I was flipping through some old Facebook statuses last night to find a link I posted back into 2008. Was it worth the search? Absolutely not. Most of my old posts from 2008 and 2009 contained me complaining about my workload as a freshman with my undergraduate studies. I scoured over different Andrew Gormans complaining about how difficult writing a paper for my fiction class was. What did I gain from projecting these complaints? Were these messages to the world the biggest problem I could put forth? My workload now is a lot heavier, but I don’t find any desire to broadcast it. Maybe this is because the academic work flow has become part of my actual process. I think we only complain when the pattern is new, or maybe breaks. Regardless, my work ethic in itself isn’t much different. Assignments are still left for the last minute and I spend the majority of my time in the West lounge, slacking with friends. There was a status in particular that came about right after my freshman year ended. There for the world to see, I boldly stated that, “I think that postmodernism is my calling.”
It received no comments, but I can just picture how many sets of eyes were rolling at this undergrad’s attempt to be an intellectual or something. I’ve always been concerned about the authenticity in my interest surrounding the subversion of metanarratives or pinpointing the intrinsic worth of the words in which we play with. What if this is just another façade? What drives somebody into something like postmodern theory if it isn’t just a scholastic trinket that they can pin onto their identity? In my own defense of self, I think I need to connect the dots.
Like all great things in my life, it began with The Matrix. I think it started late in high school. I wasn’t an academic, but I do remember watching the first Matrix film every single night for an entire summer. You’d think I was obsessed or something. I fell asleep to the VHS tape playing out gunfights between Neo and the Agents. I memorized lines, discussed the plot with anybody who was willing to listen, but more importantly, I started to push to find the significance behind this testosterone-laced hero’s journey. It wasn’t until I was a freshman in my current undergrad program that I purchased a copy The Matrix: Revisited. This was a documentary pressed after the success of the first film which presented an extensive overview of the film process in its entirety. It was in one of these segments that I first heard Keanu Reeves discuss the books he had to read before he was even allowed to pick up the script. The Wachowski Brothers had the cast reading works like Evolutionary Psychology and a canon of other major psych works. Also, they were asked to read Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulations. I wrote these down into a notepad with no idea as to how much it would affect the way in which I lived the rest of my life. Baudrillard put to words things I could only dream of trying to articulate—signs referencing signs and the steady decay of associated meaning. While Baudrillard is catalogued more closely with post-structuralism, his work is what kick-started me into the works of other theorists like Barthes, Foucault, and Derrida. I won’t even try to argue that I comprehend everything they put forth on a graduate level, but I’ve been on a steady path to pursue their work.
But this is just connecting the dots between influences, right? To what end does it serve to dwell on the patterns of academic interest? Sometimes I get worried that the ideas in my writing and my life are just plucked from these other theorists and exhausted for my own creative process. It can make one feel like a thief. If one’s only an imitator than how do they step into the role of the artist? (I hate the word ‘artist.’)
Recently, I uncovered some of my own artwork from high school. It wasn’t stashed away to be hidden from the world, but when I’m in my parent’s house I seldom go doffing through the past. However, in what has now become my friend’s room, hiding behind an old desk was a painting I finished in one of my art classes. I lacked any artist talent, but I think because I fit the mold, the public school system easily placed me in art. For four years. While I lack the ability to paint even the most basic stick figures, I was somewhat proud of what I completed with here.
When I held it in my hand, I could see that I divided the painting up into two sections, one reflexive of the other. On the top half, I painted the dark silhouette of a scarecrow caught in a sunset. He stood perched in a field with crows overhead. When flipped, the bottom half of the painting depicted the famous biblical crucifixion scene. Jesus stood nailed to the cross with the two other men on top of the rocks. They stood against a gray afternoon sky in the same stance the scarecrow did. Two symbols. Juxtaposition. When I held the slopping painting I felt a mild reassurance. For some reason, maybe out of a desperate attempt at idiosyncrasy, I was relieved to understand that I had begun hunting for the meaning on my own.
Stage Fright 