Inspiration and the Work of Being an Artist...

I work in short bursts of inspiration. Sometimes I feel I am nothing more than a sponge waiting for the Muse to enter me, to take control and direct my short bursts of genius. I chase the Muse, attempting to catch its attention. I wave my hands wildly, shouting, "Hey Muse, over here! Come visit me for a while! I'll buy you dinner!"

I was walking on campus today trying to justify why I am a Liberal Arts major at one of the top universities in the country. I felt like an imposter, as though I should not be here walking among the palm trees and hundred-year-old buildings and the "academics." Academians are physists and chemical engineers, botanists and doctors and dentists and veterinarians, graphic designers and computer programmers, archeologists and anthropologists and linguists and political scientists. They come to the university to learn a trade, a specific curriculum in a special field. I have come here to study English. I already know English, and so does everybody else-- so it leaves me feeling rather unsatisfied and doubtful that I have accomplished anything at all during my four year enrollment as a student of the English department.

Chemical engineers and scientists know chemical science AND they know how to read and write and speak. I am nothing special. There is no authority in the fact that I am an English major. It offers me nothing truly different or unique. I feel like I know nothing more useful than the average literate American.

Nobody will hire me because I am an English major. I didn't even study the useful aspects of English, such as grammar or editing. I studied literature and writing and rhetoric. And then, I didn't specialize in a field of literature. I am not a specialist in Medeival Literature or British Literature or Early American Literature, nor am I a top-notch Deconstructionist or specialist in literary theory. I am simply a person who has achieved only a simple understanding of a subject which I and every other literate person knew to begin with, before I ever came to college.

I am only slightly depressed about this. Somehow, somewhere, I feel like what I am doing is important. I feel this way because my heart tells me that this is what I am supposed to do. If this is what I am supposed to do, then maybe it will all make sense some day, but try telling that to an unemployable 23 year-old.

Our teachers spout all this cheap talk to us about how understanding literature is a powerful tool to understanding humanity and how understanding literature will help us develop tools to analyze our present culture and how understanding literature will develop us into demi-gods who know the elusive "truth" of the world. Well, that only makes me feel pompous and idiotic. Who am I to claim to know the "truth" of the world, and who even gives a damn if I do? Knowing the "truth" will not help me to solve the world's problems, it will not help me get elected U.S. President, it will not even get me a job as a secretary in a small company typing a balding sweaty man's dictation and memos.

It might get me a job as a teacher, but even this is not looking exciting as I face the hell of writing lesson plans actually objectifying what it is that I believe is important to teach people--because they make you do that, objectify everything. I prefer to live in an unobjectified world.

The truth is, I am still very confused about what I believe, and if I even believe that what I believe is important. The task of writing down and objectifying what I believe is daunting and formidable. I want to sit down and do it, but I don't even know where to begin. I have this haunting feeling, though, that if I don't do this I will continue to live in a muddy world of swirling half-developed ideas and false-starts. There is so much to believe... so many crooks and ninnies to explore, to give life to, to animate.

I'm losing faith in the power of literature as a tool to discovering "the truth." Who the hell knows what the truth is, and who even cares? I don't want to be a haughty English professor who thinks I have more of a grip on the world because I study literature. Actually, I think these people have LESS of a grip on the world since they live in their offices and analyze imaginary people in imaginary lives. As the daily concerns of living my life overwhelm the faculties of my brain, the idea of attempting to find the elusive truth of the world becomes less serious, more mocking, and rather silly. Who cares? My view of the world has become rather flippant indeed.

The sad fact is that the study of Literature comes around to the study of Philosophy, and I got a D in the only philosophy class that I ever took. I was completely overwhelmed and confused. NONE of it made sense to me. We read Barthes and Plato and Locke and I was lost in a sea of 17th century odd spellings and weird words. The concepts were obscure and abstract and my brain really couldn't wrap itself completely around them.

Have you ever tried to have a discussion with a Philosophy major? They are just as lost as us English majors. They have no idea what they are really talking about, or else they are just repeating what someone else said, and mangling it up pretty badly in the process. Who can ever attempt to know the "truth?" It's so impossible, why should we even bother? This has been the struggle of humanity for all time--we seem to think there is just one "thing" out there, floating in the ephemeral, and if we can just get our hands on it we can answer every riddle, solve every problem, unite the world in peace. English and Philosophy majors are wasting their lives trying to figure out an unanswerable riddle.

I don't think the truth exists. The only truth I know is that while my attempt to discover this truth is admirable, it has been mostly a waste. I have been to the bounds of the human mind on a guided tour thanks to UF and I have returned, and all that I am able to say is "don't worry about it, there's not too much to see. It's too dark. Return to your normal lives."

Ah, but it is the mystery that intrigues us.

Anyways, while I am trying to discover what it is that I believe, and while I go finish some schoolwork, I will be certain of one thing--writing is a skill, an art, and a beauty. Studying english is pointless unless you write, kind if like studying paintings verse actually painting them.

And there IS truth in literature when it teaches us about what it means to be human and how to be better humans. Art, and writing, is a reflection of morality. Whether creating visions of morality is important or not is another question for another day. Perhaps it is the most important question of our day.

I just don't know how I'm going to teach literature if I'm not allowed to preach to my students about morality, if I have to be objective. In all honesty, I see my position as a teacher more as a position of a preacher, which is probably a horrible thing to say if I want to work in the secular public school system. Oh well.
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On a happy note, I talked to Dr. New about doing an independent study with him over summer on Milton, and he said that would be viable. He then added that he was very impressed with my answers in class, that they were always very intelligent and that he could always count on me to answer the tougher questions he put forth. I was pleased that he noticed.