Welcome to rieblog!

My Alumni Association tries to lure me

[More:]

So says an email from the Alumni Association of Reed College, my alma mater, doubtless desperate for cash during an economic downturn that has had serious consequences for many university endowments. They are not playing fair. The muses don't visit me very often, certainly less often than when I was at Reed, so when they call, I sit up and take notice. Who wouldn't want to return to the carefree days of reading and partially understanding Heidegger on sun-splashed lawns, or holding forth in front of one's peers in the student union on matters we felt were of great import. Yes, the muse(s) were there, and today, where could we find them? Around the water cooler? Coming out of the radio during “drive-time?” On TV?

I consider myself fortunate to live in Riga where the architecture, history, and pretty girls give me a bit of muse-like stimulation. Even so, on most mornings starting my inner muse sounds a lot like the engines of the old Russian cars turning over in the parking lot outside our apartment. How different it was at Reed! The whole place seemed designed to stimulate thought. Professors encouraged or gently admonished, lectures were interesting, debates with classmates were bloodthirsty but fun. There was also a complete absence of distractions from the outside world. The taxes, homeowners' associations, and health insurance companies that keep me awake today were difficult to imagine in front of a roaring fire in my dorm room in Old Dorm Block. We had the freedom to concentrate. I didn't really appreciate it at the time, nor did I take full advantage of the opportunity, but most of the obstacles between me and my studying were my own creations. I don't feel the same way today. Distractions and problems are everywhere. Is there enough money? What is happening with my condominium? How much will prosthetics cost this year?

It may come as a surprise that I don't give any money to Reed College. It's not that I'm ungrateful and only partially because I'm stingy. On the one hand, I resent the massive building campaign the college has undertaken in recent years, which clutters the campus with new dormitories and eateries, gradually eating up the open spaces which made the campus an oasis in the middle of Portland, Oregon. If I support the school, I want my money to go to that Holy Trinity of the liberal arts: faculty, financial aid, and the library, not the Associate Dean of Making Emotionally Disturbed Rich Kids Feel Better About Themselves. I have yet to figure out a way to give to the institution without giving to the general fund, which, in my opinion, is a black hole of administrative and capital spending. There is also a second reason. I suppose I feel some resentment toward the school. The pleasure of my years there were matched only by the pain of having to leave. College, for all but the most shiftless trust fund kids, is a finite affair. We were told that we could chose the graduate school of our choice, and it was strongly intimated that our graduate education was an inconvenient detour on the road back to teaching at Reed, or some comparable garden of the liberal arts. After being kicked out of the garden, reality proved much different.

I try not to harbor as much resentment toward higher education as some of my friends. Certain Reedies I know, brutalized by graduate school, have turned their backs on the university entirely. The embarrassment of failure has transformed itself into a devaluation of the whole project. Thus: “I'm not going to waste my time reading Plato, I have to rewire the basement this weekend!” I haven't taken matters quite so far. With the distance of years I've come to recognize that my failure at the graduate level was at least half my own fault. My problem is the distinct absence of the muses offered by my needy alumni association. I haven't found another source of creative inspiration since that time, so when I'm reminded of the experience I had a Reed I feel a pang. Will I ever find such inspiration again without paying $40,000 a year in tuition, room, and board?

So where do the muses live in the cold outside world of adulthood? Perhaps I'm asking the wrong question. The real question might be: “what mental state must I inhabit for the muses to return to me?” At Reed that meant an almost trance-like state of concentration that allowed me to believe that being able to impress Professor Peter Steinburger with my understanding of Gadamer was a matter of life and death. It sounds trivial now, and yet I really poured my heart into it. What the muses require is belief and dedication. Reed's protective bubble allowed both qualities to flourish in me. The outside world, on the other hand, tends to replace belief with practicality and dedication with, well, what exactly? Getting up every morning? Patting ourselves on the back for putting up with jobs we don't like? Jalapeño poppers? The deep and passionate conversations I have with my friends these days have more to do with what to do with our money and which airlines are the cheapest. The days of arguing about what Plotinus really meant by “the One” are long over.

It's time to call the muses back. With all due respect to dear old Reed, I don't think I can find them by donating to the college. My few trips to the school have been utterly muse free. I usually visit in summer. The campus is quiet and beautiful, but completely lacking in energy. In summer the campus sleeps and readies itself for the passion, triumph, and tragedy of the oncoming fall. It's no place for a middle-aged man, or his muse. We must look elsewhere, taking the lessons of Reed, or Swathmore, or wherever else you may have experienced this protective liberal arts bubble with us. What we need is quiet, sustained quiet. We need a huge “do not disturb” sign. Do not disturb: with taxes, with health insurance, with family, with money. Do not disturb! Do not disturb: with immigration, with repairs, with retirement planning, or with questions about the value of what we do. We seek that trance-like state that allows us to believe that what we're thinking about, writing about, and painting about is a matter of life and death. The muses never call us, but we can call to them. If we are able to concentrate on what we love, perhaps they will listen.