it’s one that’s let me be honest, really honest, with myself and other people for the first time in a really long time.
I’m not in high school anymore. I’m not in college anymore, and I’m not married and working on my 2.1 kids yet. I’m in grad school, surrounded by people younger than myself, who manage to make feel young and old at the same time. I’ve got responsibility, but still get help with the rent.
Keep your adulthood. I’ll be busy discussing Foucault and flirting with the girl in the drive-through.
Tonight was the annual boy’s basketball game between Bluffton and my alma mater, Norwell.
The whole crew went, which seems to be becoming a more regular occurrence these days, and the game actually didn’t disappoint. Norwell’s a little notorious for slowing the game down and playing a really really boring brand of basketball. Bluffton ran a fast-paced game though, and managed to keep Norwell frustrated enough to pull out a win.
Going to any high school event always makes me feel really old. I’m far enough removed from high school that I don’t know anyone at these things, and the fact that Graham is getting to that point is making my feel ancient.
Add to that the fact that I’m done with undergrad, and my place in the world is very, very confusing.
Watching high-schoolers hang out is incredibly painful sometimes. It’s a point where you think you’re the coolest thing ever, totally oblivious to the culture shock that is freshman year quickly approaching. The problem with watching high-schoolers isn’t that they’re obnoxious, though they may be, it’s that you can never be sure you weren’t just as obnoxious.
Undergrad’s something entirely different, when freshman year quickly forces you to re-examine your concept of self and come up with a new set of operating guidelines. The rest of the time, then, is figuring out exactly where that sense of self is going to take you.
Graduate school is interesting. Sitting at the game tonight, I realized that most of the people I went to high school with aren’t only done with undergrad, they’ve moved on to the real world, likely holding down something called a “job.”
Many of those people have settled a bit, into a steady job, paying either a rent or a mortgage, and likely into something resembling a real relationship. They’re definitely not dating eighteen-year olds.
Grad school is enabling me to extend my childhood and fight off the societal pressures of becoming more of an “adult.” I have no desire to be an adult.
Rather than holding down a regular 9 to 5 like most people my age probably are, I get to roll out of bed whenever I want two days a week, as long as I’m in the office by 6:30 p.m. The other days, I’m usually up by seven, but I have about six hours during the day when I can do whatever I want, including take a nap on the couch in the office. Rough life.
I’m also insulated from the real world because I spend most of my time on a college campus, a world I both belong in and am simultaneously not a part of anymore. My status as a grad student gives me everything I need to officially be a part of the system (student ID, employee number, paycheck) but because I have a degree, I’m removed from a lot of the drama. I’m not forced to go through gym class, I don’t have to take COMM 210, I don’t live on campus, and I’m not just adjusting to college life. In a lot of ways, I’m very much over college life.
Having said all that, being around so many people who are just adjusting to college is pretty awesome. It’s fun to be able to sit above all that and watch, not quite playing the role of an impartial observer and in some cases getting very much involved.
I’m legitimately friends with a couple of freshmen I've meant since being here, and they fulfill such a unique part of my life.
Their drama is huge drama, it’s drastic, life-threatening drama, and huge in a way those of us who aren’t college freshmen don’t experience anymore.
And some of them don’t have drama. Some of them just scoop great frozen custard.
So, I’m past high-school drama, past undergrad drama, not yet to real-world drama, and coasting here in grad school. It’s a fun place to be because, while there is drama, it’s the closest thing to “fun drama” I think I’ve ever come across.
Since grad school is such a short term experience, especially when you’re in a two-year master’s program, the promise of a chance to reset is right around the corner. Any situations I get myself in, I’ve got an automatic out in a year-and-a-half.
At least that’s how I used to think. Something’s been going on with me this last week or so, something I think that’s been brought on by trying to do this much writing, and I think I’m ready to get rid of the drama. The past few days I’ve been sending e-mails, making phone calls, and generally trying to let people know where they stand in my life. It’s a confusing process, it’s an uncomfortable process, but it’s a healthy one, and it’s one that’s let me be honest, really honest, with myself and other people for the first time in a really long time.
I’m not in high school anymore. I’m not in college anymore, and I’m not married and working on my 2.1 kids yet. I’m in grad school, surrounded by people younger than myself, who manage to make feel young and old at the same time. I’ve got responsibility, but still get help with the rent.
Keep your adulthood. I’ll be busy discussing Foucault and flirting with the girl in the drive-through.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
BLOG 602: Four Oh
BLOG 602 is the latests project from Keep Alex Weird, an effort to write a 900-word essay each day until Jan. 7. This is the second entry.
I have never been what you would call a “grade person.” In high school, I was not the guy who would freak out over how I was doing in a class. I was in class with those people, those fun AP classes that turned out to be a lot more work, only to take a test that was crazy hard, and I didn’t get credit for anyway. Not bitter, promise.
At Indiana State, I passed on the Honors diploma. I had advisors telling me I was just the person for it, but really, after watching my then-girlfriend freak out over her Honors class, I was sure I made the right decision. I wasn’t the person who worried about grades, and anything above the bare minimum was more work than I was prepared to do.
Amazingly, and through the work of something far more powerful than me, I got by with pretty good grades. I graduated with a 3.8, which was actually down a couple of notches due to a History of the Labor Movement class I had no business taking (and didn’t do any of the homework for) and a screenwriting class (with the worst teacher in the history of the world) where I ranked up a C in each.
The last two years of my time at State, those years that found me not freaking out over a C, were spent working at the Indiana Statesman. A lot of work, yes, but work that was about as far from schoolwork as you can get. It was something different everyday, whether I was working as the Opinions Editor or, later, as Editor-In-Chief. Schoolwork took a back seat, and I was more than happy with that situation.
This, however, is grad school, and it is a brand-new beast for me.
I’d already passed out for the night when I got a text from Adam (the same Adam mentioned in the last BLOG 602 post, by the way) saying that grades were online. And… freakout.
This last semester was not my strongest, academically. It’s been a time of transition, meeting tons of new people, getting used to living on my own in a brand new town, and learning the hard way that heat/AC/water/anything doesn’t come for free. Needless to say, my head has been in about a hundred different places, only occasionally stopping to think about school.
That is, until about two weeks ago. The end of the semester was quickly approaching, and for some reason I thought then would be a good time to start thinking about grades. Okay, not really.
The only time I really started thinking about my grades was last Monday night, when I had a fifteen page paper due the next day and found myself staring at a blank screen. Maybe I should have given school a little more consideration.
After phone calls to most of the people I know, and a very needed breadstick break with Dan and Liz, I actually started the paper at around 10 p.m. I worked, more or less, all night and came up with what I thought was a perfectly mediocre paper that made a decent argument about the face considerations present in professional wrestling, and specifically, the way tag teams represent positive personality traits, and then are buried for it. Fun stuff.
While I still like the argument I wrote in that paper, I’ll be the first to admit it is a hot mess. The formatting, I think, is all wrong, and most of the wrestling stuff isn’t cited. I was hoping for a B in the class.
Now, the fact that I was hoping for a B brings with it certain connotations. I’ve been carrying around these hopes of a doctoral program and one of the things they look at, especially when you come from a small Midwestern university no one has ever heard of, is GPA.
In undergrad, you take around forty classes, which gives you plenty of time to pull up your GPA if one class treats you wrong. In grad school, you take twelve, and your first semester knocks three of those off. Not a whole lot of time to fix those errors.
So, the fact that I’m now okay with a B because I’ve got no idea how a woman who specializes in Health Care Interpersonal Communication is going to react to my hastily written paper on the Highlanders, is a bit of a big deal. Honestly, a B puts the best doctoral programs into question.
But I’m okay with a B, because I’m not a grade person, right?
Right?
About that. So I get Adam’s text saying grades are up, and I freak out. No, I think, no I’m not okay with a B, I deserve a B, I’ll probably get a B, but I don’t want a B. I’ve skated by the last nineteen (really?) years of education without really applying myself, and I get it now, I really do, I should have been working this whole time, I’ve seen people around me freak about their grades, and I get that I’m really lucky to be able to get by the way I do, and I know I should be more thankful for that and I know, now, that I should actually probably apply myself, and that chances are good I can turn into something really cool, chances are good I can get into that really good grad school if I put my nose to the grindstone, well, chances are I could have before I put that paper off, really, the Highlanders?, as exciting as I find wrestling, no one cares about the Highlanders and trying to explain what’s going on with two cousins from Scotland who wear matching kilts and aren’t really cousins, and to expect anything resembling a decent grade out of that is absolutely ridiculous, I expect a B, I deserve a B and I got…
I got an A.
All three classes.
My GPA right now, one semester through grad school, is a 4.0, despite the fact that my final papers were based around, tag-team wrestling, a total bluff on my part about a researcher from the University of South Florida, and a stretch of an argument that a feminist plan toward rhetoric was needed in 1995 because the same male-centered vision of rhetoric had driven society to war, cyclically, since the beginning of time and because that rhetoric led the U.S. and Russia to the brink of mutually assured destruction cause cosmic forces to align and promote a rhetorical theory that turned everything Aristotle believed upside-down.
And now, seeing that 4.0, I think I’m a grade person. I think I’m done skating. Maybe this moment, right now, is my version of the universe aligning to promote that new vision of rhetoric, one that understands that that cycle of destruction eventually has to catch up to you if you keep doing the same thing over and over and over again.
Oh, and if you’re wondering how that part of the story ends, where the feminist rhetoric ended up, it was pretty much the laughing stock of our intro to Rhetoric class. Good times.
I have never been what you would call a “grade person.” In high school, I was not the guy who would freak out over how I was doing in a class. I was in class with those people, those fun AP classes that turned out to be a lot more work, only to take a test that was crazy hard, and I didn’t get credit for anyway. Not bitter, promise.
At Indiana State, I passed on the Honors diploma. I had advisors telling me I was just the person for it, but really, after watching my then-girlfriend freak out over her Honors class, I was sure I made the right decision. I wasn’t the person who worried about grades, and anything above the bare minimum was more work than I was prepared to do.
Amazingly, and through the work of something far more powerful than me, I got by with pretty good grades. I graduated with a 3.8, which was actually down a couple of notches due to a History of the Labor Movement class I had no business taking (and didn’t do any of the homework for) and a screenwriting class (with the worst teacher in the history of the world) where I ranked up a C in each.
The last two years of my time at State, those years that found me not freaking out over a C, were spent working at the Indiana Statesman. A lot of work, yes, but work that was about as far from schoolwork as you can get. It was something different everyday, whether I was working as the Opinions Editor or, later, as Editor-In-Chief. Schoolwork took a back seat, and I was more than happy with that situation.
This, however, is grad school, and it is a brand-new beast for me.
I’d already passed out for the night when I got a text from Adam (the same Adam mentioned in the last BLOG 602 post, by the way) saying that grades were online. And… freakout.
This last semester was not my strongest, academically. It’s been a time of transition, meeting tons of new people, getting used to living on my own in a brand new town, and learning the hard way that heat/AC/water/anything doesn’t come for free. Needless to say, my head has been in about a hundred different places, only occasionally stopping to think about school.
That is, until about two weeks ago. The end of the semester was quickly approaching, and for some reason I thought then would be a good time to start thinking about grades. Okay, not really.
The only time I really started thinking about my grades was last Monday night, when I had a fifteen page paper due the next day and found myself staring at a blank screen. Maybe I should have given school a little more consideration.
After phone calls to most of the people I know, and a very needed breadstick break with Dan and Liz, I actually started the paper at around 10 p.m. I worked, more or less, all night and came up with what I thought was a perfectly mediocre paper that made a decent argument about the face considerations present in professional wrestling, and specifically, the way tag teams represent positive personality traits, and then are buried for it. Fun stuff.
While I still like the argument I wrote in that paper, I’ll be the first to admit it is a hot mess. The formatting, I think, is all wrong, and most of the wrestling stuff isn’t cited. I was hoping for a B in the class.
Now, the fact that I was hoping for a B brings with it certain connotations. I’ve been carrying around these hopes of a doctoral program and one of the things they look at, especially when you come from a small Midwestern university no one has ever heard of, is GPA.
In undergrad, you take around forty classes, which gives you plenty of time to pull up your GPA if one class treats you wrong. In grad school, you take twelve, and your first semester knocks three of those off. Not a whole lot of time to fix those errors.
So, the fact that I’m now okay with a B because I’ve got no idea how a woman who specializes in Health Care Interpersonal Communication is going to react to my hastily written paper on the Highlanders, is a bit of a big deal. Honestly, a B puts the best doctoral programs into question.
But I’m okay with a B, because I’m not a grade person, right?
Right?
About that. So I get Adam’s text saying grades are up, and I freak out. No, I think, no I’m not okay with a B, I deserve a B, I’ll probably get a B, but I don’t want a B. I’ve skated by the last nineteen (really?) years of education without really applying myself, and I get it now, I really do, I should have been working this whole time, I’ve seen people around me freak about their grades, and I get that I’m really lucky to be able to get by the way I do, and I know I should be more thankful for that and I know, now, that I should actually probably apply myself, and that chances are good I can turn into something really cool, chances are good I can get into that really good grad school if I put my nose to the grindstone, well, chances are I could have before I put that paper off, really, the Highlanders?, as exciting as I find wrestling, no one cares about the Highlanders and trying to explain what’s going on with two cousins from Scotland who wear matching kilts and aren’t really cousins, and to expect anything resembling a decent grade out of that is absolutely ridiculous, I expect a B, I deserve a B and I got…
I got an A.
All three classes.
My GPA right now, one semester through grad school, is a 4.0, despite the fact that my final papers were based around, tag-team wrestling, a total bluff on my part about a researcher from the University of South Florida, and a stretch of an argument that a feminist plan toward rhetoric was needed in 1995 because the same male-centered vision of rhetoric had driven society to war, cyclically, since the beginning of time and because that rhetoric led the U.S. and Russia to the brink of mutually assured destruction cause cosmic forces to align and promote a rhetorical theory that turned everything Aristotle believed upside-down.
And now, seeing that 4.0, I think I’m a grade person. I think I’m done skating. Maybe this moment, right now, is my version of the universe aligning to promote that new vision of rhetoric, one that understands that that cycle of destruction eventually has to catch up to you if you keep doing the same thing over and over and over again.
Oh, and if you’re wondering how that part of the story ends, where the feminist rhetoric ended up, it was pretty much the laughing stock of our intro to Rhetoric class. Good times.
Monday, December 17, 2007
BLOG 602: Why I Hate Art
BLOG 602: is the latest project from Keep Alex Weird, an effort to write a 900-word essay a day until Jan. 7. This is the first entry.
I hate art because it is an establishment that doles out success and failure based on seemingly random variables. It’s a world where a four-year old throwing paint on a canvas can become a superstar based on… on what, really? Art’s some weird, indefinable thing and there’s no way to get a handle on what good is.
There are two ways, I think, of defining “good” art, and neither of them really satisfy me. On one hand, “good art” is whatever you think it is. The other day, I was headed to the BSU Atrium and swung into the art gallery and saw some stuff done by my first “girlfriend,” in that non-really-girlfriend sense you sometimes mean your freshman year of high school.
I really like her stuff. She does photography, and it’s stuff I can’t really explain other than the way Adam and I did when we saw it, “This stuff needs to be the liner art for an album.” And it does. It’s good.
But that’s just my opinion. If you’d see it and think otherwise, it’s not good art to you.
Unless…
The other way to define good art, the less “beauty-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder” approach, relies on the “art community,” some nebulous group of people that have swanky parties with open bars where they drink white wine and Heineken. (Heineken is in the spell-check of Microsoft Word 07, by the way.)
Anyway, the “art community” pretty much makes the “good art” decision based on cold, hard cash. If it’s good art, it’ll sell. Of course, any piece of art (or anything really) is only worth what some fool will pay you for it, so it’s a little more complicated than that. Art seems to be good if you can sell it, better if you can sell it for more, and best if you can sell it for more, and do it at Christie’s.
It’s a totally arbitrary system, and it’s based, like so many things are, on a feedback cycle. The buzz gets started, someone’s tagged as the next Warhol or Basquiat, and that machine just feeds on itself until you’ve got the drummer of a certain Metal band getting drunk at an auction, proud of the fact that his five-million dollar sale set the record for the most ever paid for the work of a certain artist who passed because it turns out mixing coke (little c) and heroin might not be the best thing for you.
Andy Warhol built a ridiculous amount of fame based on the fact that he painted a soup can. It’s the argument everyone uses against the “art scene” and I think it holds some water. There’s nothing special about Warhol’s soup, it’s the same cans people have been staring at in their neighborhood grocery store for years, it’s just that he was the first to paint it, and for some reason, the feedback cycle got started.
John Kincade sucks. Vera Bradley sucks. But that’s just me, and they’re minting cash in they’re respective fields. But… it’s not “Art,” not in that Christie’s sense. And yes, I know Vera Bradley isn’t a person.
And so… there’s no way for us to define what’s really good. There seem to be two ways we develop definitions, but they’re often so diametrically opposed we can’t draw any real consensus.
But, okay, let’s be honest now. I hate that first aspect of art, the one where anyone can basically define what it is for themselves, because it removes by ability to plead innocent. The only reason I’m not an artist, since we live in a society that, to some extent lets me invent my own definition of art, is because I choose not to be.
It wouldn’t be all that difficult for me to drive up to United Art Supply in Fort Wayne, buy a canvas and some oils and get to work. I could then paint something, and if I liked it enough, call it art and myself an artist. Or, I could take my (horrendously underused) video camera and come up with something new and inventive, call it art, and myself an artist. Maybe it would even catch on, and someone would pay some cash for it and validate my status as an artist.
But… I don’t. And because I don’t, the reason I can’t call myself an artist is only my fault. And that’s why I hate art. I hate it because it’s a system designed in such a way to seem impenetrable, to seem big and scary, because I can’t make it to Christie’s, and I buy into it enough to keep me out of the art world.
The kicker, of course, is that I deep-down, long to be a part of that art scene. I got the slightest, slightest taste of it in Chicago, a publisher’s party after-hours in an art museum with an open-bar and hors d’oeuvres and it is amazing.
So, I’m at an impasse.
Art allows anyone in, and I hate it for that because that means the only thing stopping my from joining is myself.
Art is also incredibly exclusive, a world that I don’t stand a chance of breaking into, likely ever. And I know I should hate that.
But, in some masochistic way, the same reasons I hate art are why, deep down, I can’t get enough of it.
I’ve never liked Lars Ulrich more than watching him stumble over himself, tipsy off champagne, after selling that Basquiat for five mill. It’s a world I know I’ll never me a part of, and I love it the same way half my friends are obsessed with Payton Manning and the Colts.
But, there’s a big difference between them and me in one aspect, at least in this situation. I could do this. I could be an artist.
The scale would be different, yes, but it’s always right there, and I’ve decided not to embrace it. I could be an artist, but I’m not, and maybe more than hating art for that, it’s really just a little distaste for myself.
Slacker.
I hate art because it is an establishment that doles out success and failure based on seemingly random variables. It’s a world where a four-year old throwing paint on a canvas can become a superstar based on… on what, really? Art’s some weird, indefinable thing and there’s no way to get a handle on what good is.
There are two ways, I think, of defining “good” art, and neither of them really satisfy me. On one hand, “good art” is whatever you think it is. The other day, I was headed to the BSU Atrium and swung into the art gallery and saw some stuff done by my first “girlfriend,” in that non-really-girlfriend sense you sometimes mean your freshman year of high school.
I really like her stuff. She does photography, and it’s stuff I can’t really explain other than the way Adam and I did when we saw it, “This stuff needs to be the liner art for an album.” And it does. It’s good.
But that’s just my opinion. If you’d see it and think otherwise, it’s not good art to you.
Unless…
The other way to define good art, the less “beauty-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder” approach, relies on the “art community,” some nebulous group of people that have swanky parties with open bars where they drink white wine and Heineken. (Heineken is in the spell-check of Microsoft Word 07, by the way.)
Anyway, the “art community” pretty much makes the “good art” decision based on cold, hard cash. If it’s good art, it’ll sell. Of course, any piece of art (or anything really) is only worth what some fool will pay you for it, so it’s a little more complicated than that. Art seems to be good if you can sell it, better if you can sell it for more, and best if you can sell it for more, and do it at Christie’s.
It’s a totally arbitrary system, and it’s based, like so many things are, on a feedback cycle. The buzz gets started, someone’s tagged as the next Warhol or Basquiat, and that machine just feeds on itself until you’ve got the drummer of a certain Metal band getting drunk at an auction, proud of the fact that his five-million dollar sale set the record for the most ever paid for the work of a certain artist who passed because it turns out mixing coke (little c) and heroin might not be the best thing for you.
Andy Warhol built a ridiculous amount of fame based on the fact that he painted a soup can. It’s the argument everyone uses against the “art scene” and I think it holds some water. There’s nothing special about Warhol’s soup, it’s the same cans people have been staring at in their neighborhood grocery store for years, it’s just that he was the first to paint it, and for some reason, the feedback cycle got started.
John Kincade sucks. Vera Bradley sucks. But that’s just me, and they’re minting cash in they’re respective fields. But… it’s not “Art,” not in that Christie’s sense. And yes, I know Vera Bradley isn’t a person.
And so… there’s no way for us to define what’s really good. There seem to be two ways we develop definitions, but they’re often so diametrically opposed we can’t draw any real consensus.
But, okay, let’s be honest now. I hate that first aspect of art, the one where anyone can basically define what it is for themselves, because it removes by ability to plead innocent. The only reason I’m not an artist, since we live in a society that, to some extent lets me invent my own definition of art, is because I choose not to be.
It wouldn’t be all that difficult for me to drive up to United Art Supply in Fort Wayne, buy a canvas and some oils and get to work. I could then paint something, and if I liked it enough, call it art and myself an artist. Or, I could take my (horrendously underused) video camera and come up with something new and inventive, call it art, and myself an artist. Maybe it would even catch on, and someone would pay some cash for it and validate my status as an artist.
But… I don’t. And because I don’t, the reason I can’t call myself an artist is only my fault. And that’s why I hate art. I hate it because it’s a system designed in such a way to seem impenetrable, to seem big and scary, because I can’t make it to Christie’s, and I buy into it enough to keep me out of the art world.
The kicker, of course, is that I deep-down, long to be a part of that art scene. I got the slightest, slightest taste of it in Chicago, a publisher’s party after-hours in an art museum with an open-bar and hors d’oeuvres and it is amazing.
So, I’m at an impasse.
Art allows anyone in, and I hate it for that because that means the only thing stopping my from joining is myself.
Art is also incredibly exclusive, a world that I don’t stand a chance of breaking into, likely ever. And I know I should hate that.
But, in some masochistic way, the same reasons I hate art are why, deep down, I can’t get enough of it.
I’ve never liked Lars Ulrich more than watching him stumble over himself, tipsy off champagne, after selling that Basquiat for five mill. It’s a world I know I’ll never me a part of, and I love it the same way half my friends are obsessed with Payton Manning and the Colts.
But, there’s a big difference between them and me in one aspect, at least in this situation. I could do this. I could be an artist.
The scale would be different, yes, but it’s always right there, and I’ve decided not to embrace it. I could be an artist, but I’m not, and maybe more than hating art for that, it’s really just a little distaste for myself.
Slacker.
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