The Crazy Ones Hold The Power

"Was not all the knowledge

Of the Egyptians writ in mystic symbols?

Speak not the scriptures oft in parables?

Are not the choicest fables of the poets,

That were the fountains and first springs of wisdom,

Wrapped in perplexed allegories?"

-Subtle, Ben Jonson's "The Alchemist"

We are the crazy ones. We've wrapped our minds in perplexed allegories, hidden our knowledge away in mystic symbols and speak oft in parables. Only we can understand the word power when I say that it is a power beyond all other powers which I hold and no one else does. No one.
Other people have a power that resembles mine, but it is not the same.
Don Quixote had a power that resembles mine, but it was not the same. I have a power.

Let me explain.

Yesterday, as I was walking down the street, a man ran from the bushes and looked me square in the eyes. "Son, do you know where you're going?" he asked. "Of course I do, I'm going to my destination." I said this without moving a muscle. He then began to walk backwards away from me, and with his third step backwards, tripped and fell into the sidewalk. There was no more man before me.
I continued my stroll down the sidewalk, and came across a marvelous ruby that sparkled with the most amazing deep color of red I had ever seen. It was about the size of my head, and when I tried to pick it up it did not move. "Oh well," I said to myself, "this ruby must belong to someone else." So I continued my walk down the street, leaving the most beautiful rock I had ever seen in the street behind me.
Pretty soon, I turned from the sidewalk and onto the grass, and began to walk across a lush field of green. The lushness was so much, actually, that it closed in all around me. I was the only human in this crushing jungle. The only thing that could feel.
I saw that only a few feet in front of me there was a castle, hidden mostly by an enormous amount of shrubbery. To be honest with you, all I could see was the entrance through the thick vegetation, but I knew this was the place I was going because I had been there before. Actually, this is where I started walking from, but it doesn't look like I remember it. I think that's a good thing, so I continue on in to the castle doors.
Once inside, I see staircases all around me. Staircases to my left, staircases to my right. I see a staircase right in front of me and a staircase right behind me. There's circular stairs, square stairs, pointy stairs and hairy stairs. The heavily carpeted stairs look nice to walk upon, and the old, rickety stairs look like they're about to fall apart. There's even a staircase on top of a staircase. I decide to take the old, rickety stairs.
When I reach the top, I find a door. This door has symbols on it, and they make perfect sense to me. I look in and see a room full of monsters, and it makes me smile. This is my destination. So I walk into the room of monsters and take my seat down beside them. One by one the monsters move up and down and all around. The monsters are not aggressive, and they speak beautifully of places I'd like to visit and thoughts I wish to share.
(These monsters have so much hair. All different colors, flowing, flying, whipping, and dying. The hair was all I could focus on. One hair was so different from the next. Why is there so much hair?! And why do they smell so funny?)
Then it came to be my time to step before these hairy, scary beasts that speak in beautiful words and talk to them about... a power I have.


I tell them about how I walked down the sidewalk to get to where I stood. I tell them about how I met a man who questioned me and fell into the sidewalk, and about how I saw the most beautiful ruby. Then I tell them about deviating from this sidewalk in order to find my destination, being stuck in an intense jungle of green, and how I discover a castle that I knew I was going to all along but had never seen before. I talk of many stairs, many hairs, and a little about.... a power I have.
Have I explained myself enough? Will your journey to you next class be slightly altered because of this? Perhaps. Perhaps you will look at the different hairs on every one of your peers head next time you enter class, realizing how beautiful each individual one is, yet without the others how horribly pointless one hair would be. Like the words of a work of literature.
Perhaps I will have affected only one of you, but one of you is all I need to be remembered.
You see, my power is in two things: my mind and my words. You have the power, but it is not the same. Other people in other majors have the power, but it is definitely not the same. It is much weaker. I wanted this power to be strong, so I became an English Major.
When I read you this story of my quest for class today, you were there. You might still be there.
You may still be watching that man fall backwards into the sidewalk, or the ruby that would not move, or the jungle as I walked up to our castle, or maybe my decision to come up these stairs to class. You may even, right now, be looking around at your peers as the grotesque creatures they are... stinky, sweating, hairy creatures of a type you never thought of until I gave you this gift. Until I sang you my song.

But you must remember, it is not my song anymore once it leaves my lips and enters your brain. After that, the song is yours to create as you wish. This is also the reason I became an English Major.
I wanted to create songs to pass onto others. I wanted to take others songs and play with them as if I were child molding my play-doh. Forming it to be my own, feeling it as if I too sang their song, as you too sang mine.
Keats knew the secret. He knew that no other curriculum in school could give you the same happy ending, the same fulfillment, as that of the study of the arts, especially literature. For it is literature that defines us, literature that makes us the society that we are, and to be oblivious to that knowledge would be to never try to know who you, or the people around you, "truly" are. "And, although all men observe a similar, they observe not the same order, in the motions of the dance, in the melody of the song, in the combinations of language, in the series of their imitations of natural objects." (Shelley, A Defense of Poetry)
Literature gives you my reality, it gives you Don Quixote's reality, and it gives me your reality. The arts shape our reality, as Oscar Wilde got at when he said "life imitates art", and it is this knowledge and this love for the stories we all hold dear to our hearts that make me proud to say I'm a Literature Major. I'll always be a Literature Major, no matter where I go in my life, and that's all that matters to me.