A journal of creative thought and feeling published by LIOS ...

Words From the Presidents
A Thought of Farewell
By Lorne M. Buchman, Ph.D.,
President of Saybrook University
They said, “You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.”
The man replied, “Things as they are
Are changed upon a blue guitar.”
The Man with the Blue Guitar
Wallace Stevens
As many of you know, I will be leaving the presidency of Saybrook
on October 9, 2009. I am leaving to become the next president of
Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, an institution with a
mission centered on the education of artists and designers. I have
a particular passion for the arts and for the challenges involved in
the education of those who shape culture through their creative
work. But such “culture-shaping” is, of course, not limited to the
artists and designers of this world, nor is the teaching of the creative
exclusively the province of the art school.
Saybrook University and LIOS Graduate College, with their
distinctive approach and focus, can certainly and accurately boast a
mission to teach creativity and to educate people who shape culture.
Indeed, I would assert that all great education, at some point, is
a process of unleashing the creative. This discovery has been a
huge part of my experience at Saybrook, and I want this farewell
reflection to be a salute to all of you and your work—and how you
change things as they are...upon a blue guitar.
might enable a self-awareness that could change the world, is a
product of a multilayered and complex set of paths. The Imperative
is not the province of any one discipline—hence the significance of
the shared values of a multi-disciplinary Saybrook University.
My deepest hope is that I have served Saybrook as one of its teachers
and as a voice that helped it honor “its own being.” When I
arrived here, a community was asking to reconnect with its inherent
creativity and with its power to facilitate transformation for and
through its students. Together we found that core purpose and
then developed it through valuable partnerships with Leadership
Institute of Seattle and the Houston Jung Center and the Center
for Mind-Body Medicine. Now our reach is larger, our calling
broader, but the fundamental has stayed the same. We seek to
empower every student and each individual’s capacity to make a
difference. We teach creativity.
We are really only at the beginning of our journey to move this
vision for the university forward. As I transition to new challenges,
my connection with Saybrook University remains strong. A new
president will come and will take the next necessary steps. I will
perhaps join the Board of Trustees or simply stay close as a friend.
Either way, we will nourish the institution as we nourish each
student to find the courage to affect the world in a positive way.
But guiding us always must be our commitment to the space we
make for the creative—at Saybrook or in Pasadena—for the
learning will always be alive in that purpose: “Things as they are /
Are changed upon a blue guitar.”
What is at stake in a Saybrook/LIOS education is more than the
teaching of skill or the acquisition of facts —it is an imperative to
honor each student’s power of self-discovery, to enable the learning
of what resides within. As Ruth Richards and her colleagues point
out in her important book on “Everyday Creativity,” that selfdiscovery
is largely an opening to the creativity we hold, moment
to moment, as human beings. Only through this kind of opening,
moreover, can one make a difference in the world. In this spirit,
Rollo May, one of the pivotal lineage holders of Saybrook,
admonished us with a sacred responsibility: “If you do not express
your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being,
you will have betrayed yourself. Also you will have betrayed our
community in failing to make your contribution to the whole.” I
would only add—and I am sure Rollo May would agree—that the
“contribution” holds significance no matter what the individual’s
radius of influence. The scope is unimportant—the quality is all.
Every student has the power to transform.
I think it is important to recognize as well that the way to selfdiscovery,
to the unleashing of the creative, to an education that
The Old Man with the Guitar, Picasso, 1903
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