The Search is what everyone would undertake if he were not stuck in the everydayness of his own life. To be aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
In a certain sense, it’s absurd to go to school for such a search, to be told by folks in a position of rather arbitrary authority whether or not you’re onto something, when in fact one knows if he’s onto something with or without the help of bitter old folks who’d rather be truly onto something themselves instead of deciding if younger, brighter things are onto something.
Medical students must be medical students to become doctors, they can’t simply like medicine, a lot. Generals must be first be captains and then majors before they can command armies, they can’t simply like commanding men, a lot. Artists, too, must be tested I suppose. To teach the others, to earn a living, we must first be taught.
In the end, it’s an opportunity (schooling oneself in art, that is) to be inundated with the devotion toward that “something” which someone may or may not be onto, as an artist. Although, those considering such an opportunity (to acquire a Master’s degree in Fine Arts) should know that the details of such an endeavor do not necessarily include ample time in one’s studio, or expansive room for one’s thoughts to develop, with or without devotion. No, the opportunity is namely a chance to be examined endlessly – to try and be onto something while folks of all sorts, invited and uninvited, smart or otherwise, try and tell you whether or not you’re onto something. Because that’s their job. And nobody wants to fail at his or her job. Yet, after nearly twenty-one years of constant education, I’ve found no correlation between an educator’s sense of despair and his or her failure as an educator. That is to say, there’s plenty of bad teachers who seem to be happy with themselves.
Instead of despair resting with the instructor, it is something given from the educator to the educated, as a warning, as a threat, as a bitter little pill. To be swallowed and absorbed, so that he might also one day educate. He (in this case, me) has no interest in swallowing. He is onto something, for certain.
Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do so.
Bertrand Russell
I still want to teach people, and that’s why I came here. There is so much that I have learned. And to be fair this institution has provided me with two or three characters I consider life treasures. But the institution has taught me even more when I’ve decided not to listen. Foremost, that I can be a teacher without a class, and an artist without a brush. I like my life every day for reasons unrelated to what the tuition affords me. I like the work, and i like my friends. But I stay here only because I’ve already paid (and lost) so very much, and because I’ve no other place to go. Money’s just money, and one should always know when to cut his losses rather than losing on and on.
If there is just one thing I could tell the ambitious folks that are younger than I, one first lesson, it is that school’s never out, and you never have to go. No matter who teaches you, and no matter where, you have the rest of your life to realize that aside from grace, it’s only your own initiative that will truly get you what you want or need. In the meantime, everything costs.
If you want to be onto something, go someplace and be on it.