June 12, 2006
The Purpose
When I came to the University of Michigan, in the Fall of 2003, I harbored a small fantasy of leaving ‘my mark’ on this campus. My first semester here, I enrolled in a seminar for honors students called “Introduction To Historical Research.” In typical seminar style, the class was intimate; enrollment was less than a dozen students. Prof. Shaw Livermore was my first, and only, encounter with an instructor who was classically academic, complete with tweed suits and leather elbow patches. The purpose of the course was to research a history term paper on a subject of the student’s choosing, given one requirement: all research had to be original, primary source material. Because of this class, I found myself spending many hours in the small treasure that is the Bentley Library, a haven on North Campus I probably would never have stumbled upon were it not for Prof. Livermore and his sincere devotion to history and inquiry.
I wrote my paper on the history of activism at the University of Michigan, from 1963-2003. I found myself diving into a counter-culture of exploration, innovation and crushing addiction. I tore through the files in the John Sinclair collection, reading every poem and flier, regardless of relevance to my own research. I read about the birth of the eclectic fanfare that is the Ann Arbor Hash Bash, and found myself attending a very different, dark, and angry rally in the Spring of 2004. I read about the MC-5 free-love communes on the east end of Hill Street, and I now live in these very houses, filthy and dilapidating, with only whimsical carvings in the old cement floor to testify to the spirit that once resided in these walls. The more I read about the activist spirit of Ann Arbor, the more saddened I became. A world that I thought was vibrant and innovative turned out to be rageful and selfish.
In the course of my research, I began to ask a new question of history; one that I never voiced in the paper I ultimately turned in for my first college “A.” I began to wonder which is more potent, the fantasy or the reality. It was the fantasy of activism and creativity that inspired me to join in the Ann Arbor spirit. Without that Fairy Tale, I may have ended up at some Ivy League institution, wading through suffocating ambition and rigidity. It is the reality of history, however, that made me want to record my own experiences as a student. Perhaps if this town really was the free-spirited Mecca I had imagined, I would have been content to be lost as just another Ann Arbor Hippy, driving a Volvo (which I do), and shopping at Whole Foods (which I don’t). Knowing the truth, however, inspired me…or perhaps it scared me, into truly contributing my own voice to history. I was inspired to record my own time in Ann Arbor, for any future truth seekers such as myself who may wish to stumble upon my reality. But I was scared into preserving my youth, my own idealism and creativity. As much as I would love for the future students of Ann Arbor to learn from my musings, I know that the person who really has the most to learn from this journal is me when I am twenty years older, more cynical, rageful and apathetic. When the pressures of the ‘real world’ have crushed my current Fairy Tale, I want to be able to look back and remember that I was once creative and hopeful, and I had a voice that could not be silenced.
Posted by vcbailey at 05:24 PM | Comments (0)