This Blog Post Is a Pipe Bomb/A Reflection on Creative Academia

There is something to be said about the academization of creativity. For most of the past four-and-a-half years I've been working on an undergrad degree in Creative Writing, and may in the not-so-near future spend more years in at least one graduate program. I am conflicted about the idea about spending further time and effort in the academic institution, however. On one hand, it is great place to learn guidelines for writing and literature. It's a nice, incubated community to gather feedback and grow in. The more I'm here, the more I hate it. I find that the rough edges of a lot of work I see in student's writing, those things we're taught to smooth out or "make work"--I find with several of these pieces that the parts that are unrefined are the most daring and exciting. I guess I'm compelled by works of art that break the rules.

In the 1950s these angelheaded hipsters revolted against staunch academia with stream-of-conscious spoken word and reckless disregard. Writers such as Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, and so on created without care for whatever the academic world had to say. And the academic world largely ignored them much the same way, considering them low-brow and immature.

But over the past 50 years, attitudes have changed. Maybe this is due to the turnover of professors, where the people who understood and loved the Beats have become part of the system, and decided to teach them. Or maybe it's because now that their work has proven itself over time, the academics have deemed it valuable. Regardless of why, the fact is that The Beats have been absorbed by academia, a few of which are considered some of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.

Similarly, before The Beats, the expressionist painters of the early 20th century were often considered revolting, fringe, and crude. From Franz Marc to Henri Rousseau to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Expressionism was a facet of the early 20th century art-world that challenged deeply-held boundaries of artistic value. But as anyone who's taken an Art History class knows, these painters have been judged worthy and important by academia and have thus become part of the snooze-fest curriculum of most Art History classes.

And of course there was DuChamp, Barth, Thomas Pynchon, Abbie Hoffman, and on and on and on--all sucked up by universities abroad, all resting in the cobwebs of the brains of snooty intellectuals and hipster literati everywhere. Nowadays as soon as someone breaks the mold, the mold closes over them.

The problem with academia is not that it isn't full of great art and literature; its fault is that much of this art and literature does not survive beyond its borders. Ah, but isn't that because of the dullness and ignorance of Western Culture? I disagree. Western Culture is dull and ignorant only because of the isolationism that art created in the comforts of academia promotes. And while I'm unsure about other fields in the arts, I know that good reading and good writing has become more of a club for the initiated than an open, communal experience.

So to those of us who do create and contribute, what do we do? Is pursuing a degree worth it?

Let me make something straight, I don't think my education was a waste of time--I learned a lot about literature, people, writing, myself, etc. I would not be the same person I am right now without the past four and a half years. But I went into this thing knowing that a Bachelor of Arts in Writing means nothing to me. I went into it knowing I write poems and wouldn't stop writing poems. I knew it would push me to write more, and in different ways, and that it would provide me with a place to show my writing and get feedback--this is why I chose to get a degree in Creative Writing. But in hindsight, I could have done much of these things on my own accord if I had the drive for it. I'm not entirely sure if I would have. Now that I'm almost through this degree-seeking rigmarole, the Dutch in me figures that it would be an awful waste of money if I didn't finish this degree.

Regardless of academia or popularity, everyone who creates must do so as an act salvation. All these thoughts I've been mulling over, they all can be summed up with a poem that speaks the outright damned truth, though your literary friends might scoff at the person who wrote it.


"So You Want to Be a Writer?" by Charles Bukowski


if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.


if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

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In other news, I'm playing some of my songs at at least one open mic night next week, maybe two.