I took a class in art school…

It was a writing course to prepare me for grad school, to write scholarly papers. The prof told me I was too creative to be harnessed to those rules, and to skip grad school altogether. I had just been published, an essay on my toilet, Ode to the Commode, in a local political magazine Thorn.

I saw the prof’s very good assessment as a defeat, since the goal of art school is the MFA, the best credential and a good income as a teacher. I was still deprogramming from the narcissist abuse of my past (and present), including the betrayal by religion that put me down and trained me to put myself down. So, I had no identity and was searching. Ultimately, I read Albert Ellis, and got straightened out about the purpose of life being satisfaction and not someone else’s for-profit agenda to gain the ransom of my self-worth, which is one reason why the notion of self esteem is so insidiously poisonous.

I just read the introduction to Mantel Pieces: Royal Bodies and Other Writing from the London Review of Books where she described the same unease about not having the ‘appropriate degree’ and not being well educated about the critique theory wars and therefore being a non-combatant. Therefore, according to the academia colleagues and the gate keeper non-internet art galleries, I was not valid.

Ms. Pieces came to the same conclusion as I did; if she or her editors needed an expert on that stuff she would hire one. Art historians are a dime a dozen, trained to write the required artist statements which I hate and never read much as you hire the mechanic who fixes the car but who doesn’t decide what vehicle you find satisfying and where you drive it.

Vroom Vroom motherfucker.