The Heart Of The Matter

“I’ve almost got it now. Hold still.” As the Red Cross nurse jabs the needle into my arm for the fourth time, and misses for the fourth time, it suddenly occurs to me that giving blood is actually a lot like the art community at UA.

Alright, so I‘m lying. This bizarre metaphor didn’t cross my mind with the fourth, fifth or, yes, even the sixth vicious stab of that giant needle into my cringing skin. (“Ohmygod, I’m going to pass out” more closely resembles what I was thinking, in case you‘re curious.) It actually popped into my head a few days later, as I stared down at the impressive multicolored bruise in the crook of my elbow, and wondered what exactly I could write this blog about. I knew I needed something art-based, but I also knew that talking about the log-cabin I made out of toothpicks and super glue just wouldn’t cut it, no matter how awesome the log-cabin actually was. (Pretty awesome.) No, I needed a topic that was relevant to the student body– something that focused on the heart of UA arts, that captured the pulse and product of the flourishing artistry at this university.

Only it really isn’t that easy. One of the things that makes art at Alabama so exciting is how hard it can be to actually find that art. There’s no main headquarters of artistic expression, no central university building that offers a home to all forms of arts and creativity. We haven’t got a Creative Arts Center, and all I know about the Arts building is that it looks sort of like a castle. The theaters are on one end of the campus, the concert halls at the other, and while you may know where the art galleries are, I don‘t. On occasion I stumble across a painting in some random corner of one building or another, or a guy and his guitar sitting out in front of the Ferg playing music for the two to five people who actually bother to stop and listen, but these occasions, serendipitous as they are, always leave me feeling like I’m missing out on the big picture.

In my six months on campus, I feel as though I have yet to really find the pulse of student creativity; I have yet to successfully hit the main vein of the art scene. So far, all I’ve managed to do is make jab after painful jab into the skin of the campus, missing my target almost every time. True, I’ve been to some poetry readings and plays, and some free concerts in Moody or outside the Ferg, or in the top of Lakeside Diner, and all of it’s been enjoyable and excellent, but I still don’t feel as though any of it has made me understand what makes the art on campus really tick. There are the theater majors, and the music majors, the concerts and the plays, but what about the engineering majors who make cannons out of PVC pipe, shoot potatoes at brick walls, and claim that as their art? Everybody’s got a story, and everybody’s got their art, but where does it all fit in? Is there a grand design, a center point that all of this artistic expression flows outwards from, is it merely a random assortment of creative expression, strewn pell-mell across the campus for all who might care to indulge? Where does the art of campus come from? Where is it headed to? And where, exactly, is it all hiding?

Truth is, I can’t answer those questions quite yet. Don‘t know that I‘ll ever be able to. But I suppose it boils down to this: You can’t write about the heart of a thing if you don’t know where it lies. I’ve seen glimpses of the creative blood that pumps through the campus, but I’m still seeking the elusive vein that holds it all in and keeps it flowing.

So I’ve decided that I’m going on a quest. I’m setting out on a mission to find that vein, and follow it to the heart of the creative arts on this campus as best I can, arriving on the other side of my ignorance with knowledge and understanding. Or, you know, at least some funny stories to tell.

I don’t plan on being alone in this, though. You’re going to help me, and you’re going to like it. (Please?) The arts on this campus begins with its creators and its audience, and you may be both or either, or you may even think you’re neither, but any which way, I need to know what’s in your brain, because it starts with you. What is your art, or what is art at all, as you see fit to define it? Where do you find creativity flowing from in this campus? In the classroom? On the quad? Inside your own brain where no one but you can see it? Tell me anything, tell me everything. Click the comment button above this post, leave me an idea or twenty, and as the weeks go on, I’ll do my best to return the favor, maybe even with a little more success and a little less bruising than the Red Cross managed.

by Morgan Bruffy

~ by themissingink on February 17, 2009.