A campus tale

It started in words with an invitation:

dear prof schliesser,
you were very kind to ask about coming tomorrow. just wanted to reiterate please
do! some amature cultural critiquing practice or no, however you prefer. i
promise food, paintings, paintings, paintings and a boat...

The next day, I did go to the art-exhibit (on campus), where I met her mom and her sister at the reception; I was overwhelmed by her (miniature) paintings, which had, despite being scenes of suburbia, an intensity of focus that suggested every brush stroke was an attempt at breathing. 

She was one of my undergraduate students in a course on Nietzsche. The day after the exhibit, in response to a question about, I think, Gay Science, I launched into an  impromptu lecture* in which I used her paintings (which had been seen by most of her classmates) to illuminate Nietzsche's meaning; I went on to use her paintings as a means of Nietzsche-criticism.

I did not ask her permission to discuss her work in class. I don't recall unease over that, then.

Given the intensity of my interest in the paintings and the warmth with which I spoke, it would have been quite natural to assume that I was also intensely interested in the young artist. And, in fact, during the following weeks, I did ask some of my senior colleagues in the department, if at the college there were rules prohibiting dating former students.

Teaching Nietzsche became an exercise in sublimation in which I studiously avoided further mention of her paintings. A few weeks later I was observed with another, known-to-be-single professor in a bar-restaurant a few towns over by one of the other students in the course. In the fish bowl of a small-town college, this provided several weeks of great gossip. In partially reporting this gossip, a very senior, but healthy looking, colleague happily pointed out to me that a few decades earlier the college had faculty swap-parties. 

As any campus novel will reveal (recall), reading a text together can be a form of intimacy in which feelings that reflect improper desires, if acted upon, can be revealed. As Martha Nussbaum notes "the interaction is not altogether controlled."* This makes for easy satire.

After grades were turned in, I was not given the opportunity to act on my (ongoing) interest in the artist-now-former-student; I received a note from her saying she was going to spend the Summer away from the small-college-town at an unspecified destination. I wished her well, and I informed her (truthfully) that by the time she would return I would have gone on to my next job (half a dozen states or so more westward). I did, however, introduce her to a friend (via email), who had started a gallery in NYC, and who was looking for young promising artists.

A few months later, after my move, it's closure was marked by an email in which, while describing her Summer, en passant, she spoke of "some professor withdrawal, i suppose." I was grateful for the comment.

In an effort to destract myself from more sordid news that came out of professional philosophy today, I googled her name for the first time in a decade. She is now a professional and accomplished artist. By reading the biographical details that accompany her exhibits, I also learned that in the nomadic life-styles common to professional artists and professional philosophers, our paths had crossed in another small college-town not so long ago.

 

*It wasn't impromptu in so far as I couldn't stop thinking about her paintings from the moment I saw them.