Maybe banging things will fix my shit...that's gonna get taken out of context

I was thinking about the Large Hadron Collider this weekend (because that's something you do when you work in such close proximity to scientists--I call it nerd osmosis), and a thought occurred to me. We've built a giant, circular tube so that we can throw things at other things. This is what we do. When we needed a means to keep warm, we banged rocks together until we got fire. It might have just been something we did out of boredom (nothing on the cave wall that day) and fire was just a toasty side effect. Really, how much of science is just a couple of guys throwing things at other things and writing down what happens. Is this something I could apply to my own problems? Can I do this and avoid bruises?

ever tried? ever failed? no matter. try again. fail again. fail better.

On the fourth of July last year, I got ridiculously drunk and explained to my then boyfriend and his roommate/hetero life partner that I was "ill-equipped for failure." I said this, apparently, repeatedly and with increasing sincerity all the way from Arlington to Manassas, where I promptly fell asleep.

Well, I'd like to test that theory so I'm taking the semester off.

I've been in school since I was five. For the last 5 years or so my education has been fairly focused on reading and analyzing literature. I can deconstruct meaning, find subtext, root out binaries, distinguish between my reading and what is expected from the implied reader. I know when differance isn't just a typo. I'm good at this. I almost always have been.

When I was in the ninth grade I had an English teacher named Mrs. Siggers. I wished now that I tried harder in high school because maybe I would have gotten more out of her class. As it is, I think she was probably the best teacher I've ever had. She sat at her desk on the first day wrapped in an afghan cursing the air conditioning unit that would not creep above 65 degrees. The blanket draped her head so that, when first entering the room, you could only see her nose and the tips of her white bob. The home-spun Fate or a folksy Weird Sister. She was terrifying. And I loved her.

She would pound out iambs on our still soft heads and yell at us for the misplaced semi-colon that marred an otherwise unblemished essay on scientific hubris in Nathanial Hawthorne's short stories (I got a 98% on that essay, she docked me two points for that semi-colon.) She gave me the best compliment my writing has ever received (apart from something Chuck Palaniuk wrote that I will get to soon enough.) She told me I was clever with words. It turned into a epithet that followed me until 12th grade. Mr. Rosinski did not think I was particularly clever. He had no real reason to. I hardly ever made anything in his class that would pass for a concerted effort.

Siggers, along with my high school journalism teacher, Mr. Rens, made me want to be a writer. I used to write to the detriment of my other work. It wasn't always good. Most of the time it wasn't good. But I felt like I had to do it. Unfortunately, my formal education has gotten in the way of writing. And pretty much everything else. I don't enjoy it anymore.

I've come to resent writers I love because of the time I have to devote to them. Whitman wouldn't want me hold up in some library like a latter-day Bartleby when there are trolley cars to ride and rogues to meet. Melville called the sea the only Harvard that would have him. In Moby-Dick, Ishmael refers to the whaling ship as his Yale, his Harvard. Even Emerson knew we could be scholars even when we weren't officially students. One of my favorite lines in Beckett ends with the the phrase "fail better." I'm missing the point of their work. It comes from experience and you don't (always) get that in a book. And you don't get it from only sticking to what you are good at.

I'm good at being an English major. 4 years of undergrad, two semesters of grad school and I have yet to receive a B on anything. I have established my proficiency in the field. But maybe it's time to find out what I'm bad at. Maybe I will never be a published author. But today I printed out everything I've written in the last 5 years. I am going to sit down and find out what needs to be thrown out and what can be salvaged. The fixed bits will be sent out and I will start collecting rejection letters. I also pulled my guitar out of the basement today. My fingers hurt and I can't manage to go through any exercise without mucking it up but I like it. I don't have to think about it.

...

Now about that Chuck Palahniuk thing. When I was a freshman in college, I wrote him and he wrote back and this is what it said at the bottom of his letter:



I cried in my dorm room when I read it (mercifully my roommate had already left for winter break.) It doesn't say I'm a good writer. But it hints that I could be. Incidentally, the "November novel" was part of National Novel Writing Month wherein you try to write a 50,000 word piece in one month in an effort to just get at the thing. I failed. Next time I do it, I'll fail better.

Things I learned in Cultural Studies...

No one seems to be able to define what "cultural studies" is. Really, this isn't a major problem unless every exploration of culture in its myriad modes of interpretation becomes a defense of an academic field that has yet to be clearly defined. This happens a lot when scholars write on video games or comics books. They feel the need to spend so much time defending the act of analyzing the work that the analysis becomes secondary.

Speaking of defensive, apparently the only way to critique something is to shit upon it and then remark that you are surprised at your own ability to remain even-handed and neutral when discussing something so clearly abhorrent. It's a good thing I don't ding when my bullshit meter goes off. I don't think the class noticed my involuntary twitching.

The problem I am running into with this class is that the class (the people in the room, not the subject being taught..though perhaps this class is indicative of the larger field) isn't willing to participate in the critique. They don't want to make note of their own vested (economic and otherwise) interest in elevating a particular definition of culture and the means by which we perpetuate it. Who better than English masters' candidates to determine merit in a work (ok, perhaps the tenured PhD.s who have assigned us to read what they determine has merit...) It's asinine to assume that our interest is all "sweetness and light" to quote tonight's reading. Of course we think that reading is paramount and that reading poetry has benefits beyond paltry, utilitarian enterprises like making money or watching TV. We want to make money reading poetry and then telling why its paramount and beneficial to do so. It doesn't demean our purpose to admit it either.

I fundamentally disagree with the pursuit of perfection. Maybe that worked for Matthew Arnold. Maybe that's how he got around to writing "Dover Beach." Me, I like total fuckin' chaos. Perfection breeds a falsified sense of the sacredNo one seems to be able to define what "cultural studies" is. Really, this isn't a major problem unless every exploration of culture in its myriad modes of interpretation becomes a defense of an academic field that has yet to be clearly defined. This happens a lot when scholars write on video games or comics books. They feel the need to spend so much time defending the act of analyzing the work that the analysis becomes secondary.

Also, "historicismality" is not a word. It's not going to be a word because it sounds like shit and means nothing. And you said signifier when you meant signified. The utterance means nothing.

I don't want anything I do to be so sacrosanct I can't deconstruct it. I don't want to sit in a classroom completely unaware (more to the point unwilling to consider) that I am actively engaged in the activity I deride.

(on a semi-related note, if I think of nothing else I might write my course paper on whether Raymond Williams would tweet.)