Fred Aiken Writing

Tag: college

September 8, 2024

art supplies

i kept all my art supplies
from college,
back when i had a lot more energy
from energy drinks and cigarettes,
to fuel 2am sessions of drawing and painting 
for hours at a time
because some sort of inspiration came on,
and it never seemed to matter
that i did not have any artistic talent,
that my figures and scenes were hackneyed or distorted,
or that my color scheme was haphazard,
none of it mattered,
because it was college
and i liked drawing,
but now i no longer do it
because it never feels like i have time
and i definitely don’t have talent,
so all my art supplies sit in the corner of my home office
and mock me from their vantage point
Leave a comment
May 12, 2024

studying literature//finding a place in an expanding universe

don’t ever tell your boss you studied literature in college,
lest you find yourself writing marketing material
for every email campaign,
for every google and/or facebook ad,
for every product description on the website,
along with every blog post talking about how great the company culture is,
and how other people, other candidates,
should come, follow us down this winding path of job choices,

don’t ever tell your boss you studied literature,
lest you want to become the unpaid copywriter
that gets to tell coworkers when they ask for your help,
‘oh, i’m sorry, i can’t help, i have to write this real quick ad campaign for the boss,
they said they need it by the end of business today,
so i can’t delay’,
never delay, never delay,
don’t ask for my help,
for i’m the token english major writing away

don’t even tell your friends or family that you studied literature,
because then they’ll ask you why,
and comment on how you took on so much student loan debt,
for what? they’ll ask, 
to be able to read shakespeare and sylvia plath?

it won’t matter when you tell them that you received enough scholarships
to cover your college tuition, and so you don’t actually have student loan debt,
because then they will tell you that you wasted
the scholarship money on a meaningless degree that will never amount to anything,
and how you should have studied business or engineering,
or anything that would lead to a well-paying career,

and when you tell them that you didn’t really care about money when you were younger,
that you still don’t really care about money even as an adult,
or at least that you don’t care about money in the capacity of wanting to accumulate a whole bunch of it, but rather,
you’re satisfied so long as all your means are met, like food, water, and shelter,
with one or two streaming service here and there,
you will still get the occasional familial sigh of disapproval from all your uncles,
the sharp tsk-tsk from aunts at family events,
and the weekly phone calls from your parents asking if you’ve gone bankrupt yet,
and they’re always surprised, somehow, when you tell them,
‘no, i’m not a homeless former english major living on the side on the road,
while trying to write the next great american novel,
because i realize my strengths and weaknesses as a writer, 
and i’m not an author, i’m the guy that edits coworkers emails,
and writes all the marketing material for whatever company i work for at the time,’

don’t ever tell anyone you studied literature,
because then you’re liable to write a stupid poem about 
how everyone either expects you to write for them without any extra compensation,
or they worry about your future
and how you could have been a lawyer, doctor, or engineer,
if you’d only studied something, anything, else other than the written word
Leave a comment
May 8, 2024

Live from the Comfort of My Couch

Daily writing prompt
What was the last live performance you saw?
View all responses

I’m a bit ashamed to say that it’s been a good long minute since I’ve seen a live performance. Granted, now that I think about it, I did work the local farmer’s market last year, and there was a random Saturday in which a busker played some lovely flamenco styled melodies.

But in terms of concerts that I actually paid to go see, then it’s definitely been a long while since I’ve done any of that. Probably college. I know there were a few orchestras that I went to because my girlfriend at the time, who is now my wife, was the main stage manager for the small theatre our college had. So I hung out in control booth with her, mostly making out in between her various responsibilities. But I was physically there at the performance, so I’ll count it.

Then there were all the plays that I saw while in college, again due to the fact that my girlfriend was a stage manager for a majority of them. All of this was well over a decade ago now. So, yeah, like I said, unfortunately I haven’t been to too many live performances in quite some time.

Which isn’t to say that I wouldn’t have wanted to. There are plenty of performances that I’ve wanted to see live over past decade. I guess the reasons why I haven’t outweighed any motivation to actually go to a live performance. Either the tickets were too expensive, it was too late at night, or there were going to be a crowd of people there and I don’t like big crowds because they make feel incredibly uncomfortable.

The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve realized I don’t like being in large open spaces where there are a lot of people, nor do I like doing much of anything that disrupts, or majorly disrupts, my daily routine. In a way, I guess one could say I’ve become a curmudgeon in my mid-thirties.

Actually, through this exercise of thinking about live performances that I’ve been to, I did remember that I did go to a small concert about six or seven years ago. I went to a Smile Empty Souls concert at a small bar in rural Georgia. The band sounds as dramatic as you would think, but they happened to be my brother-in-law’s favorite band from when he was a teenager, and we didn’t know how long they would be still touring. Or maybe it was because they didn’t tour all that much in the south, and so we figured we would go and see them on the off chance that the band didn’t come back any time soon.

After a quick Google search, I did confirm that Smile Empty Soul is still around and still touring. I’m not a huge fan of their music. It’s mostly depressing emo rock where the lyrics all read like they were written by a sad teenager wrote because their parents got a divorce when they were seven and they never processed it psychologically. But on occasion, I do find myself still listening to Smile Empty Soul for nostalgic reasons. Mostly due to the fact that they were my brother-in-law’s favorite band, and unfortunately he’s no longer with us. So, my wife and I will find ourselves on the anniversary of his death, loading up Spotify and playing a few of their songs in our own private mourning concert to remember him by.

If I had to choose what sort of live performance I’d like to go to next, I think right now in my life I’m at a point where the venue would need to be super small, kinda intimate, and the music would need to be jazz. And probably none of that electric new age sort of jazz, but that jazz that sounds raw and sentimental at the same time. Something like Coltrane or Davis or Monk. But unfortunately there aren’t really any jazz musicians that come through where I live, so I’ll probably just stick to listening to them in the privacy of my home and car by myself.

Leave a comment