Began a second round of workshops today in school number three, a place where we worked in the fall.  It was bitterly cold out, and only a handful of kids showed up, but they were happy, and calm, and eager to animate.  Within moments they were “in the zone” as my assistant put it.  The energy in the room is very calm, yet alert, everyone is coming up with ideas, trying things, helping each other.  It’s a lovely thing to be part of when the kids are working that way, which they often are.

The director came in, watched the speeded up 10 hours of animation in three minute clip I’d put together and felt moved to give a little speech.   She told the kids how proud she was of the work they’ve been doing in animation.  She said that since they’d had such a good time, and done such cool work, they had asked Mr. Eliot back for the spring term and that she was looking forward to the great things they were going to do.  It was very touching and it came across without a whiff of falseness.   When I told Sekhnet what she’d said, Sekhnet told me I ought to write her a note and tell her how much I appreciated it.  I should, I shall.

But here’s the riddle for you.   I am not happy about the calm, productive session, the new kids jumping right in and animating, the experienced kids showing them how to use the camera, etc.   I have a sick feeling in my stomach from a voice mail I had as I reached the session today.   Thinking it might be from my assistant, who hadn’t shown up yet, I listened to it.  

Voice of the absentee director of the program at the other school, the first place I did the workshop, the place I am hoping to add a post-production workshop in a few weeks.  The voice of a caviling, quibbling person who has never been in the workshop to observe how it runs.   She went on with a list of things I need to do better: supervise the kids in the lunchroom before the session begins and make sure they don’t leave a mess, don’t let the children use the materials of the teacher who is obliged to give over her room to the workshop on Thursdays, she’s very tidy and has been complaining about this and that every week, even though I have an assistant it doesn’t mean that she is responsible for making sure the kids behave, that she knows I love the kids’ creativity but that the school has standards and that discipline must be maintained at all times, that she understands there was a fist fight in the workshop and that I must intevene when such things take place… the message went on for three minutes in this vein.

And I have a sick feeling in my lungs, a kind of fight or flight reflex.  Gone are all the good feelings of today, all that remains is the fussy bullshit of a clueless person making demands that are, in most cases, ridiculous.   There was no fist fight in the workshop, I saw a kid starting to jump ugly with another kid and immediately intervened to calm things.  I don’t let the children use the materials of the fussy teacher whose room we invade every Thursday at three.  I don’t leave a mess, and this woman’s administrator and my assistant can both attest to these things.

This sick feeling in my lungs is clearly an injury from childhood.  Being unfairly blamed for things that are none of my fault.   Sickens me, even as an adult on the edge of old age.   I think about the odds of such a person being in charge of whether or not my program moves ahead or not– the odds are pretty good.  Most adminstrators are like this woman, demanding, unreasonable, eager to fix blame wherever they can.  

In a sense it’s the reason I launched this program, to give a kid somewhere a fighting chance of spending a few hours not supervised by someone like this.   Allowing a few breaths of air into the lungs of a kid being pumped full of exhaust all day, fed Ritalin so he can sit still, punished for not being able to abide mind-numbing boredom and the heavy boot of factory-style conformity.   The heavy boot of factory-style conformity is the order of the day, to be sure, but it is a very fucked up order that leads to very little good and a great deal of bad.  

The riddle abides, why can I not shake this feeling of doom?