So, I've been going to this liberal arts college, doing creative work- Writing stuff, making movies. I've been doing it kind of outside the main channels for these things- Not taking the big writing classes, which are largely focused on experimental poetry, and not taking the big film classes, which are largely focused on experimental documentary work. I read the school newspaper and go "wow, this is really shitty," and chalk it up to the lack of editorial standards. Sometimes I go to the film screenings, and find some stuff that's pretty good, usually made by friends of mine. This was something I noticed in an animation class- That the people I was friends with did things I like, because there were shared aesthetics at work, and similar points of view.

Anyway- There's also a school literary journal. It's mostly poetry- almost all poetry, I think, but it does accept prose submissions. Anyway, I submitted this past year, kind of on a lark, and was rejected. Which wasn't really a big deal. The editor's someone I'm not really friends with- Someone I don't get along with at all, actually, and I realized I was just being sarcastic to her all the time, arbitrarily- somehow I'd never talked to her honestly. Until the whole literary journal thing, which was confrontational. I brought up that she mostly ran stuff from a circle of people that took classes taught by the same guy, she said she felt most comfortable coming up with a context to present that work, because she was familiar with the people who made it. Fair enough.

But anyway, here at this new place, that literary journal's in the bathroom. And there are people in it I'm on friendly terms with, or at least kind of know by acquaintance- We've taken the same classes, gone to the same shows, ridden the same buses, been at the same parties. I don't know, I figured there'd be something there in their work that I'd think was interesting.

Nope.

Seemingly, the whole experimental-poetry thing had filtered out all of the feelings and experiences that I had in common with these people. I don't know if it's just a result of their work being distanced from themselves, or if their work really does reflect them and my feeling of revulsion (a strong word, but yeah, pretty much) is just a reaction to that whole unbridgeable distance between two people thing. Either way, it's kind of a drag. What the fuck are people doing? Am I the only one at this college who takes the fact that Matt Groening is our one famous alum deeply to heart, as a signpost to try to be as real and iconoclastic as possible?

Come the fuck on, you assholes, you know deep down that The Simpsons is better than The Age Of Wire And String.

(This post's title should be: Jimbo In Purgatory.)