APOLOGIA

APOLOGIA
To Students in My Courses.

That's some high-brow non-sense.

Are you trying to say that becoming a liberal artist
allows you some high and enlightened shit? What
are we ever talking about in this class?

Nothing at all, because we are above having a
subject or point to our ramblings; everything we
spit out is pure gold.

I do not consider when I can't hold a train of
thought to be one of my strong points.

Not to be conflated collapsed or confused with liberal arts:
a difference that makes a difference.
That's some bullshit!

Good & Decent Response to my
“Meta-Sustainability & the
Economic Crisis” (2/21/09)

Imagine a context where confusion is an asset.
Stunned Stupid—a pre-requisite for study.
Being At HOME with indeterminacy and uncertainty:
a renewable resource. Imagine a context where not
being able to hold a train of thought might be a
strong point. An advantage, even.

This would NOT be the context or environment
of your regular liberal arts rigor—your major and
your minor disciplinary approach to physics and
chem., math and bio, social science or psyche-olgy,
literature or theology —or even, I bet, philosophy,
though you might think that’s what I’m talking about.

It would require a shared context where terminal
clarity and success are seen as dubious in-the-box
benefits, liabilities even (been there, done that)—
where the whole idea is to find the edge: where
ambiguity and indeterminacy are values— contra-
diction and paradox (as Neils Bohr declares): signs
of progress in progress—where not holding on too
tightly to a train-of-thought and enjoying it is an
achievement.

Scandalous. an offense to the conscientious and
ludicrous to the savvy: the idea of confusion as
asset, stunned stupidity as resource. Ridiculous.

Resist it like sin, like 3 little pigs & BB WOLF.
a homeland security issue, preserving my brick
house and trains of thought & directional
navigational algorithms (dna).

I’m not kidding.

This is why I’m apologizing.

The dominant paradigm in institutionalized
education and thru-out: clarity, accuracy,
determinacy, consistency, predictability,
on-track trains of thought, syllabi-driven
thesis-validating, pre-supposition-confirming,
say what we’re going to do, do it, say what
we did: who’s got a problem with THAT?
Makes good common fix-it sense.

So my zero-based start-up from old scratch
each class re-inventing wheels going round
and round toward frontiers yet unknown,
constellating digressive and transgressive
free associations as well as gaps of silent
John Cage-like interruptions from both
news and noise is appropriately disturbing
and an offense to the Standard Use of
Classroom time.

POINT: On track is good—will take me
to where my tracks are already laid out.

I think there’s some children’s story where
a little engine jumped track and messed
around in the fields. How can the 2 (on
track and off track) Just Get Along?

Something like that’s what I mean by
Liberal Art, not to be conflated
collapsed and confused with
the liberal arts &, like, yr
old man’s oldsmobile.

But of course, they always are
(collapsed, conflated, confused).
That’s the challenge.

Best, Sam