ORLANDO
Tuesday, July 8th, 2008Disney World, Universal Studios, Full Sail Center for the Recording Arts, and at the time, the Orlando Naval Training Center—it was all right there: media manipulation and training, and training for nuclear powered submarines in case anyone wasn’t a true believer.
I was excited about going back to school after 27 years of bumping and grinding through life on instinct, meat and potatoes. I was looking for the garnish from people who were supposed to know better—teachers–and an institution with the responsibility of shaping minds in a positive productive manner in exchange for a bunch of money. The weekend I had spent there before signing up, with all of the positive energy and hope and faith—I thought maybe the guy with the Messiah complex, the founder of the school, wanted to do the right thing with good Christian values of “Love one another.” Maybe the motto, “Learn the rules of the jungle,” meant a return to the Garden of Eden. Candide said, “We must tend to our garden.”
Upon my arrival at the apartment complex I called the office and was sent a big guy to help me move into the second floor flat. We handled the stuff in about an hour and a half–I gave him forty bucks. “It seems like a great school,” I said. He shook his head, “there are a lot of things going on under the surface,” he said, “be careful.”
They sent this guy to help me. I had already signed papers. I moved 1300 miles and paid three months in advance for an apartment. “What dya mean, be careful?”
“It’s the politics,” he said and I never saw him again. I had just spent 9 years starting up and operating a business in a very narrow minded community. I produced a 90 minute instructional video with a very old set in his ways professor from a real University. And up until the encounter with the big kid helping me carry furniture, everyone I had met at Full Sail had been positive and smiling. My philosophy was show up, do the best you can, keep working and pay the money.
INDOCTRINATION