Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Weather men are always wrong, especially in Chicago. In fact, if the weather man mentions rain, there is a better chance that it won't at all. Which makes me wonder if it's possible to be both critic and artist. Is it? Can you create the model and then take it apart to see why it works? In my own experience, the answer is no...at least, not simultaneously.
I don't know much about brain halves, outside of the fact that they exist and that one is creative and the other analytical, but I'm pretty sure that my brains work together like brothers; begrudgingly, and only then because they were told they couldn't play until the job was done. My best critiques usually come in times of drought, in the poetry sense, and conversely, when I'm writing poems almost everyday the only thing I see in the stuff I read is more poems, or ways I would make the poem better if it were mine (which, in itself is a critique, but never a sort of academic reading). But I can never seem to function in both modes at the same time, or even switch from one to the other very quickly, or even when I want to.
I've been thinking about this lately because I have to go back to school soon and I'd like to do better than I did last time, which means being able to pass all my examinations. I've always done well on course work, but you can usually choose when that gets done, it's those exams that worry me, especially as I move towards a career in academia.

It scares me, I think is what I'm really trying to say...

No comments: