topsy turvy

I feel mixed about going back to school. Believe me, I want to feel productive and as if I’m going somewhere, and honestly school is the only constant light in a world which always changes. It sounds dorky, but I also have some apprehensions of school, too. I’m not too impressed with our school, I’m not impressed with my personal development over the past two years and I’m not impressed with some people at our school.

First and foremost, I feel like I’m only going to Emily Carr because it’s the cheapest education I can get. I once had a beautiful dream of going to art school and it being the best thing in my life. Now I’m not so sure. Our art history classes suck – we don’t learn too much contextual history, only abstract theories…and to be honest, if you don’t know Hitler’s in power or if the Black Movement is going on during the period, the theories/art will seem flatter than it should be. I mean COME ON, at our school they expect us to just know the history, as if we were supposed to learn this elsewhere. I do not care if the person sitting next to me had four years somewhere else, TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION that there’s a percentage that just doesn’t know. God FORBID, there’s a huge fraction of people who come from out of the country, who might not know a whole chunk of Canadian/US history.

Now I enjoy the studio courses (its dependent on the teachers, though). I like this one part of Emily Carr: the self-teaching. I don’t like the fact that they don’t give you much technique and babble on about useless theories in class, but I appreciate the motivation this school’s given me to just do my own thing. At first it used to piss me off because in this formula, so called “conceptual” artists could spend like the morning before class to put together a pile of shit and get a good mark for a project I spent hours on. But now it doesn’t bother me too much, because I am an adult, I can see who’s doing something profound and who’s a retard. I’m sorry to be so blithe, but people have judged my work and now I feel like I have the right to think if your art sucks or not. I have that divine right now that I’ve gotten better at articulating. And it’s not only that. I know when I make shitty art. Check it out on my dA. But I don’t expect to be on the frontpage or get an A. I accept it as personal development, and that’s that.

Speaking of personal development, that’s my second thing here. This is a little mixed. I know I have matured, because:

1. I learnt to forgive my parents, and accept that they are human. I made a film about it, too.

2. I’ve not touched a student loan and have pushed myself hard to earn the money for school, so I don’t have to be in debt. Even if it means living at home, I’m not screwing myself over so early on in my life. Maybe when I hit thirty.

3. I’ve moved on from a terrible heartbreak that involved all my then friends, a boy, my parents, drugs/alcohol, all these things that happened to me before university, though some things dragged on. (Ehem, the boy.)

But let’s put school into this mix. I feel isolated and trapped. I know I can’t expect everyone to be my new found friend, but it gets so lonely at our school. Everyone’s so cool, but I’m not part of any thing. For the most part I don’t care, but at points I just want to find people who can cohese despite the business of school anytime, anywhere. And I don’t mean I don’t see people at school – I always harass everyone in the labs and I see everyone everyday. But boy, being on the holidays made me realize who’s close to me by who phoned me, hung out with me or who chatted me up on MSN.

I’m also not looking forward to going back to the pretentious assholes at our school. I cannot have a pleasant conversation without them bragging or talking about the super cool things they did in their life. I do not care. If I’m not having a cool moment with you right now, those moments in your life don’t exist to me or they don’t intrigue me. You just seem like another art asshole ready to read their CV to me. And sometimes I feel like telling these people, “If you are so cool, then what are you doing at our shit ass school, paying to be an artist? We’re all on the same boat: you must piss, shit and swear as much as I do. Get over yourself.”

Speaking of the cool people (I guess personal development/other people come together here), I don’t know… It seems like the cool thing to do is party and club, but I’m not so sure if that’s what I want. In high school, I’d go maybe once a month, if I’m not so busy. It was to shake off the stress (which it does so well) and meet people. Sometimes I want to do mindless stuff, so I know I’d go to a party, so I can’t say I’m totally a stay-at-home girl, but I’m not sure if this clubbing/partying should be the big shit. Maybe because I come from a Facebook generation. Honestly, my idea of fun is going downtown and shooting some pool at a bar (even though I suck), or walking down Main street chatting up with a friend and shopping at some indie place like Voltage. My idea of night fun is watching a movie, then getting drinks after and laughing our asses off over nothing. I don’t know. I think those things are fun/important/awesome comparatively to clubbing and getting your ass grinded by strangers.

I don’t know if I made sense in the last two paragraphs, but I feel like in terms of learning things from other people and trying to learn about myself, I always think: “If this is a lesson to be learnt, what the hell am I supposed to be learning?” That I should get super hot and go clubbing? That my art sucks compared to yours? (A la, there’s always someone cooler than you.) That I should get straight As to validate myself as an artist? I’m not sure if I like all these questions given to me during school time. I just want to live, because for the most part I just exist. I exist as a person in this school, I don’t exactly live.

What I learnt mostly from our school is that there is so many opinions in the art world, and no one seems to want to get along. It’s retarded. Someone’s trying to do something good like the food bank and someone comes over and says its a sham – that no one’s actually helping the homeless. WHO THE FUCK CARES, what is the second person doing? Nothing, obviously. I wish people would just get more interested, I mean we’re only a group of supposed intellectuals who are supposed to save the future!

Well…you must wonder after all this complaining, what is my solution. Here it is:

1. Learn on my own, all the things I can: languages, history, all these interesting things lost to me because our school doesn’t offer anything BUT art history that honestly has no history to it.

2. Push hard to learn techniques, do not become a shit ass conceptual artist. I don’t care how long it takes.

3. Continue to reflect and mature, and make it part of my art practice. It’s powerful. I’ve seen it in my film about my parents.

4. Fuck school and go out. I don’t care if I’m boozing up during a break downtown or if I slip into a coffee shop rather than the library to study. I just want to get out of that hellhole and meet people, or at least have a quiet place, a place away from school. Art used to be my sanctuary away from the world, but now it’s the other way around. I just need a place to relax.

5. Party but never have my skank ass pictures on Facebook.

6. Kick them pretentious asshole asses one at each time. When they start bragging just act over the top as well. Like: “Oh…you did THAT? REALLY? I’m SO impressed, YOU SHOULD SHOW ME SOMETIME…but I’m QUITE so BUSY because I’M doing something SUPER COOL too. See you later, LOSER.”

7. Continue to do good in my community, whether its with my friends, family and people I just don’t know. I don’t care if I’m a volunteer and I’m not getting paid or recognition, that’s not the point. I hate these CV whores at school. I just wanna do good.

Well, I once used Xanga to do something much like this. Then Facebook happened, but Facebook is a waste of time and believe me, I was addicted to Facebook for a while. And that’s the worst thing you can do to yourself. It’s like this drug where you can be someone else, but then the down is you seeing other cool people do cooler things, when they’re really just posing. Isn’t it strange watching people take photos nowadays? People are more rigid and scenes are staged, mainly because the picture will be posted and tagged.

I go to an art school and these are my angsts:

-It doesn’t matter how good or bad you are anymore. B.S.ing or lying seems the way to go.
-If you BS, and you still have a conscience, you feel infinitely small to the people who are crazy good.
-Lots of the pretentious folk only talk to you only to either gossip or network. It’s never in between.
-At my school which is Emily Carr, their teaching style seems to be giving you loads of work that isn’t hard but tedious. They don’t teach you anything, either, so while someone’s making the next Citizen Kane, someone else is making a poorly lit and hand held film of their pet goldfish, and they’re both getting the same mark.
-(By the way, I’ve done the goldfish thing and I got an B)