i's gots a halo do you

IN LOOKING BACK THROUGH THE HALO

the halo is interesting, maybe i am a bit late commenting, but most good things come through spontaneous reflection distanced from the matter at hand. But this halo image has been frolicking around in my head sporadically for some time. When i first came to buffalo and didnt know anyone and i was begining to painfully intergrate myself by meeting people and socializing there is somthing that kept comming up. When i was being introduced to people for the first time via someone else, they would always start off with announcing that i was a grad student at UB. First off i didnt really think twice about it, of course why not it is true, this is why i am here right now meeting you for the first time in this setting. Logic is blinding sometimes. But the more and more this happend i started to notice a trend. The peoples reaction was generally the same each instance. They would perk up and their voice would gain a sort of intrigue with repeated phrases like "REALLY", "OH VERRY GOOD". I started to realize that this was a little membership card, this title, this thing that could be looked at i guess as an achievement, but in my eyes it was just somthing i am doing now, another part of my continued progression through life. It is not like i particularly earned the position, or i invented somthing of major importance, it was like using a template for a website, the attachement of this title, which followed my name much like the PHD, Made my identity. I guess i kinda see this as a sort of halo, somthing that is placed on me, and not me placing it on myself, for the most part. Instantly at the utterance of this i was accepted, to an extent, into a particular social bracket and circle. It seems to me this academically placed halo is in direct proportion or fucnction to that which gets placed onto artists socially. It seems that the upper class, which dictate most of popular culture needed to invent this merrit badge inorder to let us feel inducted into a system that is generally out of our element. The creation of art to me is very removed from this space in which the halo is placed. Having a social position and the act of creation to me couldnt be any farther apart from each other. Is this just another example of how academia has vastly perverted most forms of personal expression? the restriction of the cannon is removed so to speak and instead is replaced by the halo, which appears to aknowledge the merrit of individual creativity. But really it just seems like a trojan horse. They present us with his image of our individuality, while the other hand picks our creative pocket, and holds us to a larger system that we cannot see becasuse the blinding light from the halo doesnt allow us to precieve the horizon. I don hold this just to the blindness of the individual recieveing the halo, but really to all that are involved, including those on the "outside" who just as blindly accept the same information as truth. they may have a differnt feeling about it, instead of prasing, they look on with scorn, perhaps. To return to my original example, as i started to notice this occurence and well the general perdictability of it, i would begin to place the halo on myself without prompt. Not just to those who are in this particular social of culture or academia, but also to the "average" the "unassuming" etc. It was funny to me how similar teh reaction was, it may have lost it's luster of praise, but nonetheless it still commanded a particular acknowledgement. And perhaps it ws perdictable becuase it has been so long practiced and induced into society, that it envokes a pavlovian response. MAYBE...?