Art makes eccentricity safe. Diane Ackerman
When I reached puberty I started having problems with my eccrentricity. Who didn't? Actually, I am aware of lots of people who didn't. They are the ones who when asked "Did you like High SchooL?" answer yes. I am never friends with those people since the are the ones that made my life a living hell back then. The deal was then that you had to be like everyone else and I tried but somehow it really didn't come together for me. I finally ended up with the other misfits, the baddies and the art nerds. I made wild synaptic leaps between the two groups. The artists won, thank god. I shudder to think of what would have happened to me if the bads would have stolen my soul. The bads were cynical and unhappy. Actually so were the artists, but they were cynical and unhappy in a deep meaningful way that led to creating art. The bads just drank and ran around in fast cars. The bads were rich. The artists were dazzled by the mystery in life (we weren't rich) and as Cioran says in A Short History of Decay......life is tolerable only by the degree of mystification we endow it with. I think if we were to study "Art" and could begin to understand the working of the quirky artist's brain we would learn a lot about how the brain perceives how it knows. Before language it was all images. Images are us. I guess this doesn't even begin to explain why bits of sodium and potassium (gatoraid actually) can make me different and why in being different I found a home in the arts but it does open the question and adds to the things I have to think about and solve before I stop listening to the prompting of those bits of electrochemicals.
When I am talking to myself am I having a monologue or a dialogue? Are we one or are we two? or are we both one and two?
Shunryu Suzuki, says "our body and mind are both two and one". But he was talking about the Zen mind. Is that a "normal mind". Are we all Zen?
When I reached puberty I started having problems with my eccrentricity. Who didn't? Actually, I am aware of lots of people who didn't. They are the ones who when asked "Did you like High SchooL?" answer yes. I am never friends with those people since the are the ones that made my life a living hell back then. The deal was then that you had to be like everyone else and I tried but somehow it really didn't come together for me. I finally ended up with the other misfits, the baddies and the art nerds. I made wild synaptic leaps between the two groups. The artists won, thank god. I shudder to think of what would have happened to me if the bads would have stolen my soul. The bads were cynical and unhappy. Actually so were the artists, but they were cynical and unhappy in a deep meaningful way that led to creating art. The bads just drank and ran around in fast cars. The bads were rich. The artists were dazzled by the mystery in life (we weren't rich) and as Cioran says in A Short History of Decay......life is tolerable only by the degree of mystification we endow it with. I think if we were to study "Art" and could begin to understand the working of the quirky artist's brain we would learn a lot about how the brain perceives how it knows. Before language it was all images. Images are us. I guess this doesn't even begin to explain why bits of sodium and potassium (gatoraid actually) can make me different and why in being different I found a home in the arts but it does open the question and adds to the things I have to think about and solve before I stop listening to the prompting of those bits of electrochemicals.
When I am talking to myself am I having a monologue or a dialogue? Are we one or are we two? or are we both one and two?
Shunryu Suzuki, says "our body and mind are both two and one". But he was talking about the Zen mind. Is that a "normal mind". Are we all Zen?
posted by Anne Coe | 7:42 AM
5 Comments:
There actually was another group of people, the intellectuals, who thought all the others were misfits. What was nice about being associated with them is that you didn't have to figure out how to conform with any one of the three groups--at least enough conformity to let the others in a particular group think you belonged. Nor did you really have to conform internally with the other intellectuals, as we were all so socially stupid we couldn't figure out what our image was.
When you say intellectual in high school it translates to nerds. Yes?
Nerds is the new word, isn't it? It is now "in" to be in the intellectual set, thanks to Bill Gates and his ilk. It did not used to be in, unless you wanted to be in the honor society, but then those in the honor society were also often the popular kids. So maybe the honor society was not really about honor.
So can I surmise by your comments, anonymous that you didn't like high school? The thing I didn't like about it is that they taught us stuff that I didn't care about and then made it really, really boring. If it hadn't been boring I probably would have loved it. On the rare occasions that I had good teachers (Literature, Drama, art) I made good grades and didn't ditch school. I went to 3 high schools too. That has something to do with it.
As you said, and ironically as a book I am just reading also says, no one likes high school. It is hell. I liked one class in current events, as it made me think about how we create political messes. An irony is that the teacher thought my name was Carol (it is not) and liked me so much she called on me (Carol) all the time. Finally, the last week of class I was day dreaming and she called on Carol and asked why I didn't answer. I finally told her "Because my name is not Carol." She was no longer my fan. I just thought it was sort of fun to be a Carol. It never entered my mind that class participation might have raised my grade, or at least Carol's grade.
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