Naked Singularity, Part IX - Final Installment

The hunt for a graduate school was short and sweet. I wasn't prepared to commit to a PhD anywhere, and quickly found out that terminal MA programs were cash cows for Universities. If you want a PhD, schools might be able to scrounge up funding for you, but if you just want to get your MA and get out, pay up. So the list got shortened to a few strange schools that had funded MA programs in English/Poetics. The University of Maine appealed to me because Orono had a long history with Buffalo (sharing the late great poet and teacher Robert Creeley, among others) and with the exportation of Ben Friedlander from UB to UMaine, it seemed that the traditional dialogue would continue. I knew Ben from times he would sit in for Charles Bernstein; I liked him as a person and a professor, so I thought that working with him would be beneficial to me.

I took a trip in November of 2002 to check out the University and meet with professors. Orono is an 11 hour drive from Buffalo, almost 3 hours North of the border between Maine and New Hampshire. In other words, it's up there. Way up there. I remember thinking to myself as I drove farther and farther North, what am I getting myself into? I arrived at the University in the middle of the afternoon; things were grey, cold, and dreary. The architecture was unimpressive, the campus was active, but not bustling. Quiet for a school of 13,000. I would come to find out it had little to do with the school and everything to do with the students. After a meeting with a few professors and the chair of the department, I sat in on an evening class Friedlander was teaching on Sentimental Poetry. I was myself: brash, confrontational, insightful - but everyone else was so quiet. I hadn't even read the entire book they were discussing, and I had more to say than most of the students. I thought this place could use a kick in the ass. I left the campus ambivalent, arrived in Bangor where I was staying with an enrolled grad student, and turned in early.

The next day I explored the little city of Bangor (the only thing I really knew about Bangor was it had a statue of Paul Bunyan and Stephen King lived there). In the afternoon I met with Pat Burnes, the teaching assistant coordinator, attended a reading by Mark McMorris (part of UMaine's New Writing Series), and ended the evening by having dinner with McMorris, Steve Evans, Jennifer Moxley, and a few others. Discussion at dinner was lively, and I was entertained by the depth and breadth of Evans' knowledge. I found myself thinking there might be life in Maine yet.

I left early the next morning and drove to Maine's coast in search of the ocean. For some reason I thought if I could just see the ocean, it would tell me the answer. Let me know whether or not I should be there. But I couldn't find it. I know that sounds ridiculous, but anyone who's ever been to Maine can concur - the coastline is a jagged series of rocky inlets, small harbors, and uninspiring wetlands. I wanted waves. Great big crashing waves, something bigger than me, something sublime that would draw me in completely or send me home screaming. I drove out of my way for almost 3 hours, and never saw breaking waves. I turned inland towards route 95 and headed home, feeling ashamed. Why would the ocean have the answer? Was I insane? Shouldn't I have the answer?

Flying into Bangor, ME, 2004.

I was doing good work in Buffalo - why did I really want to move? Was it because all my friends had gone/were going to grad school? Was it because I couldn't handle the complexities of my social situation? Was it because I really wanted to learn more about the subject I had come to love and value? Was it because I wanted to escape into the woods of Maine and discover things about myself? I think it was all of those things, but I also think it was to buy time. I had entertained the notion that I might never find a job directly related to my education, but I remained in denial, pushing it to the fringes, telling myself that all I needed was more education and everything would be alright. Then someone would see the value in me, want to put my knowledge to work, and capitalize on my unique skill set. Part of me was still holding on tenaciously to the golden myth of higher education, part of me was probably just drunk.

I decided shortly after arriving home that I needed a kick in the ass, someone in Maine might be able to give it to me, but more importantly, Maine needed a kick in the ass, and I was just the man to give it. I packed up my car, my big fish attitude, and moved to the great white Northeast in August of 2003.

While at UMaine, I taught composition to incoming freshmen and sophomores. I was an atypical teacher; I taught about cryptozoology and the loch ness monster, engaged my students in discussions about DADA and Situationism, assigned activities instead of papers. I was good at teaching, but I didn't necessarily like it. I always imagined when I went away to places that it would be to "work on me," but teaching made me feel like I kept emptying my bowl before I had the chance to fill it. I can tell you one thing for certain (especially those of you who like to think of your students as "teachers"), I learned nothing from my students in Maine except patience and the advantage of having multiple approaches to a problem.

Maine was an exercise in patience. Stores and restaurants closed at 9p, bars closed at 1a, people were reticent and uncommunicative, and the climate was oppressive. I keep late hours, so rarely had the chance to grocery shop or eat out; I'd arrive at bars a half an hour before last call; I'd find myself leading every single conversation I was in; and sometimes in the winter, the temperature didn't clear 0 degrees Faranheit for weeks at a time. I never realized how truly impatient I was until I experienced the interminably slow pace of Maine. I mean, seriously, the speed limit in the city is 25mph. And people obey it. But I learned patience. Not only with the place, but with myself.

Nadja Sayej installation at 107 Neville. Mural, Chris Fritton, framed work, Nadja Sayej, 2005.

This new patience made me a better reader and a better writer, as did guidance by Friedlander, Evans, and Tony Brinkley. I admired and envied their reading skills, vocabulary and wit, and wisdom, respectively. Maine allowed me the freedom to cultivate and integrate a number of varied interests, including, but not limited to: pataphysics, utopia/dystopia, visual poetry, poetics, perceptual science, hermeneutics, Situationism, and Marcel Duchamp. But this meandering appreciation didn't help me in an environment that prizes unilateral specialization - I didn't have a particular focus that was my "project," my "specialty." Evans once remarked to me that the nature of my papers and outside activities led him to believe I "may have been better off going to art school for an MFA." It probably didn't help that I had converted my office at school into an international art gallery that focused on visual poetry from around the world. The space was called 107 Neville; I would have artists mail their work, then I would hang and curate a show for them in the space; the work would change on a bi-monthly basis. I saw it as a way to draw together students and faculty from the art, english, new media, and philosophy departments. All told, 107 Neville hosted 9 shows and featured artists like Nico Vassilakis, David Baptiste-Chirot, Wendy Collin Sorin, Nadja Sayej, Mike Basinski, and many others. It never turned into the multi-disciplinary haven I envisioned because I didn't really understand the insular nature of the departments (and people) in Maine. But it was, as Jennifer Moxley called it when I first described it, "an idea beautifully doomed to fail." And it was a beautiful, fun, and entertaining failure, which in my opinion, is as good as any success.

Nico Vassilakis visual poetry projection, 107 Neville, 2004.

Did I give Maine the kick in the ass it needed? I think so, at least while I was there. I made people drink a little too much, think a little too much, see and do things they would've never done had I not been there to encourage them. I was wild, erratic, cocky, and chronically argumentative, but I brought a lot of positives to the table too. I was decisive, creative, inspiring, and engaging. Apparently students and professors there honor my memory by describing things too hyperbolic, over-the-top, or unusual as "Frittonesque".

Me in Orono, ME 2005, complete with furry earflap cap.

Maine taught me to read, to write, to have patience, to make my own fun, and to honor myself and my personal vision. But it also taught me about the sordid, ugly side of departmental politics, the incessant jockeying and feuding, that the Ivory Tower is as muddy as any place where human beings interact. There is nothing sacred or exempt about it. The most important thing I learned in Maine was on my final day. I had stopped by my mentor Tony Brinkley's office for a goodbye chat. After some small talk and a comfortable silence, he sat up and looked me right in the eye, and said "You know it's all a house of cards, right?" I thought I knew what he meant but I wasn't sure. I said "yeah," but it must not of been believable, because he kept staring at me, and said "Are you sure you know it?" I knew it. And I still know it. He was talking about all of academia. He was talking about building a career writing papers about other papers that people wrote while building their careers writing papers about other papers other people wrote. He was saying, we don't need anymore papers, you don't need to write those papers, go out and Do Something.

I've been trying to do something ever since. After graduating, I co-curated the Soundvision/Visionsound III visual poetry show in Somerville, MA, then moved back to Buffalo. I started the Buffalo Small Press Book Fair. I wrote three books, learned how to letterpress, screenprint, and etch glass, quit drinking, found a stable relationship, and quit my job. I'm doing. I'm doing as much as I know how, but not as much as I imagined.

As hard as I work, sometimes I still feel like I'm in Maine, taking a walk through Bangor at 1a, next to the pitch black Penobscot River, full of ice. I could be the last man if it weren't for the chimney smoke that signals others are out there somewhere, or in there, in the spaces we make so we can keep on making, keep on doing.

Next up: Now that we're done with the history of Me, we'll take my friend Tawrin's advice and do a brief history of this thing we call liberal arts.