One day I really will write about how going to Wheaton College — where dancing and drinking and sex and drugs were verboten — was an absolute riot of creativity among my friends. We just unearthed these tapes, just some of the many bands and solo acts who wrote and recorded original music.
@joshuapsteele Yes! And/but there’s an interesting set of questions of where invention comes from — whether despite, or because of constraints, etc.
@ablerism @joshuapsteele I assume that Grendel’s Fenn, a downtown coffee house, is long gone. (I found precisely one reference to it on the web: a caption on a photo of a 60s-looking acoustic group.)
@ablerism I was there at Wheaton just a bit after you and found the same thing to be true. I’m reminded of how the meaning of askesis is basically “discipline,” where limitation can actually become a channel toward creativity and fruitfulness.
@ReaderJohn @ablerism @mwerickson I didn’t see Grendel’s Fenn when I was there as a PhD student from 2017-2021 (#PhDropout…but at least they gave me a Masters for PhD coursework!). Also, I think we doctoral students were too stressed and overworked for much extracurricular creativity, as it were.
@mwerickson Yesssss. I often think with gratitude, too, that that era was a television wasteland. Nothing on to see! I probably watched a total of four hours of television in four years of college. I often say I minored in staring at the wall. So much open time.