Anathema

It is not. Going. To. Happen.

“So are you going to go to doctoral school?”

Everyone wants to know.

About a year ago, I started considering the pros and cons, and the question lingered on people’s minds. Some people insisted that I should, others warned that I would only be destroyed.

I haven’t forgotten my pledge to myself, either. I know better.

There are certainly strong reasons to look into it, of course, but overall, I know that it would be the wrong path for me.

For a long time, I’ve had this topic set aside as a possible blog post, but never thought it necessary. I thought it was very clear, but apparently it’s not. So now I’m going to blog about it.

Perhaps the biggest reason to go back to school is simply a lack of anything else to do. Hmmm… that sort of lacks a certain drive behind it to make me stick it out to the end, doesn’t it? “Being a student is the only thing I know how to do, so why not.”

So I would enter a program because I’m cornered, having no other options in life? To what end?? What would come of it?? I would effectively further corner myself in life, because I would be stuck in the academic realm. On the tenure-track to something I never had the passion to do in the first place. There’s the rub: I have no passions anymore.

”I’ve WORKED in the private sector. They expect RESULTS.”

Yes, composers have always prospered almost exclusively in the patronage system, and yes, the patronage system of our age is the university. Just ask Milton Babbitt—he understood this all too well. If you want to “make it” as a composer, you have to be a teacher, devote half your life to planning festivals, and attend weekly circle jerks. Then, maybe, a handful of people you’ve never met will have heard your music in a recital hall where, afterwards, nobody else gave a shit because that’s what academia is. No one cares or ever will care, so why not just write what makes you happy? I am not about to get into compositional existentialism and musical philosophy, because no one has the time. But personally, I’d rather invest my future in the Captain’s screenplay ideas, for more reasons than I care to list.

I vividly recall swearing off school. I vividly remember the liberating feeling when I finished. Yes, life is shit now, and the real world is a cruel and corruptive place, but would it really be better if I went back to school? Come on.

If you are a doctoral student, or if you plan on going back, more power to you. It’s not for me. That doesn’t make me inferior.

I haven’t burned any bridges, though. I’m no fool. It would have to be the “right place” for me to even consider it. Herr Vogler is ever vigilant for the dogma-free doctoral program, but I remain skeptical. He says I could be the “Mad-Eye Moody” of the composition department, which I must admit appeals to me. Shakin’ it up… calling people on their bullshit. I could do it. I could. I certainly wouldn’t allow too much bullshit to go on under my nose.

I suppose the chief inhibition here is self-doubt. I truly believe I wouldn’t be able to do a dissertation. I also feel like my brain has atrophied, despite doing independent studies in my spare time. So it comes down to this: I don’t like that world, and I don’t think I’d make it anyway, so why bother? I suppose if I did feel like I really could do it, my stance would change slightly. So there’s my humble admission: I don’t have it in me.

Oh, and that whole “being cornered by lack of options thing”… um, let’s be realistic here: even with a doctorate, the job market still holds no guarantees. It’s still a tight fit for all the wannabe professors out there. I am unemployed and with enough debt as it is, thank you.

Entering a doctoral program feels to me like a “point of no return.” I would really have little or no control over any aspect of my life ever again. Perhaps that is a lie, based in fear and cynicism. Take half of this post with a grain of salt—but I won’t tell you which half.

Let me tell you a story to illustrate why academia is anathema to me. Beyond the ideological supremacy factor, beyond the dogma, beyond the bullshit… there’s the bureaucracy.

I had almost forgotten this story until my friend Jordan had me recount it to remind him how the composition department was much worse on the inside than it looked from without. With my TiVo-like memory, I told him about something that still pisses me off, even almost four years later. But hold on a second—before you go chastising me for holding grudges, keep in mind that bad administration has no statute of limitations. The U.S. Government still takes abuse for the fiasco of Katrina, and you don’t say, “Well, that was a long time ago, let’s let bygones be bygones.”

Yes, I just likened the composition department at BGSU to FEMA… it’s a stretch. I just mean that you still remember past aggravations because the same administration is still in charge. It has nothing to do with the president, it has nothing to do with me not forgiving my oppressors. Listen to the story first, then decide. And remember that the same people are still in charge today.

Besides, all this happened about a year before I even started the blog, so just hear me out.

Off we go…

My first semester at BGSU as a comp grad student. Praecepta, a group with a made-up, pseudo-Latin name that nobody really explained, was the student-run organization to “promote new music” (I’ll leave alone the fact that they only promoted experimental music, not any “new” music, despite their righteous declarations of intent). I never actually signed up to be in the group—I just found myself on an email list after attending a meeting or two out of curiosity, and suddenly I was a “member” for the next two years.

So there I was, a noob, balls-deep in bullshit. Dr. Burton Beerman, the senior composer of the university, was seeking to promote a sensory-overload piece, one of his trademark collaborative works with his wife, who was a professional dancer. Lots of psychedelic lights, TV screens, dancing, electroacoustic manipulations, and I think a clarinet in there somewhere. I don’t remember hearing music exactly.

Anyway, Celesta Beerman gave a long sales pitch to us at a Praecepta meeting, asking for funds to help take the piece on a national tour.

Let me put this in the proper context. Praecepta had a surplus of funds—several thousand dollars to spend. I, personally, didn’t feel like I had a say, because I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to stay in the group, never mind the fact that I wasn’t around the past couple years to actually raise those funds. I just inherited a vote to spend someone else’s money. But they insisted that it didn’t change the fact that I had my rights, so I participated. Meanwhile, many of the pro-EA second-year grads had an agenda: to spend it all on a new sound system and new equipment for the digital studio—the one that not even all the composers are allowed into. We already had a renowned EA program and a considerably high-quality arsenal of hardware. But hey, upgrades. It reeked of self-serving hypocrisy, but whatever. I wasn’t about to stir the pot.

So a few of those EA goons spearheaded the vote, insisting that we “need” to save all the money to blow it all on stuff that only the select few could even use. They convinced us not to give the Beermans all the money they asked for, which in itself is an acceptable decision. We gave them some, not all. Where’s the fallacy? It’s called a compromise.

It didn’t occur to me until later how wrong I was to humbly belittle my own say in the matter, because most of the people responsible for the surplus were long gone, right? So when I was telling this story last night, I realized that probably everyone saw it as free money, ripe for the plucking. Including the professors.

Wait for it… wait for it…

So the vote was to give them—operative word is give--half of what they asked for. I believe that amounted to $500. I’m fairly sure, anyway. But that’s immaterial.

We, as a group, got an email from Dr. Lillios… let me repeat that…

We, Praecepta… received a mass email… from Dr. Lillios, who had nothing to do with it, but was sort of the wet nurse for the group…

Dr. Lillios emailed Praecepta… lambasting us for not giving them every penny they asked for. She said she was disappointed in us, and she went on and on about how we should be ashamed for not giving back to those who have given so much to us.

Dr. Lillios made us re-vote. Re. Vote. That’s… not how voting works. That’s actually the opposite of a democracy. My first thought was, “Why am I getting punished for a group vote that I essentially had nothing to do with?” My second thought was, “After all this… yeah, like we’re going to not vote to give them all the money. If they are going to make us give them whatever they want in the end, why dress it up in a kangaroo court? Just take the money and bitch-slap us, because it’s the same thing. Is this what it’s going to be like to be a student here?”

How prophetic those words turned out to be.

Tell me now that Bowling Green State University is a free country.

And since when does everybody get exactly the amount they ask for? Instead of a “thank you for the generous sponsorship,” we get rebuked, and the powers that be rub each other’s backs by having an ally step in and force a re-vote. Then, only then, did we get a “thank you” from Lillios. How very… hollow.

Dr. Beerman is a tenured professor. He could damn well have afforded the money to promote his own music that had no practical relation to the university. But the money was there, and it was up for grabs, and apparently the entire faculty thought we should pay him his dues. That’s bureaucracy. A small part of me died inside when I realized that Dr. Beerman was inadvertently perpetuating the Jewish stereotype. I hate when people perpetuate stereotypes.

That’s pretty much how things were done there. Fear and intimidation were tools of the leadership. The problem is, eventually that sort of thing leads to a revolution. Eventually, it almost did. Tenure is a funny thing… you can get away with anything. And you know as well as I do that nobody forgives bad administration. Hence, I’m telling you about it years after the fact. So there you have it, a prime example of why I washed my hands of that sort of thing.

And this is the man who was recently awarded the Ohio Governor’s Award for the Arts? No, I’m done with that world, thank you. It’s ancient history to me.

Academia is anathema to me. I’m not going back. Leave me alone, and worry about your own future education. If you like that world, that’s fanfuckingtastic. For you. Not me.

“I remember… I remember everything.”

End of story.