DAY 060 – DESIGNING DANGEROUSLY

Fraudulence

I was in a meeting this week, which in and of itself is not extraordinary. A senior faculty member wasn’t there, was missing, and became the butt of a pretty scathing joke. I don’t have any love lost with this particular faculty member, but I was filled with pity for someone who so clearly was sliding toward irrelevance more quickly than they could imagine. Someone who had already lost credibility with their colleagues and only has a limited amount of time until the students see as well.

Teaching art is difficult. Or rather, keeping the soul of an artist and working in academia is challenging. We are so quickly reduced, delineated as performance statistics, credit loads, sorted into bins of “tenurable” or “are you happy here?” We are ground down by institution, offered the illusion of safety to trade in our artist’s heart to be miniature administrators. To be little cogs in a big machine.

Here’s my theory: most teenagers develop a heightened sense for sniffing out bullshit. They see the compromises their parents make, the hypocrisy, the settling. They see these adults no longer as heroes, but as tragic, small persons not even at the center of their own story.

Once these teenagers go to college, they have a new set of adult heroes to emulate, to look up to for wisdom, so much more savvy and less provincial than their parents, stuffed full of knowledge and happy to conjure poetry.

This relationship follows the same arc, just in a much more compressed, and often a quieter format. There are no slammed doors or “I hate you”’s, there are no tears. There is just, typically 2.5 or 3 years in, an awakening, a sniffing out of the same bullshit, the same stink of fear on a mentor. The realization the emperor has no clothes. A fall from the pedestal. The professor’s house is no longer exotic or a puzzle piece in constructing a full view, it is safe or slummy or pedantic.

I have attempted to walk this balance, but I have come to a crossroads where I must hop off or grasp on so tightly that it will compromise who I am. I hope that I have been quick to acknowledge my trepidations, my failures, my too few answers and too many questions. I hope I have brought those forward to you, students, in a productive way. We are all making this up. I have worked hard to educate, not just to administer information, but to speak to your hearts as well as your minds, to the best, most earnest parts of you.

What does it make me if I encourage you to follow your path and chase after what is true, but sell my birthright for a hunk of bread and a bowl of stew? I cannot put both feet in, I will not be a tiny cog. I would not be able to continue to look you all in the eyes and teach the things I believe. This does not make me a hero. It feels as though the hero would find a way to do both, to stick it out, overcome, beat the system. This is not that story. As absurd as it sounds, stepping away from the regular paycheck into something completely unknown for me and my family is terrifying. And I don’t know if I will succeed, but I’ve got to try.

I carry many of you in my heart. I cannot tell you how deeply it grieves me to leave, but it wouldn’t serve you well if I stayed.

How do we have different connotations for “sold out” and “sell out”? For the artist, are the two not the same?