This probably isn�t one of those blogs that go well with morning coffee �
(wrote this last night - but I am just getting around to putting it up now...)
Not to sound too existentialist, but I�ve been adrift the last few days. I am in a rut. At some point after Thanksgiving, I feel like I just dropped the ball. My interests changed from school to that nebulous �other� category � friends, concerns at home (and lately, everything seems ratcheted up a notch), or just more of this �getting settled� business that�s been a concern all semester. All of this was possible because the academic fire cooled down several degrees � I have less to do than expected (assignment-wise), and as a result, I was able to feed too many distracted urges. I think it is true that I work best under pressure, and with less to do, I am getting less done and not doing anything with particularly stunning academic significance. On top of everything else � call it stress about my family or concerns about whether to keep my lease or move � I just haven�t been sleeping well or enough. I find it hard to wind down at the end of the day, and I�ve been getting up before 6am, thirsty, restless, and unable to recharge or sleep comfortably. Even now, I�ve dragged my heels all day, only to get a second wind at 11pm (and ironically I am blogging, not grading, watching movies, or reading).
No matter whom I�ve talked to, that first year away from college is always a challenge. It is hard not to have everything be familiar and arranged just exactly how I like it to be. Although I didn�t drastically change professions, I made a lot of other drastic changes that have been largely assimilated without a grand, uphill effort. I think the last few weeks have allowed me to spend more time examining these changes � my decision to live alone (in my current apartment) and just other simple lifestyle factors that I consciously or unconsciously now consider (how I choose to divide and spend my free time, who I spend it with, what I make for dinner�). Lately, I feel extra frustrated with my romantic life, or lack thereof. A strange analogy that seems appropriate to this situation is calling my stagnant love life a vitamin deficiency. If only one were able to cure chronic single-ness with iron supplements! I don�t know if this deficiency is something internal on my part or some greater shortcoming on the part of the external world and my immediate environment. I have solid, platonic friendships here in Madison and a supportive peer group � but these are all familiar reincarnations of friendships from a previous life. I am craving something else � partly a challenge to be intimate and to see if I am even capable to have a sustained romantic relationship that is neither a fling nor wholly dysfunctional � a test to learn my own limits of endurance, trust, and even on a basic level, the ability to open-up and share. I want to grow, goddammit. Madison just feels like a Groundhog Day version of Middlebury� recast the main players with fresh talent, but the same scriptwriting forces are pulling all the strings. Clearly, I am the constant here, so I am obviously doing something that doesn�t lend the outcomes I desire� but what it is, specifically, and what I can do to change it aren�t clear to me.
By the same token, there is nothing easy about graduate school. The workload is intense, the pressures to be self-disciplined, self-scrutiny, and the constant feeling that I am not doing enough or know enough is ever-present. I�ve been second guessing this path � not so much that I regret my decision to be here, but out of fear of leaving school for the dark nether-realm of the �real� (employment) or just a driving, forward impetus that made more school the logical next step (a kind of educational inertia), I am ready to admit that I didn�t consider many alternatives. Not to say that even after all the soul-searching in the world that I would have chosen the proper path (or that the proper path isn�t exactly what I am doing), but at some point recently I came to the rather redundant conclusion that I could be doing many other things that I am better suited for. I�ll also admit that I�ve found myself in a position where everything is NOT easy � where I am out of my league on many occasions and there is no immediate remedy (I can�t solve the problem of a lifetime of not watching enough films or not knowing my French Directors or Russian Theorists) and I just have to accept that it will be many years until I�ve reached a satisfactory proficiency. At the same time, when I browse the art library, I really wish I were studying sculpture, an unrelated thought, but something I miss and think about often. Also, I�ve been getting back many assignments lately � and this is one of those little things they don�t tell you about grad school � but there�s a gentleman�s agreement about grades. I am sure this is not absolutely set in stone, but basically, everyone does well. So to get papers back that I was not entirely satisfied with, with sparce comments, and a high grade � it just feels less conclusive, less important�
Blah, blah� I don�t want to talk about this anymore � on one level, I didn�t really want to talk about it at all. I�ve already been thinking about it, plagued by it, staying up late mulling it all over � facing the same options and reaching the same conclusions. All of my classes seem to converge lately, or I�ve been leaning in this direction and finding it in my work as a result� I am wrought by the idea of autobiography in film. Particularly in all of this, Mekas emerges as the central figure of interest. I just finished reaching this lecture he gave about (his conception of) the �Diary Film.� It is interesting because he said that he came to this film style pragmatically � too busy at the Village Voice or Anthology Film Archives to ever have several months to devote to making a singular, epic film. Instead, he settled for shooting short, sporadic, spontaneous bursts of his daily life. I can�t help but see his approach as very much like my own. In part driven by similar motivations, (in this forum or a paper journal) I also deal with daily life because I never found the time to sit and write the great American novel over a lazy summer or a year, and even if I had a sabbatical and a fatty grant, I don�t know if I could even know if I�d be cut out for it. I digress�I am ready to admit that I may be too self-absorbed to tell anyone�s story but my own. I�ve wondered how crossing the private / public line matters (when you stop making art exclusively for yourself and acknowledge the presence of or package it for an audience) it is a question wrapped around bigger issues of audience, intent, fiction, vulnerability, repression, self-censorship, self-delusion, the ability to recognize things as they really are or how you�d like them to be �
Generally, I am apt to admit that some topics are just plain off limits [in my blog, or perhaps even in conversation]. I am more sensitive to certain concerns, and perhaps, I sometimes over-explain my feelings when I know I am talking to an audience (feelings, motivations, references that would be automatically familiar to me require background knowledge when told to others). This is messy, I am tired, and hopefully this post is not completely incoherent. On some level, I think it is very different to write for one�s self than it is to write for an audience that includes friends and strangers. On another level, if you really want to, you can construct yourself into whatever type of person you want to be deep down, regardless of reality, even if you only write �for yourself� in a private diary. It is silly to think that people are more honest when they write only for themselves. I don�t think honesty or subjectivity are gauged by potential readership, I think they result from something else.
Anyway, maybe I�ve found this academic muse because I still don�t fully understand the process or full-implications of constructing a self, coming to terms with memory, having written evidence, or even how to balancing the fleeting, perceptual self and a preserved, indexical document (words, a filmed image) � but anyway, Mekas offers this interesting insight and I felt obligated to post it here, my little ode to selfhood:
�I came to realize that writing a diary is not merely reflecting, looking back. Your day, as it comes back to you during the moment of writing, is measured, sorted out, accepted, refused, and re-evaluated by what and how one is at the moment when one writes it all down. It�s all happening again, and what one writes down is more true to what one is when one writes than to the events and emotions of the day that are past and gone��
After all this ranting, the quote doesn�t exactly tie into everything I�ve felt lately, but I thought it merited repeating. Honestly, I feel like I am just stuck in this rut and needed to vent � in hopes of accomplishing something tangible, I think I�ll take a break from blogging for a while, committing to come back when I feel more myself or have something significant to discuss. I am going home in slightly over a week � maybe that�s just what the doctor ordered.
posted by lmjasinski at 2:24 PM
