It’s been a very long time since I was a student but I work at an academic institution, in the library. One of my favorite parts of my job is the start of the fall semester and helping out with the ice cream social the library holds to welcome new students and welcome back the returning ones. Mostly I just scoop and hand out cups of sorbet but if I could dispense some advice too it would be this: You’ll probably fail something at some point and it’s going to feel terrible but you’ll be fine. Sometimes, no matter how much work you do, no matter how much you prepare, you will fail, but you just keep going.

I’ve forgotten all the tests I failed. I’ve forgotten most of the tests I aced, too. The only test I really remember is one I did pass, barely. It’s the one D I’m proud of.

In my first few days at college I, along with all other freshmen, took a series of tests to gauge aptitude and to place us in classes not related to our majors. I’d already settled on majoring in English, but there was a biology test and I had two advantages: first, I’ve always been interested in science, and, second, I was lucky to have had some good science teachers. The counselor looked at my test and said Biology 101 would be a waste of my time; I should take Biology 125.

There were over a hundred of us in the classroom. I sat near the front and started talking to people around me. Everyone else was pre-med or nursing or something in science. I thought this was funny.

Then Dr. Barnstable came in. He was tall, stocky, with a dark combover. He wore a lab coat over his dress shirt and solid gray tie. He gave all of us a very stern look and said, “This is not a class for English majors. If you’re an English major leave. Now.”

I was rolling with laughter. I was an English major who’d killed the biology test. I could handle this.

The next day there was an ice cream social. Dr. Barnstable was there. I went over and introduced myself and said I was an English major. He told me to drop his class. I said that since I’d done so well on the introductory biology test I thought I’d stay.

“What’s a phospholipid?” he snapped.

I wasn’t expecting to be tested but I gave him a pretty good textbook answer.

He glared. He hit me with a few more questions, standard cell biology stuff, I thought, and I was able to fire back with answers. Finally he muttered, “Well, fine,” and walked away.

The truth is I struggled. The reading I could handle—hey, English major, reading comprehension is in the job description. The lab work, on the other hand, required math. I could have taken Physics or Chemistry 101 but I went for biology to avoid math. Nobody told me I’d need algebra to determine the oxygen consumption of mealworms in a tube.

Then there was the first test. I’d studied hard but I still sweated every question. When I got the test back with a big red D at the top I thought, okay, maybe this isn’t a class for English majors. When I told Dr. Barnstable I was dropping out, right before the start of the next class, he said, “I’m sorry to see you go.” I assumed he didn’t recognize me and said that to all dropouts.

A week later I passed one of the guys I knew from the class. He asked why I’d dropped out. I told him I didn’t do so well on the test.

“Yeah,” he said, “almost everybody failed. I think only three people passed it.”

I still don’t regret dropping out. In the spring I took Chemistry 101, and did pretty well. For an English major.

Because I’m not a professional art critic I never have to write about anything I don’t like. Maybe professional art critics don’t either. I read a fair amount of art criticism and it’s very rare that I read anything that’s even subtly negative. I did write for a short-lived arts publication—so short-lived it ended after only two issues, which was unfortunate because my third review was really good, but that’s another story—but got lucky in that I really liked the works I was assigned to review. Well, that’s not entirely true. There were some paintings in an exhibit I was supposed to write about that I really didn’t like at first. I started off making a lot of negative notes but, as I looked at the paintings more closely, I started to really like them. And the more I liked them the more positive things I found I had to say.

Something I wonder about with professional art critics, or professional critics of any kind, is, do they ever have trouble coming up with something to say? Especially with something they like. There’s nothing special about critics—they’re just people with opinions, although their opinions are, or should be, more informed. If you’re looking at, say, a painting, and you like it but you can’t explain why maybe, just maybe, a critic can offer some words. Maybe a critic will point out something you missed. And maybe if you don’t like something a critic can give you a lengthy explanation of why you should like it. You can still hate it after that.

This is a long-winded way of saying I really like that RAZ tag. It’s clean, it’s simple, but it also leaves me wondering if RAZ is short for something. Razmatazz? Razberry? Razputin?

Yet after spending a lot of time looking at it and thinking about the details—look at how that white triangle in the center must have required careful thought and planning, and how the brick behind it is painted while further up has been left raw—there’s not a lot I can say about it. And I hate that.

My first real introduction to art history was a high school class I signed up for because I thought it would be interesting. I’d read some pocket biographies of famous artists and I wanted to get a broader view of how they fit together. I didn’t think it would be easy but when a subject is interesting that makes even the hard parts worth it. It helped that I had a really good teacher.

We started with the 19^th century which both made sense and was also jumping into the deep end. It was where all those movements and -isms really started—Classicism and Romanticism leading into Impressionism and so on. But then it wasn’t until around the 12^th century that putting paintings in frames and carrying them around became widespread and the first public art museum didn’t open until 1661. There’s been art as long as there have been people—art history is human history—but the 19^th century is one point where European art at least started to get organized in a way that’s easy to study.

One of the later groups we learned about was called Die Brücke, The Bridge. They were unusual because, first of all, their name wasn’t an -ism (they were kind of a subgroup of Expressionism but that gets complicated) and they were also in Germany. Most of the artists and movements we were learning about were in Paris. Many artists even came to Paris from other parts of Europe and beyond to be part of what some considered the center of the art world. A little side trip to Dresden was a reminder that art, and art history, was happening everywhere. It was also happening in Africa and Asia and North America and South America and Australia and Oceania, anywhere there were people, but we didn’t get into that at the time.

I was really fascinated by Die Brücke paintings which are bold and colorful. I especially liked Emil Nolde who did a whole series of paintings of masks. But why “The Bridge”? I asked my teacher. She thought for a minute and said, “I don’t know. I never thought about it. Why don’t you look it up and you can tell me because I’d like to know too.”

I told you she was a good teacher.

The answer, by the way, is that, like a lot of founders of art movements, they were young and idealistic and wanted to create art that was “a bridge to the future”, breaking with past traditions and opening up a whole new freedom of expression. When I read that it opened up my mind to the realization that all art, really, is a bridge to the future—art is creating something that didn’t exist but which reaches beyond the present.

I still think about that every time I see art on or near a bridge.

Here’s Emil Nolde’s Mask Still Life III.

Source: Artchive

This is painted on a shed in someone’s yard. On the one hand I’m a little uncomfortable sharing a picture of something that’s on private property. On the other hand it’s visible from the street, and adjacent to a public park, so I think the message is meant to be public. And why wouldn’t it be? It’s a wonderful, reassuring message that whatever struggles we go through can produce something positive. Or maybe it’s a message of self-care. Sometimes we have to put out a few thorns to protect ourselves so that our roses may bloom. Those are just a couple of thoughts. I’m sure there are many other ways to interpret it.

I also wonder what prompted someone to paint this message. Not all art is a response to trauma but a lot of it is. Read a biography of almost any famous artist and you’ll find plenty of turmoil and conflict. And people who aren’t famous artists, who aren’t famous at all, experience plenty of turmoil and conflict too. Some may create art. Creating art can be therapeutic but it can also be a way of asking for help.

I don’t know if the person or people who created this mural were asking for help or, with this message, were hoping to offer help. I’d want to help if I could but at the same time I don’t want to invade their privacy.

Dumpsters are popular sites for tagging. This is probably because they’re out of the way and most people don’t care about them. Business rent dumpsters and stick them out of the way and every once in a while the business that owns the dumpsters sends a truck around to empty them and I’d be surprised if the drivers who do that have any concern with how the dumpsters look. And no one really cares who throws anything away in dumpsters. Got some trash in your car? Throw it in the nearest dumpster. No one’s going to complain. They’re perpetually someone else’s problem, or no one’s problem, which is why someone labeling a dumpster “Dream Catcher” seems like a bitter, angry statement. Someone’s saying, dreams are trash.

Of course I always second-guess myself. There’s a long history of dumpster-diving, especially around college campuses. Back in 2009 the Nashville Scene profiled a local man who picked through campus trash after the students left for the summer. They did, and still do, leave a surprising variety of things behind, from refrigerators and microwaves to laptop computers and clothing. There are official drop-off places for donations but not everyone knows about those or has time to get to them. People packing to leave their dorms—especially graduates who have no plans to ever come back—understandably might just hit the nearest dumpster.

So maybe it was a bitter, angry statement, or maybe it was meant to be more ambiguous, maybe even positive. One person’s trash is another person’s dream. That reminds me of a classic line from Mitch Hedberg:

“I’m sick of following my dreams. I’m just going to ask them where they’re goin’, and hook up with them later.”

It’s not easy to see but the tag TYPO has been applied to the back of an interstate sign. It was also not easy to get a picture of it and I was only able to do so because my wife was driving; if I’d been in the driver’s seat I probably wouldn’t have even noticed it, let alone been able to take a picture of it. I’ve seen the TYPO tag a few other places—always next to the interstate, in one case under a bridge, and in another on a retaining wall. It’s been difficult to get pictures of those too because we were moving at high speed.

I’ve been a defender of graffiti for most of my life, though I have mixed feelings about it. It goes back to a documentary I saw in the 1980’s about graffiti artists in New York, showing how many of them were very talented. Some were even being given gallery spaces and materials as a way of getting them off the streets, though there was a bit of a catch-22: to be recognized they had to first create graffiti, breaking the law and risking arrest. I thought, and still think, there should be another way to recognize and foster talented artists.

The tag TYPO is also interesting. It prompted me to think about how it’s a shortening of “typographical error”, compressing two words and seven syllables into just one two-syllable term whose meaning is still understood.

With that preface what I’d really like to say is this is some of the stupidest, most unnecessary graffiti I’ve ever seen. I could make a lengthy statement about how important art is, how it doesn’t just enrich our lives but makes living worthwhile, but I can’t defend this. TYPO, whoever you may be, you risked your safety, maybe even your life, and you endangered others too. You’ve created a distraction that’s still potentially endangering others. I know it’s not easy but I see real skill in your work, and the effort you put into painting on an interstate sign could have been redirected elsewhere. You can do better.

Most libraries don’t date-stamp books at checkout anymore. A lot of libraries have self-checkout systems at the desk so you don’t even have to hand your books over to someone—just enter your card and scan the barcodes on the back of the books. Funny enough an administrator I once worked for used the checkout stamps to prove keeping actual books on shelves was a waste of time, money, and space. He said he’d found a book that hadn’t been checked out in a hundred years. I believed him but I also had a lot of questions. How long had it taken him to find this century-old book? Did he know that people can, and do, consult books in the library without checking them out? Most libraries have a reference section of books that don’t circulate but that’s because they’re so heavily used they have to be available. And did he know that librarians regularly go through the stacks and sometimes remove books they decide are no longer needed?

He wasn’t taking questions.

Libraries can now collect circulation information digitally which is a lot more efficient and easier than going through individual books but I still feel like we’ve lost something by not stamping books anymore. When I check out a book and see all the dates it was checked out previously I feel connected to the other people who read it (or maybe didn’t but still wanted to). This library also used to stamp books with a returned date so I could even see how long someone kept it.

My goal when I first started working in libraries was to work in circulation. I know the stereotype of librarians is that they don’t want to deal with people, and I’ve known plenty who are like that. But libraries exist to serve people and I still believe in the importance of people helping each other rather than just relying on machines.

The book I checked out, by the way, is Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls. It’s a small, fun novel I found out about from a blurb in a magazine—an actual paper and ink magazine—that said “If you like The Shape Of Water you’ll like this book.” I do, and I did. First published in 1983 it’s got a sort of cult status so in a way it’s fitting it hasn’t been checked out more, although that last stamp with the 2017 due date is right before the library stopped stamping checkout slips. 

Maybe a lot of people have read it, though, without ever taking it out of the library.

The son of a friend of mine is fascinated by the history of video games, from Pong up to the unbelievable array of apps available through our phones, tablets, computers, and other devices. His favorite is the original Super Mario Brothers from 1985, a game that, at the time, felt like a quantum leap—not to be confused with Quantum Leap, the TV show which wouldn’t premiere until four years later, but that’s another story.

The way video games have metaphorically mushroomed, expanding through every part of our culture, with graphic interfaces becoming even part of the way we work, seemed to be captured by these which mysteriously appeared near my office.

Source: Facebook

What’s the most memorable way someone has ever asked you out?

This is not a request for suggestions—I’m very happy with my wife and have no interest in anything other than friendship with anyone else. I’m curious because something came up recently that reminded me of the most creative way someone has ever asked me out. It was before I met my wife. I was in college and the person and I knew each other—I thought there was something there but was afraid to make the first move. They were out of town one weekend and left me their dorm key so I could feed their fish. I went in and there was a note on the stereo that said “Play Me”.

There was a cassette in the stereo—showing my age, I know—cued up to “Reel Around The Fountain” by The Smiths.

This was, as I said, the most creative way someone has ever asked me out, not the best way. I was an English major so of course I had to analyze every single line of the song. I thought I understood “Fifteen minutes with you/Well, I wouldn’t say no” but did they want me to slap them on the patio? And was that a euphemism? I pretty well understood, though, once it got to this verse:

I dreamt about you last night
And I fell out of bed twice
You can pin and mount me like a butterfly
But, “Take me to the haven of your bed”
Was something that you never said

Still not the best way to ask me out. Someone who really wanted to woo me would use a Kinks song—but not anything from Give The People What They Want. It’s a great album, one of my favorites. It’s just not one for setting the mood; the song “Destroyer” pretty well sums up some of my romantic experiences, but that’s another story.

Most happy memories are tinged with sadness, including this one. I has happier having forgotten it, honestly, and will be happy to forget it again until something reminds me of it. Listening to “Reel Around The Fountain” that first time, though, while feeding a crimson betta fish, was and always will be pure happiness. I don’t know if the person I’ve been writing about here will ever read this. I’m not going looking, but I will say this: in spite of how badly things went we did have a very happy fifteen minutes and I hope you’re happy now.