about time..?
Mar. 27th, 2006 02:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adrienmundiI remember being an undergraduate, and being faced with the "Appreciation" requirement for a B.A.; one had to take either Art Appreciation, Music Appreciation, or Drama Appreciation. After a little bit of worry, I chose Drama. I was terribly afraid that if I studied the specifics of things I knew I loved (art and music), it might interfere with my love of them; I was afraid of only seeing form and structure, style and skill, and losing whatever it was about the arts that reached in and grabbed me. As I've never been a huge fan of drama, I assumed that even in the worst case scenario, it could damage me least. Of course, I didn't think about movies being drama, too, and ended up learning a lot about them, about how they worked. I seriously doubt I would have ended up joining the Cinematic Arts group of the student programming body, much less running it, had it not been due to that initial exposure.
I suspect that fear, of learning much about the things that matter most to me, has been with me a lot longer than sophmore year of college. Were I to guess, I'd probably say that was probably behind my retreat from math and the sciences; I listened to the way mathematicians and scientists talked, and it scared me to think that I might only view the world through the narrow, but sometimes intens, focus of their discipline. I know next to nothing about music, on a fundamental level, because I can't imagine a life without it. I've never really worked at understanding how poetry works, because I didn't want it to ever stop working as I read it. .
And yet, not knowing things, particularly about things that matter to me, drive me crazy. My own ignorance will set me off like little else. I desperately want knowledge, but only knowledge; I don't necessarily want anyone else's structure, whether explicit or implied, getting into my head withour permission, possibly overwriting or overgrowing my own. I'm not sure if this is the root of my authority issues or just tied into it, but there's also a fair amount of insecurity, too; I'm afraid that I may not be able to withstand the ideas of others, to retain my own and my own perspective. But I'm tired of fighting about things that don't matter much to me. I'm tired of my time and energy being given away foolishly.
Reflecting on this, I can't help thinking there's a lesson in all of this for me.
I suspect that fear, of learning much about the things that matter most to me, has been with me a lot longer than sophmore year of college. Were I to guess, I'd probably say that was probably behind my retreat from math and the sciences; I listened to the way mathematicians and scientists talked, and it scared me to think that I might only view the world through the narrow, but sometimes intens, focus of their discipline. I know next to nothing about music, on a fundamental level, because I can't imagine a life without it. I've never really worked at understanding how poetry works, because I didn't want it to ever stop working as I read it. .
And yet, not knowing things, particularly about things that matter to me, drive me crazy. My own ignorance will set me off like little else. I desperately want knowledge, but only knowledge; I don't necessarily want anyone else's structure, whether explicit or implied, getting into my head withour permission, possibly overwriting or overgrowing my own. I'm not sure if this is the root of my authority issues or just tied into it, but there's also a fair amount of insecurity, too; I'm afraid that I may not be able to withstand the ideas of others, to retain my own and my own perspective. But I'm tired of fighting about things that don't matter much to me. I'm tired of my time and energy being given away foolishly.
Reflecting on this, I can't help thinking there's a lesson in all of this for me.
