[twelve] ways to ponce

(Recently, I was asked about moves I had made to move out of Atlanta after completing college at Emory or Oglethorpe in 2012. There is never a right answer to this question, but engaging this question has caused me to ask a lot about myself as a young person and where I want to go. This is the full response.)

The thing about creatives and creative academics is that they’re always placed in a world that needs for them to place things in the context of wrong or right, better of worse, this twisted binary that makes them delineate and feel a tremendous stress about what is acceptable here and now, when, in reality, it all just is, well, what it is. Art, music, philosophy, language is what it is. There is no such thing as universally right, no wrong (unless it causes harm to people).

To me, the academic world, and to a greater extent, the more outwardly creative world of music, art, theatre, print/web design, and, literature, both realize that the corporate will not go away, but the corporate will fight tooth and nail to keep things as they are against something so dynamic and so emotionally charged as the human spirit at it’s best, when it’s creative. Let me be honest, I feel there is a mix of hetero-normative, patriarchal, Anglo-centric thinking that comes from this mentality, based on the fear of a loss of power, and seeks to subtly control to maintain this status quo.

But other centers of innovation have learned (or are beginning to) that this construct is no longer acceptable for true progress, and that we have to move towards a community that openly values ideas, not simply what that idea means for their bottom line, not immediately defaulting to our narrow viewpoints, not all about making some immediate corporate connection. Universities, civic institutions, the citizens see the writing on the wall, and are fixing it any way they can, even if that means more taxes, or hearing things they don’t want to hear. This explains why we now have the cities of Milton and Sandy Springs, as well as the speed of transit development in Portland, Denver, and Charlotte.

There is much that can be done in the technology (and related) space here, but I do know this - when I graduate from Oglethorpe or Emory in 2011/2012, I can’t afford, given the context in which I want to work, to stay in city that has an active antagonism towards newcomers in the marketplace of ideas, a marketplace that this city really needs. Just look at the mayoral race - we have one person who’s done nothing to benefit people of the city on a policy level and even more so recklessly placed the very citizens she’s bamboozled by face time in harm’s way by not working hard to prevent police furloughs, and another who’s running a vigorous campaign on star power, but will still have to face issues from inside and out because of his past in the legislature. While he’s the best solution we have now, I think the pressure of the next four years of progress this city has to make will crush that administration due to the class, and to a greater extent, racial issues this city has been too busy to address. Something tells me that Kasim can do it, though. This city is at a point where it has to move more boldly to get almost as far as our competitors in Charlotte, the Triangle, Seattle, NYC, and elsewhere. In a few ways, Atlanta’s the city too busy not dealing with its problems to progress.

I love Atlanta with a passion. There are not a lot of people who can claim this city as their birthplace and are still here. But Atlanta isn’t a place I can grow. That requires a place that’s willing to go out on a limb for ideas and willing to stretch and challenge itself and live with the costs it entails. As an academic type that found himself in the web industry, I’m not seeing how the trend of growth is not towards the corporate, binary forms of thinking that has stifled the creative class in this city.The binary of the status quo is not something I can easily live within, because honestly, I’m not within either side of the binary. Atlanta needs to figure out its social contract for itself, not as an attempt to be New York. Until then, you’re going to hemorrhage artists and other creatives, while keeping accountants and lawyers around.

(Even though this was my answer to this question, what do you think about the A? I’m very interested in what you think.)