Postmortem

Talked with my old teacher over break. He said what you take out of college is what you put in. It seems like advice I should have heard before. He was surprised I didn't. So, looking at it with this new lens, I've put in very little. And though I have learned a lot, it is not worth the money if I don't do more. I'm not sure what all I should do differently, though. In life we often have to do things that just are not our bag. I need to make more connections here. I need to find things to occupy me other than school. I need to capitalize more on classes I like, like Creative Acts. Somehow. I need to start reading again. I need to keep writing.

In ten hours this class will be done forever and I'll have to go on to the next thing. I don't like that. I think there is a better way. The other day I reinvented the Zamboni. I think smaller ice rinks are wasting money. What the fuck is wrong with me. I don't even skate.

Bureaucracy here is the worst. The absolute worst. Sometimes it gets me so mad I walk out of buildings imagining them explode behind me. But that wouldn't solve anything. That would make it all stronger. They'd take more from us all to build it up bigger and better. They'd replace the toilet paper with iPads. Meanwhile ten thousand kids will graduate with a bonafide dee-plo-ma and the banks coming at them like dogs.

The other day I met a guy who's dad is the vice president of Comcast. He says he has a card in his wallet that he can show the police is they ever pull him over and they will let him go. Now tell me we don't live in an Orwellian dystopia.

Deeley said he's bringing snacks for the last class. Maybe I'll buy some chips or something.

"You'd give him a flower, he'd keep it forever"

Saw Days of Heaven by myself. It was my original intention to go see Alpha Papa, the movie centered on Steve Coogan's awkwardly funny Norfolk radio man Alan Partridge, with my friend Adam for his birthday. But his family was coming up then so we knew it couldn't happen. Guess we'll be waiting another year for that one. I suppose seeing Days of Heaven has made me more cultured, however, and all around more knowledgeable about movies, which is a big hobby of mine. But I will say I wasn't really in the mood. Then again I never find myself in the mood for Terrence Malick. Having said that, this is my favorite of the two Malick films I've seen. The period drama on a love triangle (of course) set on a farm blah blah blah it's my blog and I don't have to summarize. This movie is great. It makes me want to see Tree of Life again, really. I think I have a better handle on his style after seeing it. Looked amazing. The guy who shot this also shot The Conversation. Richard "gerbil" Gere was really good. Way better than I've ever seen him actually. And I immediately got the sense that this is a story told from the younger girl's perspective, which makes the film that much better when you realize it I think. Ending is a little lame, but I don't care. Wow. Very sad. Very powerful.

Seeing it in a theatre makes everything better though. I think its the whole collective mind theory in practice. Not sure which hippie doctor book I got that one from. But the movies are a magical and amazing place. It's the only place I always want to be. I tried to sign up for volunteering at the festival way earlier, but unfortunately I did it through Temple, and like everything at Temple, it didn't work. Now I got nothing to do.

Ugh. I'm sorry. I want to write more on this film. But sometimes the more I like something the less I have to say about it. Or at least that's definitely congruent with movies I enjoy.

The whole blog thing's not for me. It's a public diary. If there are two things I dislike, it's the public and incessant monologues. That's one thing the world of twentieth century poverty might have over ours. Nobody had any time to sit and hear themselves talk.

I liked what the narrator said about the farmer. He was very lonely. I felt sorry for him. Sorry for all of them I guess.

Driver

They came to Philly the other day, my old band. They're taking a break out here after the ep release. I played on every track of that ep. I sweated my ass off in that house. We actually released it as soon as they got here, and celebrated together. I miss it a lot. Living here is just a series of motions. There is nothing I want to feel a part of. I mean, sure it wasn't the best crowd, but they were my crowd. I need things to start looking up here. The glimmer of home on the horizon gets brighter every day. The record: http://driver.bandcamp.com/

The nature of storytelling is that if you can simulate an experience well enough you can make a character sympathetic. Raskolnikov, Henry Chinaski...Don Draper. Tony Soprano (this is as far as my intellectualism can take me). I wonder: who could make me sympathetic? Or rather, who would?

Fuck it, Dude. Let's go bowling.

It is currently 7:49 and I am staring at the same 3 pages of complete schlock that I've had since I threw out the last three pages of schlock. There is no story. I'd write the Thomas Mann quote about it but then I'd end up distracting myself. All I can do is write and I can't even do that. Why am I here? Every facet of the day points to the increasingly unavoidable possibility that college is a mistake. I can't afford this shit. What's the point? I'm not here to be anything. I have a plethora of unrealistic goals. That's all I've ever had. Why can't it be simple? Doesn't everyone know that it's all a big scam? Let's just all get up tomorrow and blow each other's brains out. Hunt for food and all that dumb hippie shit. We'll practice free love and die of AIDS. I am not good at this college thing, man. How many posts are even supposed to be on this blog, anyway? I'll end up failing every class. What then. What can I do. Where is the escape button. Fuck it, Dude. Let's go bowling.

I'll write three more pages of shit and listen to the class chew it out Wednesday. Half of them won't have even read it. They'll go off of the first two things people say. I'll listen to them on the elevator talk about how clever they are. These are the future leaders of our nation. They'll do a great job. I'll look up from my cardboard box and see their faces on a billboard, smiling down on me. If you will it, Dude, it is no dream.

Eh. Fuck it.

Space

"Why are we drawn to outer space? What happens to us when we reflect on the big cosmological questions? With music, bodies, and science, we offer a piece of quantum theatre that lies somewhere between waking and dreaming."

So I took a different approach to this FringeArts assignment. I chose to go to something that sounded awful. Who knows? Maybe it was the MST3K lover in me, or maybe it was the fact that tickets to "All the Sex I've Ever Had", a panel discussion of elderly folk talking about all their sexual exploits, were twice the price, that led me to seeing "This is the Twilight Kingdom" by the Found Theatre Company. I'll never quite know which one it was. All I know is I thought a lot about old people having sex during that nothing-less-than-contemporary spectacle. I remember at one point, while a young woman ran through the middle of the audience and collapsed upon the floor beside me, lamenting at the top of her lungs the supposed infestation of her body by parasitic space slugs (I could not see them), I thought: "There must have been a lot of useful knowledge thrown around at that discussion. Perhaps I could get my grandparents to relay me some stories, so I don't completely miss out." Regardless, I left with a catharsis that perhaps would not have come to me had I instead listened to old ladies talk about blow jobs.

I tried to catch a train there but I got on the wrong one. It's the little things that frustrate you to no end. At home I know where I am. I know the routes. Nobody can swindle me. When I came out I did my best not to look like a foreigner. Don't look up, don't look around too much, don't stare at your phone. Don't look engaged. It had come natural to me in Pittsburgh. Going to high school downtown made for some great lessons in urban etiquette. The most important thing was to let people have their business. Don't get involved any more than you have to. This time I couldn't rely on someone else for navigation; my go-to friends had both gone home that weekend and I didn't know anyone else well enough to have them pay to endure avant garde theatre for the sake of my own comfort without feeling bad. I needed a cab, and it was raining, so I stopped under the awning of a hotel to hail one, but they were all taken. I was running late now. The doorman asked if I was waiting for a ride. When I said I was looking for a cab, he insisted on hailing one. I talked with him as he did. 

"Where you from?"

"Pittsburgh."

"What brings you to Philly?"

"College."

"Oh? What college?"

"Temple." He turned at that one. 

"Me too. What year?"

"Freshman."

When he got a cab he opened the door and asked me if I had gone to any fraternity events. I said no. He gave me his number there, claiming to be the president of one. "Hope to be hearing from you." he said.

"Sure. Thanks."

 When I gave the cabbie the address it soon became apparent that I didn't know my way around and we went through the same ropes as the doorman, only this time he asked how I liked it here. I said fine. 

"Yeah, it's alright here. Not too hostile."

"Oh yeah?"

"Sure."

He told me about being a cab driver. He said he didn't want to do it anymore. When I asked him what he wanted to do he didn't have an answer. He said he did painting and remodeling on the side and that he should be doing more of that. He was the kind of guy made for small encounters, which I always like. My girlfriend always gets annoyed with me when I talk to strangers that way. I think a friendly stranger is the best type of person on earth. So long as they're not a pedophile I guess. She's in Pittsburgh, too. When we drove past a limousine he whistled.

"There's your answer. Limousine. I wanna drive a limousine."

"The clientele would certainly be better."

"Yes sir."

I got there twenty minutes late, after some fumbling through the wrong art exhibit. The curtain was drawn and there was no stage. I couldn't go in without interrupting, so I sat in the dark room listening. It was the kind of venue I was very familiar with. White walls, chipped up brick, dust and cobwebs lining the sides. Liberal-minded middle class old people, hipsters, family members. I knew the audience without even looking at them. I could smell the boat shoes and chrome book bags. In high school I was part of a "contemporary" (for those who don't know yet, the word contemporary is how avant garde artists get you to pay to see their stupid shit) music ensemble for three years, and then a punk band for one. The punk band got the better venues. But it was fun. The avant garde was a great realm to explore, a fun scene to witness and hell, very fun to play. Many of our pieces, some I had written myself, were performance pieces. In other words I have no quarrel with the avant garde. I appreciate it, even. But at that moment, soaked with rain in a dark room listening to some theatre school drop out recite an abstract monologue on the cosmos, it's just not doing it for me. A man walked past me in a dress and a crown made of electric candles. We did not speak. Later, as the scene changed, some actors run into the room, and one was kind enough to lead me to the back entrance. "There's no more seats," she said "but people are sitting on the floor in the front. Just be sure not to block the pathway." 

Thankful for her empathy in me, I sat, and it is only immediately after sitting down I realize why I cannot block the pathway. This is the part where space slugs girl threw herself beside me, screaming. Then I saw the woman who had let me in, cackling and ranting at no one in particular, and just as soon as she did for me, I felt sorry for her. After a few minutes of that a man stepped into the center and halted the cacophony (it's always the center). A shoddy, pixelated image of the moon appeared upon the plaster behind him, and after a haunting pause worthy of the great method actor Daniel Day Lewis, he began reciting safety procedures in flight attendant style. The audience laughed, but was there a joke? The candle-head man meanwhile danced with a guitar in the shadows. As his volume increased they all began singing. Or maybe chanting. It was hard to tell. 

I remember once, back in Antithesis (my avant garde ensemble), I wrote a piece entitled "Nocturne for eight music boxes." It had, of all things, come to me in a dream, and I looked far and wide for the exact right music boxes to articulate what I had heard in the dream. We set it up at the show so that the one I had at home, the only one I could remember from the dream, was illuminated on stage by a single light. Backstage, at precise moments, the "players" would wind their boxes a certain amount, and let the tunes clashes and harmonize and, eventually, fizzle out. It was intended to evoke the feeling of my forgotten nightmare. I remember how hard it all was to hear my dream again in real life, how hard I had worked for it. And later, when it was all said and done, my mother said "That was neat. Make sure you don't break that music box when you bring it home." That was the problem with avant garde. It just didn't transfer all the time.

When the show had ended the rain had gone from nuisance to torrential. I stayed indoors with the cast and their families and friends all talking amongst themselves. I watched an excited young girl ask her parents about the show. "Interesting" her father said. Her mother was quick to dazzle her with compliments. It was all very intimate. I found myself more engaged in everyone's conversations than I had been for the show. I walked from one to another, taking in everything. My time waiting had become suddenly interesting. I learned about every drop of sweat that went into the show, how they felt about the performance, what their plans were that night. I listened with intent as the photographer introduced himself to a friend's family. I listened to the actors' aspirations, the director's, the crew's. I saturated myself in the hopeful creative energy. I forgot how invigorating it could be. I occupied the entire space as a silent listener. Every moment was so intensely human. I saw a young girl with her friends swearing and smoking then a moment later a complete angel with her family. When they all walked out into the rain together it was my natural inclination to walk with them. They all got very quiet when that happened. So I turned into the emptiness of a wet alley and waited for them to get ahead. It was very cold.

Half of the classes I am in are deliberately shedding light on the shortfalls of college

Why? Is it to say "Ha ha! You're too late. We got you."? Is it to warn me maybe? Is it an elaborate scheme to get me to drop out of college? If it's the latter (can I say latter when there are three reference points?) I'll probably be kicked out anyway so you guys can stop now. It's fine. Whatever it is I certainly appreciate it.

I learned a lot from the time I spent earning the bound piece of paper lying under the driver's seat of my mother's car. All valuable lessons in the facets of modern American society. One lesson being that pieces of paper are exactly that. Money. Diplomas. Parking tickets. Who gives a shit? Not me.

I guess that's not really true. But reading things like William Deresiewicz's Solitude and Leadership speech certainly ease my mind about my level of pessimism concerning institutions (not just scholarly ones. You know, corporations, governments, charities, cults, knitting clubs, religions...big groups of people in general. I'm just trying to sound smart for a good grade here so try to stay with me). It always seemed to me that once you get too many people involved in an objective the objective is lost. So is the case with college. Why make future "leaders" of our nation when we can scam them into indentured servitude? Take a cut from their first years of pay in the workforce and make a nice big cushion for us all to lay on? 

Really though, why not. After all the people who make up the administrations of colleges in America had to deal with the same, more or less (much much less). I've come to understand that most institutions start out with good intentions. But somewhere down the line it becomes immediately evident: we are all just trying to survive. I don't care if the housing bubble bursts, I don't care if the dollar collapses, just let me and my family come out on top.

And there is nothing wrong with that. At all. I do not want to sound preachy (but I totally do don't I? I'm sorry). I have no desire to change the way things are. As long as everyone is made aware that no one is really looking out for you, then we all should be dandy. Trust is not given. It is earned. Who do you trust? Your family. Your friends. Those people earned your trust. Obama did not (but that doesn't mean you can't like him. Remember that time he sang Al Green to Al Green? That was so cool). 

Getting back to the point, about which I have inevitably forgotten, college does not make leaders. Colleges utilize words like "leader" because our modern society idolizes self-actualization, i.e. the American Dream. A leader is not a slave to the 9 to 5 weekday pushing pencils in a cubicle. That guy is just a dude with a job. And most people are satisfied with that. Or they pretend to be and just keep their mouth shut about it. But to those looking to be leaders, college is quackery. It is the miracle bracelet that will revitalize your body and give you strength. It is the ordinary looking sponge able to absorb an entire tub of water. Like I said earlier, no one is looking out for you. The road to a truly self-actualized success is overgrown with obstacles. It will require stubbornness and opposition to forces that appear stronger. And it certainly does not come from a piece of paper. 

What it feels like to go to college