Bi-artisinism.

Thanks P, for informing me I do indeed have an audience. So here I go; I’m going to give this blog a little more attention. The goal is an update a week.

The MFA students of Syracuse are all artists. It's not just in what they do. It's in how they think and feel.

I’ve been back in Syracuse now for more than a month. And although I spent four years here, most of the time just hating it, most of the time preoccupying myself with unnecessary minuscule frustrations just to avoid thinking about why I was actually unhappy, most of the time working too hard and sometimes drinking too hard, this go around already feels somehow more authentic; like I’m more in control.

Another change, this go around I’ve combined worlds. G and Syracuse were from two distinct and disjointed periods of my life. G, from New Hampshire, high school, the summers I would come home from college, but never part of the four years spent in a university. Now, by his own free will (I didn’t brain wash him) G has come to Syracuse with me. I think this means a lot. G, who has a passion for traveling, for exploring, who could be anywhere in the world right now, wants me on his hip.

The MFA creative writers here have a weekly social get-together at a local bar. The get-together is called “Thursday Night Club” and yes, it’s on Thursday nights. The bar, a small, dimly lit dive with a pool table and a popcorn machine, is a transformed funeral home. You know this by the strange awning connected to the south side of the brick building, where it’s easy to envision horses dropping off the dead. Three weeks ago, Dan and I go to the first Thursday Night Club. This before classes started. This before I had met more than three people in my program.

When we got there, the bar was bloated with MFA writers. They huddled in the cramped space around the bar and filled the small front room where the dart boards hung from the walls. We were greeted with a mix of friendliness and caution. The kind of looks from the second year fiction women (who are all, mind you, physically beautiful) that questioned blatantly our looks, our talent, our dispositions. Would the first years be intimidated by them? Would we be friendly and unselfconscious? The select third-year that bothered to come out were the friendliest of all, offering up advice and commenting about classes and teachers; being generally supportive and encouraging. (Weeks later, I will find out almost everyone in the program is an awesome, sweet person).

My good friend A, a first-year poet I’d been talking to via G-chat for months before we both finally made it to Syracuse, has a habit of getting giddy when happy and happy. It’s cute. He even bounces a bit, with a big smile on his face. This had been happening a lot the week before classes start, the week we’d been introduced to the social side of the program. Well, he immediately felt drawn to one particular second-year poet. A man we’ll call CB. CB is tall and thin. His face has a decidedly philosophical, intellectual bent to it. He’s definitely handsome. It’s his eyes, which might be the smallest bit asymmetrical. By the Asymmetry works adds. He’s got long hair he wears like he doesn’t pay a bit of attention to it (but likely he does). The most attractive thing about CB is his attitude and energy. He’s a charmer. When G and I walk into the bar, he tells us about the wars. Wars against first year poets and first year fictionists. The war between those who live south of Euclid and those who live North of Euclid and those who live South. He tells us we have to fight.

A immediately loves CB’s charisma. His character. He wants to know him. Then one night, CB calls A to meet at the bar. And they hang out. And CB and A get drunk. A couple other’s join them. They all go to A’s house to use a certain mind-altering substance. There’s guitar-playing, talking, listening to loud country music, etc.

Then CB finds an unopened package in A’s house. About nine people live in A’s house, so the box could be anyone’s.

“Hey, I’m going to open this,” CB tells Andrew. He goes at the box with a knife.

“What? No,” A says. “You can’t open that. It’s my roommate’s”

“Oh,” CB says. But he goes for it again. Before A can stop him he’s opened the package and A has another thing to explain to his new roommates.

Later, CB tells A that A and his girlfriend (who has spent the past year teaching English in a remote Asian country) will not last. She just moved to live with him. CB says, not having met her yet. “It won’t last.” He shakes his head knowingly. "It just won't."

When A tells me this, I say, What does he know? ust because he's unahppy doesn't mean you have to be.

A says in class CB is a charmer. He answers questions with humor. He sees things in the poems. A says he thought they would get along, now he isn't so sure.

The first time I met CB at the bar, he was a doll, the life of the party, inside the party. But when I went outside for some air, and there he was, leaning against the building like an old man with a mushy spine. He's got a blank look and a frown like a crescent moon. He doesn't look at me. He almost doesn't blink. I say hi and he says hi, and not much more.

I'm not surprised. The off and on-ness: I'm not saying it's insincere. Writers tend to have wild ups and downs. But that doesn't mean they must be used so visibly. There are ways to be a gentleman (or woman) about one's own dillemas. There are ways to practice harmfullness and ways to practice harmlessness. Put it in a poem, he could.

And I wonder what he misses when he goes about like this.
I wonder what I've missed, too.

Someone very close to me once said, to create art, you don't need to always be confilcted, always be in pain. You need only have the sense to remember what you have felt in the past, and the sensibility to ressuract it accurately in your work.But you don't need to live it all the time. And doing so is more likely a distration to work.