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June 05, 2004
Traveling Backwards Through Time, part 1 of 3 - Graduation
Lookit me, and mah big shiny art degree!
.... So I made it to the end. Four years at Ringling, digging a nice deep hole in my future finances for the sake of being taught how to build a ladder to get back out of that same hole.. with no guarantee of being able to actually build it. I mean sure, I know how to build the thing, but who said the means to do so would be there when I was done digging?
I guess what I'm saying is that I'm really looking forward to my first art job, whatever it may be!
It was a photo-finish. I took a class on Anthropology & Globalization where the teacher scheduled the classwork without due dates, stipulating that it would all be okay as long as you got the work in by the end of the semester. Naturally, 90% of the class waited until the final week to do this work, and no, I was not in that plucky 10% remainder who actually got sleep during the last week of classes.
Other classes included Myth and Symbol in Film (the easiest of the semester); Portraiture (taught by Shawn Barber and in which I would've gotten a much better grade if it hadn't been at bleeding-eyeball-o'clock in the morning with me pulling so many late nights); Advanced Illustration Media (because I'd been doing almost nothing but digital art for a year and needed the chance to play around with all my other art supplies); and of course, Advanced Illustration: the class where I spent the semester thinking about and drawing the future. The conclusion I came to: Martians are nicer people, generally speaking. But that's for another journal entry to be done later.. or earlier. Hrm.
Time travel makes the brain hurt.
Reflections.
Of the group of people I found myself attaching myself to as a Freshman, only about half of us graduated. This surprises me, despite that it's pretty much what we were told by the faculty would happen.
Back in the day, I'd just come off of my two-year Tech Support career, which is a thoroughly embittering experience that I don't reccomend to anyone unless seeking motivation for a career as a torturer, executioner, or one of those people who takes families' homes away to cover tax debt for the IRS. The point of my mentioning this is that it had me kind of looking down on people that didn't really deserve it, and I viewed the other large cohesive group of students that year as degenerates for their habits: drinking, partying and getting stoned.
As years went by I got to know some of them better and I learned that I really missed out by not getting to know them sooner. Jojo, one of them, turned out to be such a great guy, I kinda miss having the guy around to shoot the breeze with on breaks from painting. I finally went to one of his parties, graduation night.. and learned a bunch of things, most important of which was that I was an asshole for thinking the way I did and that I wish I could go back and hang out with their crew in addition to my own.
It should be noted that of my crew, all 'good kids', didn't get drunk and party or get stoned, half of them graduated, if that. Of that other crew.. almost all of them did (as far as I can tell) and on the whole, they seemed to struggle less with their advancement. I made it, sure, but I'm still frustrated at times, and I can't help but wonder how things would be if I'd not distanced myself from these great people and hung out with them sometimes.
Of course, one of them told me in conversation that they probably shouldn't have done as much of some of that stuff as they did, having wasted too much time on it by their reckoning.
Why is finding a balance of, uh, just about anything so damn difficult for the human species as a whole?
I'm being slightly unfair to my crew though. Three of them who didn't graduate just haven't graduated yet. Chris was held back a year and frankly it's the best thing that could've happened to him. It gave him the opportunity to take classes that weren't normally in his curriculum, stuff that normally only Illustration majors can take, and his drawing and color skills have increased dramatically because of it. Bekkah gave up Illustration and switched her major to Photography.. which is what she loved anyhow. The switch set her back one year because she was missing too many courses from that curriculum, slating her to graduate next year, with Chris. Natasha, whom I see most regularly of any of my Ringling friends, had a bit of a personal crisis this year, and realized she didn't care anymore, and because of that she wasn't really working. I'd seen this for a while, but it's hard to approach someone on the topic. If she goes back next year, she'll be able to graduate.. but only if she can get herself to do the work and not just skate by.
Skating by works as a freshman: that year is mostly BS anyhow. All you really need from that year as an illustrator is Figure Drawing. But the extent to which skating by works dramatically decreases with each year. I hate to say it, because 'Tasch and I are close, but with some of that work she did, I wonder how she made it the Senior level on schedule, let alone graduation.
The Graduation event was something special. Ringling was an expensive school, and they threw an expensive Graduation bash. I'd been to one College Graduation before that, at a college in Nyack, New Jersey when my Aunt Barbera got her Bachelor's degree on her way to becoming a full-fledged Dentist.. which I think just happened. I know this was her last year for her PhD, but I haven't received word yet on whether she passed the final test, which involved flaming hoops, a trampoline, whirling knives, and a pit of angry mutant crocodile/killer bee hybrids, with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads, and at the end she must face a specially made mirror which she must stare into and do battle with her own soul for the real secrets of cavity prevention. That's right: fluoride really is a Government conspiracy to pump pure evil into your supply of drinking water!
Mmm. Yes. But back to Graduation.
At that Graduation in New Jersey, it was basically several rows of folding chairs in front of a make-shift stage with a podium at the center for people to speak at. This was outside in the open air, underneath some seriously threatening clouds. I think the constant organized (and nearly enforced) prayer during the ceremony was the only thing that kept us from being rained out. Ringling, on the other hand, set out to book the biggest, bestest, and purplest theater within a couple hundred miles for the event, and with a name that sounds like an automotive parasite, that has to be the Van Wezel.
Backstage preparations were as disorganized and confusing as can be expected of Ringling's administration, especially the Student Life people. They were running around in all directions, like poultry after taking the first step towards becoming dinner. Color-coded cords were being handed out in all directions. The girl in front of me, one of my crew, named Caitlin Chaney (spelling?), got handed one.. and didn't know why. It took about half an hour to get someone to explain that it was because she was graduating with honors. Graduating with honors? That was news to her. Nobody had told her.
Nobody had told anyone, in fact. I am very much glad that the school store (E-follet) was in charge of getting us our cap and gowns, because if student life had been the ones put on it, I would've ended up with a set built for a Zimbabwean pygmy.
So we're lined up backstage, and we're checked to make sure we were in the right order about 12 times and then lead out into the theater with that pompy and circumstancy music playing..
.. oh the roar of that place. It was packed to the gills with well-wishers, all of whom were clapping and cheering wildly. The hall holds nearly 2000 people. I can't describe the moment adequately. I had a small crowd there for me specifically: my Grandmom Guenther, Uncle Clarence and Aunt Val were all there, in addition to my parents.
I'm giving Grandmom, Uncle Clarence and Aunt Val their own paragraph because of how great it was that they came down, and I know they're going to read this at some point. It needs emphasis, and that's why they got this paragraph.
The President of the school got up and did his share of talking, of course. This was the second time I've actually seen him addressing the student body in person since I got there. The other was September 11th (go fig). His address was the nice, inspirational and light hearted sort, but the speaker really worth speaking about was the commencement speaker: Mr. Daniel H. Pink
Mr. Pink (*snicker*) writes all kinds of stuff. He even wrote speeches for Al Gore. Let me tell you: his speeches sound much better when they're coming from someone with a pulse in his veins.
His first remarks involved what he considered to be the 5 commandments of speech writing. One of them was that all your most important points must be repeated at least 3 times, to sort of hammer the point home. All your most important points must be repeated at least 3 times, to sort of hammer the point home. All your most important points must be repeated at least 3 times, to sort of hammer the point home. This got a laugh. It got more laughs when he tried to repeat things three times later in his commencement address.
... I'd always wondered why the hell Gore did that.
Other topics included: Ford as an art company, outsourcing having the potential to be a good thing for us artists (can't outsource creativity: if you import your creativity from India, you get results that speak an entirely different cultural language and don't hit their marks here with American consumers), and the amazing $3 designer toilet brush that he smuggled on stage under his Commencement garb.
He was a funny man. He had the entire theater rolling with laughter at points, which was a task, considering I know the diverse group he was addressing: all the families I'd ever heard about being 'back home' waiting for my fellow students. Laid-back liberals. MILITANT liberals. Worse: Conservatives. Staunch Militant Fundamentalist members of every religion you can tack those three adjectives onto. Ringling students are a diverse group, and some of them can be opinionated, but none of them can compare to their parents.
I heard stories about intense phone calls in the middle of the night from concerned fathers trying to make sure that the Gay present at all art schools doesn't infect his son. Or daughter. And that's a tame example. Mr. Pink (*snort*heehee*) got all of these people on his side and laughing. So I guess what I'm saying here is that he rocks, and I understand why he gets work writing speeches in Washington DC.
After that it was all music, names, degrees and photographs until everyone had been up and the crowd's hands were crimson red from clapping.
Afterwards I went to dinner with my relatives (Olive Garden, yum) and then to Jojo's party. Lots of people were surprised to see me there. Some of them I didn't even know. But it was enjoyable and it got me thinking.. as you already have read.
Now a month has passed and I'm almost fully moved back in at home. I'm trying in my meager, no-cash way to stir up some interest for my work in local publishing circles. Monday I go and talk to a local gallery owner to find out what I'd need to do to get some work into there. My Father thinks this is a fantastic idea.. I'm inclined to agree.. to the point that I could do stuff that could go up in a gallery.. but the portfolio I'm bringing along is mostly Editorial Illustration, not gallery work.
I am stalwart before a mountain. I have only my hands, but I will lift it! Even if I must start with a handful of dirt at a time.
Posted by Eric Chapman at 03:40 AM | Comments (1)
June 02, 2004
The Birthday thing
Sighted at a local area steakhouse late Sunday night, May 30th:
Is it me? Or a cleverly indignant android impersonator? You figure it out.
May 31st was my 26th birthday. May 30th was the day my friends took me out and made me feel all special.. and put up with my antics. Heh. I took it upon myself to let fly with the false megalomania and giant-ego-disorder. Fortunately everyone knows I was just having fun and messing around (or was I?). So we went out, my slab of cow was covered by their bank accounts. Ice cream followed.
Plans for world domination were hammered out. I have a loyal right-hand-man who knows how to walk on empty cardboard boxes without damaging them. He could probably pull off the domination thing on his own, as could I, but it'll be a much more solid thing with both of us in tandem. We also have a sewing cult to be lead by another friend (Soldiers Of Doom need uniforms).
I watched an Ice Cream Server have a nervous breakdown from the sight of the line going out the door at closing time at Coldstone. A large, yellow, tubular traffic-control device appeared mysteriously in my trunk. I even found out that the developers have fixed the atrocity that they'd turned the Legacy of Kain game series into with the first Soul Reaver game. It was a good night all around. I felt loved.
Then, the next day, I went home to spend the day with my parents. Which went well, really, until dinner.
We went out to another steakhouse, and I got another slab of cow, this time decidedly more pink and less cooked.. but that's in a good way. No the problem was that at dinner, things got akward. I don't want to get too far into it, because it's pretty personal.
That night, as a result of the akwardness, I felt pretty alone in the world.
Those last five words are the most important, so I'm going to elaborate on their point: The akwardness of the scene made me feel utterly alone in the world. I am someone who feels precious few connections with other people. It is a direct effect of how I've grown up: the one who got picked on the worst in school, whom nobody (or almost nobody) could be bothered to know, the one whom girls never talked to except if they needed something or if they wanted to mock me in some way. So then I'd go home and things would be pretty rough there too. I can't go into detail about this without dredging up stuff with my parents that I'd rather let stay dead. Suffice it to say that I'd come home from school, where I couldn't connect to anyone, only to find that I couldn't connect to anyone at home either.
These days things are much better at home. And through college, things were much better at school... well, after a little while. Things go much better when the other kids have a year or two between them and high school, so my social life didn't really get much better till sophomore year. But I still feel like my connections to others in this world are precious and few. A couple of friends. A previously-dopey but now pretty cool guy (despite his religious fervor) that I roomed with for two years at school. A few people at the role-playing events I attended through college. And, because things are much better between them and I now: my parents, whom I love very much.
But now I'm in Englewood: my friends are far away. All I really have right now are my parents.. and on the night of my 26th birthday, I didn't feel like I had that.
Whenever this sort of thing happens, and it feels like all connection to all other human beings has snapped; I feel as if I might cease to exist. Like an untethered balloon, I'd just float off into the endless sky and never be seen again. But I'm still here. Utterly alone, but still here.
Happy Birthday to you, whenever you have it. Try not to let go of the balloons.
Posted by Eric Chapman at 12:08 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack