Arts Degree

Hello. I wrote the first bit of this way back in January an the rest earlier this week. I enjoyed writing the first bit but when I came back to it after the first session I could not get back into the tone of it. On Tuesday I got sudden inspiration and finished it. I'm quite happy with how it has turned out, so I thought I'd share it with you. It goes thusly:

Arts Degree

Or: Don’t Interrupt My Drinking

I was sat in the pub last week with a beer and a steak and sat by my plate a stack - near collapse, on the verge - a pile of Latin verse. For a while a man had been staring and with a smile he struck a bearing and spoke. My reply, though terse, failed to unnerve him or move him, in fact he just zoomed in and asked: “Can you tell me what the point is: all this toil up in that joint with the purpose to anoint eight thousand more youths (less dropouts) with certification?. They’re so impatient to fill the nation with vagrants who are qualified to debate the neighbours on the literature of Plato – they think they’re so smart but really they’re useless and vaypid.” His fallacy’s quite flagrant. Not least because it’s vapid, the ‘a’ is short, like my patience. I don’t retort because I want my steak and not confrontation. But this paragon of tedious arrogance has had a rapid thought and continues as though he’s not already bored me: “The problem with you – as in you lot, not just you here before me – is that you all think what you learn will matter when you enter the real world and scatter to earn your place in it. Why, that stack of notes right there, I think you’ll just bin it. You’ll never use it again, and so, my studious young friend, I ask: why do you do it? Why do you strive at these tasks?” He then says something he shouldn’t, just one thing: “I think it’s right that the Arts have lost all their funding.”

“Well sir,” I state, a little irate, “I don’t concur. In fact, I believe your thoughts are both daft and actively damaging. And I’m not being disparaging just to get you to leave- though that’s an event whose failure to happen I honestly grieve. No, it’s not just that you bore me and ignore me when I give you hints that your little stint in my presence isn’t a thing that I like; it’s that you’re wrong. So get on your bike and go. But first I’d like you to know the reasons you’re wrong. The list is quite long so I’ll just give you a few. In fact, only two!”

I pick up my beer and soften my thirst. “Reason the first. We ‘waste our time’ and taste the fine thought of minds from ages past to learn how to think; really think not just muse on what we will drink. We do this because – and I do hope you’re following – if we go through our lives just merrily swallowing the things that are said and the words that are spread by those in charge we’ll derail rather fast. Then, when we’re done, this all will have led to a stark inability to speak with facility to see our goals won without tanks, bombs, and guns: speaking is nicer than steel, lead, and fire.

“Reason the second, the more important, I reckon, is that beauty - the wonders that you see and hear and know and feel – is hard to make real. It’s a trophy that’s born from a half-dreamt phantasm. The true artist’s job is in bridging this chasm and in making these joys a concrete reality. This is why we need an Arts faculty. The Sciences constantly give us marvellous tools to help us survive but if we’re really to thrive we need reasons to live. These can only come if we all speak as one and support the Arts.”

Soundly chastised my opponent departs. I pause, then I grin and order a gin. A double with lime and soda. As the young people say: that’s better; rant over.

One hopes you're well,
yrs,
ADWoodward