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All art is essentially one person speaking.
“If your words are well said they will meet with assent thousands of miles away. How much more so than nearby.”–The I Ching (Wilhelm/Baynes Edition. https://www.ranker.com/list/famous-male-orators/reference?page=1
I was 22 when I first read THE I CHING. It teaches that learning and doing must be one otherwise both are dead. Shortly after some people came to my program from a place I had never heard of (newly opened Rochdale College). They spoke of a woman I had heard of who was in residence there, Judith Merril whose name I knew from her anthologies of THE YEAR’S BEST ST. Said Judy thirty years late, “You scared the shit out of me when I first met you.” Nonetheless she told me that at Rochdale there were no teachers, that each Rochdalian was called to be their own teacher (something only about 1% actually were). Judy said, “You belong here.” Around the same time the family of Robert and Jane Jacobs came into my life. In an interview in THE GLOBE AND MAIL Mrs. Jacobs stated, “”I had wonderful teachers in the first and second grades who taught me everything I know. After that, I’m afraid, the teachers were nice, but they were dopes…I have a lack of ideology, and not because I have an animus against any particular ideology; it’s just that they don’t make sense to me…they get in the way of thinking. I don’t see what use they are…University and uniformity, as ideals, have subtly influenced how people thought about education, politics, economics, government, everything…We are misled by universities and other intellectual institutions to believe that there are separate fields of knowledge. But it’s clear there are no separate fields of knowledge. It is a seamless web.” Yes, it is. A few years ago Emo Philips sent me a post card on which he wrote, “I honestly believe you are the greatest teacher I know for only you preach (publish) the evil of teaching. Well, not only you. David Mamet in TRUE AND FALSE confirms everything you’ve been saying all along.” Writes Mamet , “Like the belief of the terminally ill in medicine the belief of the legitimately frightened in the educational process is a comforting lie.” “Most teachers say you should go to school to get your degree to have something to fall back on. Aside from being a huge lie, that also creates a very high level of mediocrity, because nobody who really believes that is going to take the leap of faith required to be a serious artist. Stay out of school.”–Ellis Marsalis to his sons Branford, Delfeayo and Wynton. Emo sent me this: “Most teachers say you should go to school to get your degree to have something to fall back on. Aside from being a huge lie, that also creates a very high level of mediocrity, because nobody who really believes that is going to take the leap of faith required to be a serious artist. Stay out of school.”–Ellis Marsalis to his sons Branford, Delfeayo and Wynton. Henry Miller wrote in his AN OPEN LETTER TO SURREALISTS EVERYWHERE (in THE COSOMOLOGICAL EYE), “For my part, I will say that whatever else I may want, I know I don’t want work. To live as an artist I stopped work some ten or twelve years ago…Naturally I was not paid to stop work and live as an artist…if one chooses to live his life in his own way he must pay the penalty…I need no leader and no god. I am my own leader and my own god. I make my own bibles. I believe in myself-that is my whole credo.” Happy to pay the penalty. “Invent nothing. Deny nothing. Stand up. Speak up. Stay out of school.”–David Mamet. I can not put it better. Amen.

 

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