6.I.2004 :::: 16.26 epiphany

jonathan mentioned his hatred for people mentioning "The Arts" & hermanito i need you to know that you are not alone. yes it is a term that screams out to the wary/savvy listener, "i pander! i think creativity is a commodity! our inner cities are deteriorating! won't somebody please think of the children! i think new mothers should play mozart around the clock!"

i say all this as a snotty twenty-seven year old who grew up in a middle class home where creativity was nurtured, encouraged. i had private art lessons, ballet classes, years of piano. my parents bought me a flute when i started band & then an oboe & then an alto saxophone when my dilletantish tendancies manifested themselves. jonathan had even more years of band which involved my parents putting up with first a trumpet (in the hands of an eleven-year-old boy) & then a seven-year autodidactic foray into percussion. oh yes, then he started buying guitars.

i was honored to be selected to attend the kentucky governor's school for the arts in creative writing. but this was the culmination of years spent cultivating a sullen, writer-y image. this mostly involved my locking myself in my room all hours of the day. it also involved typewriters, which are loud. it also involved loud, morose music issuing from my stereo, often on repeat. also this is the justification i always gave for spying on people & writing down things i overhear, which has led to my paralyzing fear of having conversations with my friends in public.

oh yes, also i was in plays. so my parents had to go to junior high & high school & community theater productions of plays. if they were musicals, i had to wear tap shoes & always had the largest part that didn't require solo singing or solo dancing. if they were not musicals, i always had a large role & of course was taller than all my costars.

i mention all this to illustrate the patience & devotion of my parents, who could after all have just bought jonathan & me some sets of crayons & brushed us off.

still they are the kind of people who say "The Arts" & all my respect for them vanishes every time i hear them say it. at what point will i blow up? at what point will i accuse them of pandering? at what point will i reveal to them that catching camelot on tour is not the cultured experience they may think it is?

oh my, i ramble, i lose control over this entry.

in other news, today is my first day back in a classroom since 1999. of course, i spent most of spring semester 1999 holed up in my room, assiduously avoiding anything resembling a classroom, so you may consider this my first day as a student since, i don't know, my junior year? i guess. there is no microbiology lab tonight so i have been killing time. first i killed time eating a veggie burger, on a cold bun, in the cafeteria. now i am killing time in a computer lab. later i will kill time sitting on the floor in the hallway, reading william gibson. then i will learn some things about human anatomy, although i doubt i will learn anything since the first class is probably terminology.

seriously. microbiology involved a discussion of microorganism v macroorganism. also i like to say miCRObeeology, instead of MYcrobiOLogy. you should know that.

students, discuss: does my style when i am killing time improve upon my style when i am sitting at home with a cat on my feet, trying to come up with only perfect & inevitable words?