When I walk on “The Hill”, the campus known as Western Kentucky University, you get this immediate feeling of peace. It is a very Zen type of place and just being there already lifts you above the world, not only figuratively but also in reality, because you are actually “above” the surrounding ‘world’.
I grew up on “The Hill” because my father was a Professor here and my mother was a secretary for a time as well. I was lucky in this way because I also went to first and second grade at the Training School on the Hill, which was much like going to college for school kids. What an atmosphere!
During my school and elementary years, WKU was an exciting place to be. For me my memories of the 60s and early 70s was a time of freshness, newness and a vibrant life. For some reason, whether it was because of my getting older or whether society became more negative, this brilliance of life somehow became less and less present.
But, the thing that has always been so special about “The Hill” is the very clear “Ivory Tower” type of Fortress that it represented to me. When the chimes ring on a rainy fall night and you could hear a choir rehearsing the presence that surrounds you there puts you in a mental state of restful peace.
So, when I go to write I think about “The Hill” and the lofty “Ivory Tower” sort of thoughts that are probably not considered real world thoughts, but rather the thoughts of an idealistic utopian dreamworld.
It is a luxury to go into your own “Ivory Towers” of thoughts and to create some ideas which lift you above the world of common pedestrian socially acceptable thinking. Here, you can theorize about great things and regardless of whether it is realistic in today’s world, we all know that it doesn’t matter what today’s world thinks, because it basically doesn’t and that what you dream today can become reality in the future.
The truth is that society has never been moved forward by old thinking. Going backwards has never led anyone forward. So, while the past may have been great in many ways, the truth is that those situations are no longer a part of the world today. You can’t treat the future as if it is a repetition of the past, because the conditions of the future is not going to be the same as the past.
In many ways you can look at a university as a place where you study the past. No matter what you study, you are studying and learning the knowledge and skills which were developed in the past. But the point of education is not to become a human museum for old stuff, but to develop a person from the inside by creating an awareness of life that those who don’t walk that path can so easily access.
University is often thought of as a place you have to attend to ensure you get a good job. But really, if money is the only reason you are going to college, then it isn’t going to be the experience it could be.
This holds true for writing. If you are writing or doing any art just to make money your motivation will soon run dry because the rewards of money are usually greatly delayed from the point of departure on an artistic quest. The real value of writing lies in the practice of digging for gold in your soul about things that really matter to us and others.
While making money is important in life, it is sort of like eating a meal, you are hungry – you eat – you aren’t hungry. But writing or artistic involvement is a never ending quest for building a towering ivory monument to who you are and why you are.
What good is living if you aren’t going to build your own inner ivory tower that has it’s own independent set of values not derived from the fads of common life? If it is important for you to belong to a group that accepts you because you somehow blindly adopt it’s set of principles then by all means, just grab a number and become one of the many.
But if you value what “God” has built you to become then you will explore your inner goldmine, you will question what others blindly accept, not because you doubt but because you want to fully understand and come to your own conclusions about life.
The great thing about the “Ivory Tower” is, you have the space to theorize and explore without the need to be right about everything. It is a process of yes and no, true and false, a labyrinth of questions and answers which allow for the mistakes of commission by giving you room to roam.
So writing in your “Ivory Tower” takes some time. It may take 20 pages until you get “warmed up” and really begin to get to the good stuff, the deep stuff. With blogging it becomes a good thing to not only just publish the result of your experiment but also the process of it.
When I look at the word count I am always aiming for 2000 words. But, just now I came to a conclusion that those two thousand words can be a series of articles, then brought together in one post about a topic which you have been exploring.
The interesting thing about blogging is, that when I write a title, often the article becomes about something else. You see, it shows a journey from an idea through a series of spontaneous thoughts and concludes with an open statement about where it is leading you.
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