When I was in high school, one of the people I admired most was a classmate named Bill.  Bill was, without question, one of the most interesting people I knew.  He had some intriguing fascinations, like Nietzsche, Tim Burton, and punk music (especially the Misfits and AFI).  He was exceptionally well-read (one of only two students in my class to score a perfect five on the AP Lit exam), and he wrote some pretty amazing stuff, both poetry and songs.  He even played lead guitar in a band, although for the life of me, I can’t remember the name.  (Sorry, Bill.)

Anyway, one of the things I do remember was that he adamantly (at the time, anyway) described himself as “straight-edge”: no drinking, no smoking, no drugs.  He never really made a big deal out of it, and if asked, he would simply say that he wasn’t into those things and he’d leave it at that.  It somehow made sense for Bill.  Considering how intellectual and hardcore he was about everything else, it was logical that he wouldn’t cave in to these vices, that he wanted to remain as clear-headed as possible at all times.

Now with graduation only 190-odd days away, I’ve been trying to consider librarianship in a sober context — something like a realistic continuum of information professionals and information services — if for no other reason than so that I can understand *why* I’m working so hard to get this degree.  I’m wondering to what extent we, as librarians, intoxicate ourselves with theory, with the desire to manage and control, and with misguided attempts to justify and redefine our profession when we aren’t even sure what we’re doing — or what we should be doing — in the first place. When we get right down to it, when we sacrifice the sacred cows and strip away our own professional neuroses, and when we even ignore (if only for a moment) whatever new trends are on the horizon — why are we here, and why do we do what we do?

Maybe I’m just seeking simplicity, something essential rather an over-arching set of lofty, idealistic (and often disappointing) goals.  Like Bill, I don’t want to be distracted by intoxication.  I’d rather see things as they are, for all their glaring imperfections and all their little victories.

But then again, I have to wonder if intoxication is sometimes a good thing. Can controlled chaos and confusion lead us in new directions? Can blurred vision help us see things that we otherwise might never imagine?  Surely the idea of a de-Deweyfied library was radical when it was brought up within the past couple years.  But its implementation went over pretty smoothly and the project continues to, well, thrive.  When we talk about the Perry Branch of the Maricopa County library in 2018, will we be using the phrase “the then-radical idea”?

Maybe we can bring productivity (or at least creativity) out of that chaos and intoxication.  Jackson Pollack’s works wouldn’t exist without his alcoholism, and the Jesus and Mary Chain couldn’t have composed “Psychocandy” without LSD, amphetamines, and who knows what other drugs.  Poe had absinthe, Ginsberg had weed, Hemingway had whiskey, and Hunter S. Thompson was, God bless him, crazy.

But then that seems like a violent, Cobain-esque self-destructive streak — and that might work for cutting-edge creative expression, but it hardly seems conducive to good librarianship.

I have to ask: Is there a reason why we call it “library science” instead of “library art”?