I: This chair

I've long since left behind whatever doubts I used to carry around that I shouldn't be in University. That ship has sailed, this is where I am and by and large I believe it is where I belong.

But that doesn't mean I always love it; there are times when I wish I were doing virtually anything else.

I've never thought of myself as a particularly smart person. I have plenty of evidence to support that. I'm smarter than dumb people, but dumber than smart people. A lot of the time in University I feel like I am out of my depth and when I strive to delve deeper I can't help but fall short. I keep trying to get to a place I feel is there in my mind, but I simply cannot access.

This semester has been one of my least favourites in all of my University experience. That includes last year's semester two, which was thoroughly hellish, but on my terms. This semester has felt lacking in stability and consistency. I have self-consciously fallen short keeping up in the readings in three of my four classes. In my Lit Theory exam this past week, I am sure I came off exactly like someone who attended the lectures and took notes but did not do the readings. It was a funny little exam, comprised entirely of short answers and IDs. Most of them, I could fathom or speak a little bit about. I must've gotten partial credit for everything, but some things are still clearly beyond me.

Everything in Literature Theory relates back to a lesson by Saussure in one of the early weeks of the course. The idea of "parole/langue" and the relation between "signifier/signified." Everything in Literature Theory relates to that lesson, and everything in the world seems to relate to that lesson. It became pretty clear to me after a few weeks that we weren't talking about literature at all, but how things are understood and represented. And that's cool. I actually feel I understand it. It's just hard to explain back (to someone who understands.) Ironically, that sort of phenomenon is a lot like the very thing we were studying. Sadly, I don't think my professor will grant leeway for meta-academic remarks like that.

It was one of three term tests I took this week. Earlier that day I wrote my Modern Drama exam. Funny how Lit Theory actually helped me understand that class better. In a sometimes awkward way, every play from the second half of the semester was about the same thing, construction of identity. Signified/signifier. Saussure. This time, I knew every single one of the identifications (doesn't mean all my observations were valid, only that they were largely accurate.) My essay was rushed. I have lingering disappointments with that because it was largely repetitive of the IDs, and the point I was going to make that a) did not related to the IDs and b) summed up my entire thought, I didn't have time to make. Well, it's over with. A lesson for next time. That point was going to be about Pygmalion, about the transformative properties of language, about how we are what we speak, and how we speak frames the way we are able to think about the world around us. But then again, I didn't get around the reading Pygmalion again, so whatever I'd have said would be a generalization and a misquote. I also wanted to comment on Jazz Singer as the first sound film and relating to the building of an identity, but as it stood I was out of time and nothing I said was original, and nothing I was going to say was original. Fucked it up. Living with the consequence.

So this semester has been one of the most frustrating for me as a student and yet one of the more valuable for me as a person. That doesn't mean it doesn't irritate me when every class suddenly starts to seem the same, and asking the big questions that seem somewhat detached from concerns of the material world I secretly yearn to address. I have spent my life in my imagination desperately trying to find a way back to reality. Most people go the other way.

I'm tired of problems of identity. That's what Short Story Collection was about too. I felt like I was suffering post-traumatic stress as Prof. Flynn was discussing Beckett. Suddenly I feel like I understand Beckett. That class has been even worse on my conscience than the others. Didn't feel bad not reading papers by Spivak and Derrida. Didn't feel bad skipping Playboy of the Western World and Mullato, although in hindsight they'd be valuable. It's my loss, however, that I haven't yet read Miguel Street.

I dropped the ball on those stupid online responses. They're not stupid, I'm stupid for not paying them the effort they required. I'm only human, and when I get home from school the last thing I want to do is log onto Blackboard and do more school. After Thursday I tend not to think about school until Sunday night, by which point the journals were two days past due, and late ones were not accepted. Two are still open. I don't feel like doing them yet. I was working all day, I am worn out (weak excuse.)

Final journal was worth 10%. Parameters of the assignment were vague. At one point she mentioned the possibility of getting creative, submitting collages or mix tapes, with at least a brief explanation of them. So I got creative. I wrote a story (based on an idea I'd already conceived for myself, polished by the Beckett lecture and embellished with some Hemingway and Munro ideas.) As far as the prose, it was not my best effort, but it served the dual purpose of being a story and an expression of my reactions to the stories we'd been studying. In it, a man is uncertain of who he is, years after a divorce, following a dream in which his ex wife was clutching onto his wrist. He awoke to find it was his own hand. He thinks about a conversation he had with his son earlier, worries they are becoming strangers. Heavy stuff. Heavy, vague, disaffected stuff. It's barely 1000 words.

I sent it along with a note analyzing in brief the influences of the course's writers on the story's theme and contents, and a note that it was largely open to interpretation. i also noted that I hoped it was appropriate for the assignment, although by now it's too late to worry about it though. What's done is done, and at least that much is done.

I called the story "The Reasons" both because it is evocative without saying anything explicitly, and because I was listening to the Weakerthans when I conceived of it. So there's that.

I have been walking a delicate balancing act in how I choose to apply, or ignore, these themes in my writing. I certainly would never want to be an ideological writer, I'm not certain enough in my ideas for that, I just want to write whatever I think will be amusing to people. There were times it seemed as though the new play would be "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense: The Play." Nietzsche could use more dick jokes.

The test for short-story is next Wednesday. I intend to complete the readings for that class by then, intend being the operative word.

Anyway. Though the question of "what is the self?" lingers in the air, my personal question is "why does it matter?" What did self-examination ever get anyone? I want to adopt a philosophy: If it can't get you paid, and it can't get you laid, it's not worth your thought. Shallow, but happy.

The other final I wrote was for film, a brief essay in class. We had 5 or 6 choices, most of the class including me chose the same one. I was dismayed at that because I usually pride myself in being different, but it was just too easy. I wish I'd done the one that involved the Karen Carpenter Story. That seemed so obscure and yet I enjoyed it and maybe could have worked with it. Instead I copped out and bullshitted my way through comparative depictions of masculinity in Tightrope and Halloween. My problem was, though some of the other films might have been more interesting to talk about, none of the questions struck me as much. I could've written about Heaven's Gate for hours, but the question was about "How is Heaven's Gate a western, how does it represents the view of America at this time?" and that was bullshit. The real important thing about Heaven's Gate was that it was epic fail. If I could've spent an hour outlining that fact and its implications I'd have earned a gold star.

Most of the other questions were similarly bogus.

Before I get back into "what I did this week" stuff, I'd like to note that oddly enough, the lecture in Lit Theory that spoke the most to me was Queer Theory. I say oddly enough because from the sound of it, I expected it mainly to be about analyzing works of literature from the perspective that all the characters are secretly gay. Shallow conception, I know, but no moreso than some feminists seeing anti-feminist messages in innocent stories (I have no examples of this, it may not exist, but I believe it does.) What it's really more about is underlining the concept that all people are different - not just men different from women but women different from women, blacks from blacks, gays from gays. And that gender, rather than a biological fact, is a performed construct. Gender is the reason I'm not wearing a dress right now, even though there's no biological reason I can't be. Far out.

I think my main problem is that I'm tired of learning what the man wants me to learn. I am not an intellectual or an academic, have no desire to be one or write like one, or write for one. I do not intend that my books should be studied in university classrooms, but then again I suspect Alan Moore, Ernest Hemingway and Jerome Kearn (Showboat) did not either. I bloody well know Hemingway didn't, and I wonder whether Prof. Flynn grasps the irony of nearly fetishizing an interview with him where he basically shits on the notion of doing exactly the kind of thing she gets paid to do with his work. I guess the jokes on him since she gets paid to do it. I guess I just wouldn't want to live with the notion that people were being taught that my work was meant to be understood this way, and that not grasping that is grounds for failure.

If someone tried to teach me that Questionable Content is about the construction of the beta-male identity in relation to the influence of female figures, I'd probably just say "It's about a dude who owns a porn-loving robot." This is probably why Jeph Jacques is not taught in University classrooms.

Yet.

The balance between the entertaining and the intellectual. The high and the low. The interior and the exterior. Fuck me, I've just spent the semester learning the same thing four times.

I saw Joe today before work. We commiserated and I gave him the brief version of this rant. He knows the score, he reads SWP, and so do you.

Nearly 3 AM. I should get to bed. Don't think too hard about anything I've said. That's the point.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto