I realized that as a professional student I have 3 "first days" a year. I wonder if this gets boring after a while? So far, it's maintained its level of excitement. I think this is going to be a really great quarter -- if I can survive it. My classes ("Traditions of the Avant-Garde" and "Philosophy and Literature") are going to be super sweet. Both are taught by fairly demanding profs, which I like. I'll be TAing discussion questions for a large lecture, which I have never done before but which should also be fun. Yesterday I was in a meeting with the writing TA's who are also linked to the same class and they said "basically, we want you to teach the theory and we'll handle the literature." Music to my ears.
But I'm also taking french 2 nights a week for the next 5 weeks. If I can stay on top of everything, it will be great. Pray that my wife still likes me after all of this.
As a follow-up to my last post, a buddy sent me this.
My relationship to the art world is often fraught with ambiguity.
Since most of the things we say are derived from someone else, I will offer an extended quotation from Robert Smithson for your consideration:
The ultimate film goer would be a captive of sloth. Sitting constantly in a movie house, among the flickering shadows, his perception would take on a kind of sluggishness. He would be the hermit dwelling among the elsewheres, forgoing the salvation of reality. Films would follow films, until the action of each one would drown in a vast resevoir of pure perception. He would not be able to distinguish between good or bad films, all would be swallowed up into an endless blur. He would not be watching films, but rather experiencing blurs of many shades. Between blurs he might even fall asleep, but that wouldn't matter. Sound tracks would hum through the torpor. Words would drop through this languor like so many lead weights. This dozing consciousness would bring about a tepid abstraction. It would increase the gravity of perception. Like a tortoise crawling over a desert, his eyes would crawl accross the screen. All films would be brought into equilibrium -- a vast mud field of images forever motionless. But ultmate movie-viewing should not be encouraged, any more than ultimate movie-making.
This comes from an essay published in 1971. If one were to replace "film goer" with "digitodrome" and "film" with any combination of new technology words ("cell phone," "laptop," "Xbox," etc. etc.), one would have a fairly bleak but all-too-possible description of the contemporary affluent citzen. Technology can increase indvidual agency. But it can do an even better job at destroying it.
Of course, I'm publishing this on a blog. Take that for what you will.
I really love fly-fishing. This weekend, while the world raged, people suffered, a chief justice died, and somebody's favorite sport's team lost again, I went camping in Powell, Idaho with my wife's family.
Did I feel guilt? Of course. But I realized that there was nothing further I could do right now to change in one iota anything that was happening. In the future, yes. But now was a time to camp and . . . fish.
I don't think I have fished for trout in over two years. That's probably the longest stretch since I was 12. I don't even have my fishing equiptment with me here in Seattle -- most of it is back in Pittsburgh. But knowing we would be near cutthroat trout waters, I asked my father-in-law Martin if he could bring fly rods and reels. I stopped and got some flies and other necessities in Missoula.
Martin not only brought equiptment, he had a gift for me when we arrived at the campsite. It was a fifty-five year old split bamboo flyrod that had been owned by Martin's step-grandfather and had never been fished before. Martin graciously gave this rod to me, as he didn't fish very often and he wanted it to be used.
So there I was, with vintage equiptment, on a stream in the mountains of Idaho. The first day was kind of a disappointment, as I was still trying to figure out where the fish were. But the second day, I caught about a half-dozen beautiful native fish, including one that was 15 inches long. It was a great day.
And now I am back at my work, back to the world, back to the chaos and conflict we all have to live with. But I feel better. I feel ready.