The following is the journal I turned in to Professor Moen and Aliotta in my trip to Prague and Krakow. They are pretty much the intended audience although in parentheses I address anyone reading this online.
Journal:Part 1
January 3rd
Today was mostly me laying around, feeling like hell, longing for sleep which came after a long wait in the airport, a miserable cab ride, and a slow check in.
The later half of the day was better. Dave took some of us to old town. I thought it was gorgeous. Dinner was a lot of fun too. Due to procrastination there isn't much more about today for me to say.
January 4th
This day was a large improvement on the one before it although I still felt weak. I can't remember the early part of the day too well. The walk with Dr. Sedlakova was interesting. i was surprised that the architecture was derived from Gothic through Baroque and at first I did not know why. later it hit me that it was the graffiti and stores which seem to altar Pragues aesthetic. i thought to myself how could someone vandalize a building that so many people over centuries worked to maintain. This day was more aesthetically and emotionally stimulating than philosophically. i appreciated this because it gave my later thoughts a backdrop.
Later that night I began reading "A Brief History of Czechoslovakia" and the backdrop ground what I read in a way that made it more real than history classes back home. I found the history I learned to be somewhat of a relief. I could tell my ignorence of central and eastern Europe was beginning to thaw. I felt excited about being in Prague to a much further extent than the day before.
January 5th and a few more days after that
Today is the day that got the wheels turning, or atleast put the car in ignition. Dr. Aliotta's presentation on power was interesting. It went over concepts I hadn't thought much about. Habitual power got me thinking about the tyranny of the majority. I think of habit often as a failure of imagination. I remember the gut hostility I felt when confronted with views I could not comfortably cope with when I was younger like solipsism and atheism. I couldn't accept the idea that we are isolated to our experience alone because I was all to familiar with the shortcomings of relativism. I desperately wanted a absolute truth. Now I have learned to see things in less black and white terms but it was a painful process. I didn't want to give up an ideal that I could no longer justify. So how can you get a large body of people to imagine new perspectives, and break away from the habit of avoiding pain. This I believe can be a greater challenge when you are in a dominant group. To criticize oneself would be to criticize others and people now a days are too P.C., relativistic, and self absorbed. Not to mention the fact that it's painful to be in a short of ones ideal. I imagine it's easier to change yourself into thinking things are right when their not than to try and do something about it.
The realization for me was the discovery of pluralism which has aided me ethically, philosophically, and artistically. The discussion was very close in our second meeting to an argument I had with my grandfather. He voiced his intolerance of atheist, "they have no moral obligation without a higher power of some sort.....what do they swear on in court?" My father and I flipped out (which sucks because my grandfather is a brilliant man and this is the only time I have seriously opposed him. Throughout my life he has opened me up philosophically and without him I don't imagine I would have been in Prague taking this class or in philosophy in general). I tried to use an article by Sartre and a chapter in denOuden's book on Nietzsche where new moral constructs which are not based in religious doctrine are necessary. The argument was good preparation for class discussion. I found the tention between law and morality both interesting and troubling. I feel like our moral sense may always be ahead leaving some casualties of outdated law unavoidable. But the faster and more efficiently our formal constructs grow with our rights, the fewer casualties there have to be. The big revelation for me was that both absolutism and relativism reduce everything to power relationships. No truth excuses negative behavior and the absolute Truth brings dialogue, our formal government, culture and freedoms to a halt. Both extremes result in alienating masses of people and the possibility of dehumanizing them. I learned as Barnes stated, that like any good composition, in law both stability and novelty are necessary.
I'm not clear on which night we went to the jazz club but the necessity for both stability and novelty came up again. Lets just say the band was heavy on the stability and lacking in the novelty. In other words, boring.
From here on I will loose chronology because it is to time consuming. Prague castle and the cathedral were gorgous but the little pale colored, snow covered buildings along the winding roads really moved me. One picture I took begs to be painted. The use of design architectually in place of hard shadows (which if you have ever been to Italy you know are everywhere) was really cool. The class discussion continued to be better and better. I have a new found interest in phenomenology. In addition to the readings I was struck by Sokol and Kohak's different, but excellent solutions to educational issues. In Sokol, obligation as opposed to entitlement, and in Kohak the relationship between inspiration/emotional intellegence/intuition and founded philosophical stances. Both attitudes I think suit pluralism well. It is a good alternative to the Pc, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, over specialized, fragmented, and ultimately alienating experience of school I have been through.
I've also grown to enjoy discussing philosophy with my classmates. It is a huge help in trying to digest it all. I am perpetually overwhelmed. I often wonder how much professional philosophers have and have not read, and what was sacrificed to have time for it. I know one thing, I read much faster than I did a year ago. But on the topic of discussion, Dan Push and Willie are great for conversation. We discussed whether religious institutions/governing could co-exist with pluralism. I don't think so. At least not as long as religion dictates individuals morality. Dan H is great to talk to as well but its easier to maintain a heated discussion with the other two. I think its because Dan H is coming from a very different field than myself. (that's actually not it. It's just that Dan's process of philosophical discussion, as he described to me, is often first arguing and then working his way down to a collaborative inquiry.) For the most part, we all share a pretty similar attitude about many issues.
(I apologize to anyone reading the following paragraph who is unfamiliar with Pierce. It is probably not too easy to make sense of. And for those of you familiar with Pierce I fear it isn't much better written than his own. For this, I also apologize)
The discussion on Pragmatism has also made me come to a much greater appreciation of Peirce and his semiotics. All of this has affected my art by making me far more aware of the relationship between myself, my art, the content of my art, and the audience. There is a complex web of relationships but to be brief I recognize that a painting of an apple is a sign of that object and shaped by my perception (so it is also a sign of me) and the emotional reaction is an interpretant. It just hit me that the emotional reaction to any work is based in stages and habit as the interpretent in Peirce and changing habit has been a process of changing myself by reflecting on my work which reflects me. It is like this time i played guitar and sang but could not hit the key till my friend joined me. i couldn't sing to the guitar directly (seeing as I was concentrating on playing it) but could sing to her singing to the guitar. I don't know, loose example. Thinking of art as a sign rather than a definite thing allows room for a variety of interpretants. Here is a diagram:
(and there would be one like the one I drew in my notebook here if I was on a windows and could draw it on paint so I will try to explain it. The artist and his relationship to the artwork which when comeplete because an object of it's own as opposed to a sign of it's content creates an interpretent. The viewer and the artwork also have their own interpretent. So here we have two interpretations of the work.)
This way the work is a common experience while the painter and various viewers still hold on to their individual experience. The ultimate experience of a work is a marriage of the two. It is a pluralistic balance denied by the militant literalism of much contemporary art. Anyways this is all exciting to me.
I want to write more, but I better hand this to you.
Journal: Part 2
The past few days have been discomforting but all the more valuable experiences. This should come as little surprise to me. Every time I have traveled there has been discomfort. It is usually social but this time it is philosophical discomfort. I am going through some changes on levels that feel more foundational to the rest of my ideas.
Journal:Part 1
January 3rd
Today was mostly me laying around, feeling like hell, longing for sleep which came after a long wait in the airport, a miserable cab ride, and a slow check in.
The later half of the day was better. Dave took some of us to old town. I thought it was gorgeous. Dinner was a lot of fun too. Due to procrastination there isn't much more about today for me to say.
January 4th
This day was a large improvement on the one before it although I still felt weak. I can't remember the early part of the day too well. The walk with Dr. Sedlakova was interesting. i was surprised that the architecture was derived from Gothic through Baroque and at first I did not know why. later it hit me that it was the graffiti and stores which seem to altar Pragues aesthetic. i thought to myself how could someone vandalize a building that so many people over centuries worked to maintain. This day was more aesthetically and emotionally stimulating than philosophically. i appreciated this because it gave my later thoughts a backdrop.
Later that night I began reading "A Brief History of Czechoslovakia" and the backdrop ground what I read in a way that made it more real than history classes back home. I found the history I learned to be somewhat of a relief. I could tell my ignorence of central and eastern Europe was beginning to thaw. I felt excited about being in Prague to a much further extent than the day before.
January 5th and a few more days after that
Today is the day that got the wheels turning, or atleast put the car in ignition. Dr. Aliotta's presentation on power was interesting. It went over concepts I hadn't thought much about. Habitual power got me thinking about the tyranny of the majority. I think of habit often as a failure of imagination. I remember the gut hostility I felt when confronted with views I could not comfortably cope with when I was younger like solipsism and atheism. I couldn't accept the idea that we are isolated to our experience alone because I was all to familiar with the shortcomings of relativism. I desperately wanted a absolute truth. Now I have learned to see things in less black and white terms but it was a painful process. I didn't want to give up an ideal that I could no longer justify. So how can you get a large body of people to imagine new perspectives, and break away from the habit of avoiding pain. This I believe can be a greater challenge when you are in a dominant group. To criticize oneself would be to criticize others and people now a days are too P.C., relativistic, and self absorbed. Not to mention the fact that it's painful to be in a short of ones ideal. I imagine it's easier to change yourself into thinking things are right when their not than to try and do something about it.
The realization for me was the discovery of pluralism which has aided me ethically, philosophically, and artistically. The discussion was very close in our second meeting to an argument I had with my grandfather. He voiced his intolerance of atheist, "they have no moral obligation without a higher power of some sort.....what do they swear on in court?" My father and I flipped out (which sucks because my grandfather is a brilliant man and this is the only time I have seriously opposed him. Throughout my life he has opened me up philosophically and without him I don't imagine I would have been in Prague taking this class or in philosophy in general). I tried to use an article by Sartre and a chapter in denOuden's book on Nietzsche where new moral constructs which are not based in religious doctrine are necessary. The argument was good preparation for class discussion. I found the tention between law and morality both interesting and troubling. I feel like our moral sense may always be ahead leaving some casualties of outdated law unavoidable. But the faster and more efficiently our formal constructs grow with our rights, the fewer casualties there have to be. The big revelation for me was that both absolutism and relativism reduce everything to power relationships. No truth excuses negative behavior and the absolute Truth brings dialogue, our formal government, culture and freedoms to a halt. Both extremes result in alienating masses of people and the possibility of dehumanizing them. I learned as Barnes stated, that like any good composition, in law both stability and novelty are necessary.
I'm not clear on which night we went to the jazz club but the necessity for both stability and novelty came up again. Lets just say the band was heavy on the stability and lacking in the novelty. In other words, boring.
From here on I will loose chronology because it is to time consuming. Prague castle and the cathedral were gorgous but the little pale colored, snow covered buildings along the winding roads really moved me. One picture I took begs to be painted. The use of design architectually in place of hard shadows (which if you have ever been to Italy you know are everywhere) was really cool. The class discussion continued to be better and better. I have a new found interest in phenomenology. In addition to the readings I was struck by Sokol and Kohak's different, but excellent solutions to educational issues. In Sokol, obligation as opposed to entitlement, and in Kohak the relationship between inspiration/emotional intellegence/intuition and founded philosophical stances. Both attitudes I think suit pluralism well. It is a good alternative to the Pc, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, over specialized, fragmented, and ultimately alienating experience of school I have been through.
I've also grown to enjoy discussing philosophy with my classmates. It is a huge help in trying to digest it all. I am perpetually overwhelmed. I often wonder how much professional philosophers have and have not read, and what was sacrificed to have time for it. I know one thing, I read much faster than I did a year ago. But on the topic of discussion, Dan Push and Willie are great for conversation. We discussed whether religious institutions/governing could co-exist with pluralism. I don't think so. At least not as long as religion dictates individuals morality. Dan H is great to talk to as well but its easier to maintain a heated discussion with the other two. I think its because Dan H is coming from a very different field than myself. (that's actually not it. It's just that Dan's process of philosophical discussion, as he described to me, is often first arguing and then working his way down to a collaborative inquiry.) For the most part, we all share a pretty similar attitude about many issues.
(I apologize to anyone reading the following paragraph who is unfamiliar with Pierce. It is probably not too easy to make sense of. And for those of you familiar with Pierce I fear it isn't much better written than his own. For this, I also apologize)
The discussion on Pragmatism has also made me come to a much greater appreciation of Peirce and his semiotics. All of this has affected my art by making me far more aware of the relationship between myself, my art, the content of my art, and the audience. There is a complex web of relationships but to be brief I recognize that a painting of an apple is a sign of that object and shaped by my perception (so it is also a sign of me) and the emotional reaction is an interpretant. It just hit me that the emotional reaction to any work is based in stages and habit as the interpretent in Peirce and changing habit has been a process of changing myself by reflecting on my work which reflects me. It is like this time i played guitar and sang but could not hit the key till my friend joined me. i couldn't sing to the guitar directly (seeing as I was concentrating on playing it) but could sing to her singing to the guitar. I don't know, loose example. Thinking of art as a sign rather than a definite thing allows room for a variety of interpretants. Here is a diagram:
(and there would be one like the one I drew in my notebook here if I was on a windows and could draw it on paint so I will try to explain it. The artist and his relationship to the artwork which when comeplete because an object of it's own as opposed to a sign of it's content creates an interpretent. The viewer and the artwork also have their own interpretent. So here we have two interpretations of the work.)
This way the work is a common experience while the painter and various viewers still hold on to their individual experience. The ultimate experience of a work is a marriage of the two. It is a pluralistic balance denied by the militant literalism of much contemporary art. Anyways this is all exciting to me.
I want to write more, but I better hand this to you.
Journal: Part 2
The past few days have been discomforting but all the more valuable experiences. This should come as little surprise to me. Every time I have traveled there has been discomfort. It is usually social but this time it is philosophical discomfort. I am going through some changes on levels that feel more foundational to the rest of my ideas.
The discomfort began with the gallery visits with Jana. I have no desire to go into it but the experience made two things clear to me. 1, The deconstruction of values in both craftsmanship and aesthetics have sadly crossed the Atlantic. 2, Even philosophers are suckered into the garbage of the late 20th century (only knowing how to experience things literally as opposed to the visual language of line, form, color, exc. and the emotions these produce) and philosophy or "philosophic" thought may be largely to blame. Sigh, see here I am overstating myself because I am angry. Let me rephrase that, " and half ass philosophy or poor philosophic thought which does not take into account all sorts of human experience may be largely to blame."
It was the first time I ever felt at odds with philosophy because the kind of thinking it required tries to verbalize and liberalize what can't be said in words and misses the mark. As Barnes has said many times in class, confusing our models for reality (a concept which has left an incredible impact on how I look at the world). I'd say a good philosopher must realize the limitations of even their own conceptual models and we all have to make models because they make us able to function in the world. One issue I always have is that I find a greater objectivity than what has been argued by non artist because they have not experienced the fundamental principles behind good art and can't even begin to come up with a concept that justifies it. They argue (postmodernism) that everyone experiences everything differently but lack the experience to know just how different and importantly how similar. That intimacy and knowledge comes with practicing the craft, and trusting the experience of others, as opposed to passing it all up to social class, gender, exc. To be put simply, a philosophical text on art, even ones that are really good, are not art, and can't replace that experience. So with that, I think good philosophy is philosophy where the individual who writes it isn't afraid to get his hands dirty working with the content and to spend a long time at it. One huge issue now in the way art is taught in the U.S. is that you have so many teachers who are not working artist. I think the same goes for any field that tries to comment on another. It is now another reason I appreciate this trip. Learning this material in a classroom simply would not cut it. But being in the Czech Republic is an experience which sparks the curiosity and brings the material so much closer. I worry about the increasingly specialized nature of jobs (and the specialized nature of the Czech University system) that the sensitive nature of one occupation, one field, one philosophical standpoint, one anything, commenting or brushing shoulders with another (as politics did with philosophy in our course) may fall victim increasingly to fragmentation and models confused with reality. These clean cut divisions in fields and schools of thought are artificial and in order to have a pluralistic world a much more honest, hands on understanding of others and their work must be made. It isn't enough to simply respond to the idea of something, you must respond to it as it exist in the world of experience.
In a sense my negative response to a lot of Czech art has done this to some degree for me. I have become increasingly aware of how others perceive art though my classmates. Their lack of understanding and doubtfulness of mine brings about a hostility in me. How can you make a generalization like that Miguel? I'm not making a generalization thats just generally how it works! I must say though that this too is an overstatement because my classmates are extremely intelligent individuals who listen to others when they speak. My hostility is more-so them from time to time reminding me of the masses of bullshit I've dealt with my whole life.
A huge part of this hostility comes from being told that my experience is obsolete. I'm sick of the emphasis on "relevance" in our culture. What the hell is that? As long as someone is moved by a work, it is relevant. The words "old fashioned" came up repeatedly and the evasion of it. It was as if everyone thought they knew all there was to know and experienced all there was to experience about pre-20th, no pre late 20th century art. AI argued to Willie and Dan that the 19th century had a great deal of variety. Just because a neoclassicist and a impressionist both painted a landscape doesn't mean that the handling of the paint, the gesture, the emotion, the philosophical standpoints, and even the content itself is similar. It's only the subject that's similar and that kind of knee jerk reaction is another example of seeing the model of something (a grassy field) as opposed to experiencing what it is.
I am so damn sick of sterile white walls full of shitty artwork (if you can even call it that) where there are no aesthetics just half-ass philosophies and justifications you have to read in order to get anything and often still nothing out of the work. It is ugly and it robs us of our humanity. Through the arts we have the ability to express and communicate a vast array of experiences which can't be done in words so why not use them! Thank god we've gone out and heard music and stuff despite the complacency of some of my classmates. You can't say everything there is to be said in words alone. In Unbearable Lightness of Being Sabina says that beauty is in refuge from the world and I agree with her.
This reminds me of an experience in Krakow at one of the churches/ At times I have wanted to crumble all world religions to the ground and reconstruct new and improved constructs in their place. The only thing that ever opposes this is the feeling I get in a place of religious worship. I have gotten it in some museums but never in the sterile contemporary galleries. Willie said that beauty cant be separated from the institution when it came to religion but I know different. I can do it to an extent but on a social level he may be right. I fear that when (if) the world ever reforms into the world I wish for, the world I'm willing to fight for, it will be too sterile for beauty. When my friends went in the church they thought of their Christian upbringings and felt oppression, where I saw dedication, craft, beauty, an aesthetic silence, a religious one that whispered in my ear liberation!
Perhaps I have found a new task. To preserve religious beauty and the weight of life in art, for the secular world. You may walk in a gallery and see bad art and think oh well thats disappointing and get on with life. i on the other hand think of the individuals I know including myself who want to put a little beauty, and humanity in the world, but can't because we aren't what the world thinks is relevant. There are so many artist in the world today and so I wonder why galleries look so much the same from Chelsea to Prague. It's that Sterile quality. The lack of humanity in it. It's a festering infection.
I know what the cause of this is. It is the media in the general sense. I will not go into great detail seeing as I have had a long conversation about it with Professor Moen and do not wish to over do it. I will try and put it as plainly and efficiently as I can. The root of my hostility towards feminism I've discovered comes out of the competitive nature of my field. When I see bad art being sold because it is "feminist" it makes me bitter for all of us sincere artist who have no crutch or gimmick to sell, only the hard work of trying to excel at our crafts. I say crutch or gimmick because the word feminist art as well as african-american art or gay and lesbian art or outsider art or anything else is that is supposedly anti-establishment is slapped on like a name brand to work that is the establishment. And who is to decide that this art is relevant art? It is all those other than the artist who profit from it. That is after-all how you climb up the latter. And this is done through the media which chooses what can be sensationalized, not what is worthwhile. The loudest statement is not always the best statement so the "relevance" of a work ultimately comes down to its profitability. Before this most other arguments are fronts. So what happens to the genuine feminist amongst the other hard working artist who rely upon their craft. Well as I stated the best feminist I know don't identify with the term, and we are all together at the lower levels of the art market.
And when i think about it, I know artist who are sincere and make great livings, and live happy lives. So what is it that I really want. It isn't money, and it is barely fame. What I want is history. When people look back on the time in which I live I want them to know that there were people who felt deeper, worked harder, and had things to say that were not sensational enough for the media, but worthwhile. I don't want my experience of the world to be tossed away as something obsolete and irrelevant. This is one reason I kind of hate art history. It over generalizes. I'm sure there are others like me. Others who feel that their life, their world, their voice, is deserving and fear that it will be drowned out by the endless passing of fads and novelties.
I am sure this applies to other crafts as well. I wonder to what extent it works this way in philosophy. I'm certain that in politics profit comes before quality, efficiency, and skill in far too many cases. So I have been thinking lately that this too is something to fight against. It is another area where there needs to be a new system.
My interview with Tomaz Vlcek who is in charge of the collection at the Museum of Modern Art left me with an odd feeling. he was very insightful but did not really give the kind of answers I was looking for. I think it was due to the lack of relevance in my questions. I learned that the Czechs were not as into expressionism as the Germans so finding work that directly relates to the politics of the times will be difficult. What I did learn though was that there isn't a common spirit of the time which Vlcek called an illusion. Instead there are parallels of thought. I brought up Hussrel and whether he was influential. He said that it was a broader influence due to Czech nationalism. The art world was also greatly affected by population loss during the German occupation and the immigration of many Czech artist, musicians, philosophers, and intellectuals during the Soviet occupation. There is also as we know through reading "A Cup of Coffee with My Interrogator" and "Largo Desolato" the means of controlling peoples ability to express themselves under the Communist regime. He stated that the new gallery system since the velvet revolution hasn't quite worked out all the kinks since they are now dependent upon private funding as opposed to everything being controlled by the state. After this interview and looking through the gallery I realized that I will have to radically change my approach to my paper. I have often said "I want my work to be the social change, but not necessarily about social change." I'm getting the humbling feeling that this viewpoint may not be so novel. In the Czech Republic, from the work I have seen, this seems to be the case. So my paper will have to be more on the institutional history of the arts more-so than the individual expression of the artist. I'm not sure how I feel about this. More research is necessary. Who knows, I may do something completely different. I still have a lot of reading left to do. It is overwhelming.
Auschwitz and Birkenau had an impact on me, as they would anyone who is open to the weight of such an experience. I have been asked about it many times and every time I have little to say. It feels strained and almost disrespectful because detached from the reality of it, in common conversation, it makes it unreal. You have to use your words delicately so as not to turn a tragedy into something entertaining. It gives me a bit of a headache when asked about it. It's the same headache I had while there. What I do feel more comfortable talking about with people is how can the world go on the way it has in the past 60 years after such a tragedy? How can the world know a tragedy this great and let it happen again? How can people sit back completely indifferent to the genocide that recently occurred in Darfur? Why is popular music so self absorbed with songs about "myself" instead of "the self" when so much is happening in the world? I know some of the answers because I am at times guilty of it myself. It's that hopelessness, that distance, following the path of least resistance, and the fact that our lives are so occupied with so much junk, who has the time to care? I want to do a massive painting of the gas chamber. A mural really. Figures in desperation, prayer, horror, looking introverted, looking to one another, clutching their children, scratching to get out, all facing what they know will be the last moments of their life. Maybe I'll update it to a scene in Darfur. I want to do this painting to show the sheer preciousness of life (all my paintings I want to show the sheer preciousness of life) and the vulgarity of our culture and our media and our own failure to recognize the truth about the human condition; the bliss, the tragedy, the struggle, the intensity of life in a pure state so that the viewer walks away feeling cleansed, uplifted, and alive. This does not have to be done "dramatically" either. I put dramatic in quotations because it can be the drama of a wilted flower, or of a snow covered patch of ground, or simply the color blue melting into a subdued violet. Those are dramas too, they are relevant, they matter. So I want to move forward with no sarcasm, no irony, no mean spirited wit, no cowardice. I want, dare I say it!, sincerity. How pitiful it is to live in a culture that fears sentimentality. I refuse to. I want my work to be brave. I have to be brave.
A lot of people say that the arts are useless in such matters. Bob Dylan, my hero, even said a song can't change the world. And he is right that art can't do it alone. You need institutions that facilitate positive actions in the world. But those institutions need a culture that is moved by it. The most important thing I learned in Barnes class while reading Aristotle was that every form of governing is corruptible. It is the people involved who carry the responsibility of maintaining it and corruption will come if the institution is left alone. I've heard my friends in the Roosevelt Institution say repeatedly that people have to much trust in the system. So I think change for the better is a cooperative effort between many different fields. We need formal changes to occur undoubtedly but at the same time we need cultural change to occur to get people to take advantage of those formal changes and to support and tend to them. No system is perfect, no law can ever fully take into account the complexity of our moralities but so long as we keep working progress can be made. So this is where I feel my role as an artist comes in (and hopefully not the only role I take on in my life). If I can contribute to the bettering of our culture, if I can offer an alternative to the way the media has made pornography out of the human condition, if I can inspire people to experience a greater depth of life, I can hopefully make a tiny bit of difference in the world. Hell Bob Dylan did it for me along with Rembrandt, Mark Rothko, and my teachers I have been fortunate enough to have in grade school, high school, the philosophy department, and in the art school. Big huge shifts in culture involve movement at all levels. My high school administration didn't support a lot of the things my teachers taught me which led to me being here and who I am today. So again, don't rely on the institution alone. To learn to draw the figure at 16 I had to pretend to be a college student and sit in on sessions at the local university. To learn about human rights we went to Czechoslovakia and turned our gaze back towards the United States. You must have experiences outside of the institution at times in order to think of new possibilities. It takes the responsibility of individuals who care. This is why I want to be an art teacher. I don't only want to help create a generation that is of great skill but also of great responsibility.
I apologize if you are weary of my ramblings about art. It is not out of any negligence towards the significance of politics and philosophy in this course but to the contrary. I have been moved and shaped by our studies, and am just trying to get the rest of my life to catch up. I have no plans of pursuing philosophy academically (outside of school I plan on continuing to read it diligently for the rest of my life) and that worries me. I know I want to be a painter, and that I want to get my masters and probably will teach art, and I know that studying philosophy has shaped how I will do that, but I guess I just don't want to let it go. I hope that if I keep on reading, keep on finding people to talk about it with, that it will still be hugely relevant in my life and in my work. Increasingly though, i fear loosing it, and imagine more and more what if I had more time? What if I could have gotten the full major? What would it be like at a graduate level? I don't know. I'll just keep on reading and writing no matter what I pursue professionally.
Overall I have to thank my classmates and faculty for how great this experience was as well. There were so many good conversations. It got to be exhausting. The discipline required to carry on any one of our many conversations is lost to most people I've met, particularly in common dialogue. But with these guys it just never ended. It was wonderful. I can't believe we could maintain a state of thoughtfulness for that long. It's a wonder we didn't go crazy from it. It was nice speaking my mind, being listened to, understood and responded to. At home I'm used to feeling like I'm talking to a brick wall which has allowed for me to develop a bad habit of getting a rise out of people for the sake of conversation. In school I'm used to being singled out or alienated by so called compliments like "your smart" and "god I don't think I could have the patience for that kind of work." It's like "gee thanks but if you just told me what was on your mind that would be so much better." Well none of that on this trip. It's hard to say where class ended and socializing began. There wasn't the abrupt shift, the feeling of sinking that came from talking about things that matter to bullshit. Even when we joked around and really did talk about bullshit it felt appropriate because it was the end of the day and not forced onto people when they honestly have something on their minds. So thank you class and faculty for this wonderful experience. I just hope I can retain it all.
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