Quivering Conception

Outer Order College: a freeform universe, a decentralized academy of the heart and mind where everyone’s their own dean, trustee, and favorite eccentric professor. A world sprouting from the deep, rebel-rooted soil of Black Mountain College’s anarchist experimentation and The College of Complexes’ nightlife debates—where ideas were mixed with drinks, and intellect met the grit of real, unruly life.

Here, education is a dream we’re all lucid in. The curriculum is crafted from whatever feeds your soul: the stacks of public libraries where forbidden knowledge waits between dusty book spines, federal grants repurposed for the unemployed, for the artists, for those waiting for a place to create and explore without cost, without conditions. Art is self-made, unapologetic; there’s no approval board, no artist statement to keep it tame. The performance and distribution of art are as wild as the art itself—through poems read in coffee shop basements, movies projected on bedsheets strung up in city parks, zines and manifestos handed out on street corners. 

Psilocybin and marijuana mix with coffee here, fueling conversations that glide from the shallow end to the deep end without skipping a beat. And the soundtrack? Jazz, punk, hip-hop, symphonies, soundtracks from horror flicks, and spoken word collages, all looping in an eternal playlist of creative discovery. No genre is too obscure, no taste is too out there. There are clubs, loose alliances of like minds and curious strangers who meet to dive into whatever lights them up: meditation circles, pirate radio broadcasts, rooftop stargazing, urban foraging groups, philosophy book clubs, woodworking classes under bridges.

All kinds are welcome—psychonauts, poets, philosophers, people whose classrooms are street corners and alleys. Buggers and lovers, thieves and dreamers, the mischief-makers and the woods dwellers, peanut people and non-peanut people alike. If you've got hate in your heart for someone different, this school’s doors are closed; leave your intolerance at the gate.

The ethos here? Every student is their own academy. You don’t enroll in courses; you dive into your own obsessions, sharing knowledge freely through digital forums, face-to-face encounters, impromptu performances. Technology is both your megaphone and your archive. Live and let live, but live loudly, openly, outrageously. Be kind but unflinching. Be powerful but compassionate. And, above all, be—whatever that means to you.