| ||||
|
Arts & Entertainment  BooksComics Health & Body Media Mothers Who Think News People Politics2000 Technology - Free Software Project Travel & Food  Columnists
Current Click here to read the latest stories from the wires. - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - Also Today For a full list of today's Salon Books stories, go to the
Books home page. - - - - - - - - - - - - Search Salon - - - - - - - - - - - - Recently in Salon Books Reviews Reviews Reviews - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
Experimental lesson | page 1, 2
On the other hand, every artist -- though in the end they may reach the masses -- begins with a smaller real or imagined audience. Being a teacher means committing a lifetime to engaging this small, intimate group. It may not be art, exactly, but it has to be creative. In fact, the stakes are higher, the damage greater if a teacher falls into banal routine. After all, their students cannot walk out on them as one might from a bad movie or a lackluster painting in a gallery. They must stay and listen carefully, even when the teacher is as riveting as an automated telephone directory. My aspiration to treat my vocation as a kind of performing art has made me a better teacher. I've never really taught the same class twice. The discussions of "free will" are never exactly alike. But I haven't taken the big risks. I've erred on the side of safety and respectability. I knew exactly what I could do and did it reasonably well. I experimented with "something else" in small ways: giving no exams, sitting out in the classroom rather than in front of the room, holding classes in bars, restaurants, homes, parks and beaches, allowing students to grade themselves, giving no lectures, having no textbooks, abolishing attendance, wearing T-shirts and boots, cooking food in the classroom, having pizza delivered, serving tea and bagels, deliberately not showing up for class, arranging for various deceptions such as pretending to be somebody else, being paged during class and having beautiful women come in and kiss me. I even staged a standing ovation for myself during an evaluation, wowing the college president in the bargain. But most of the time I felt like Gordon Liddy playing tricks rather than an artist expanding the possible. The problem with "experience" is that is becomes the foundation on which a potential formula is built, the "things to avoid" and the "things to do" crystallizing into a repeatable structure. I know, for example, that I will not assign readings of more than a certain length, will ask questions on only a certain level of abstraction, will create personal chemistry of a certain mix of bonhomie and seriousness, will punctuate lectures with a certain degree of sarcasm. I even meditate or go for short walks before classes in order to obtain the exact amount of detachment that I know enables me to walk the thin line between excess zeal and excess indifference. Walking the line for years is the formula for success in the classroom ... and a slow deadening in the soul. What did the true "artists" have in common? Bakunin, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, John Cage, Orson Wells and the Marquis de Sade -- these folks just plain ol' didn't give a damn about public opinion and sustained their disregard for a lifetime. How can I walk into my next class carrying the personnas of all these rebels? Maybe it is not necessary to do or say anything, just manifest the spirit of the artist in my face, the tone of my voice, the refinement of movements, the way I treat people. Maybe there is a kind of grace, like Paul Robeson or Lena Horne had, that defies objective description, the "something else" being so lilting and luminous that it transcends behavior, leaves the body behind and fastens faint traces in the air like humanistic perfume. After all these years, sometimes it feels like I'm on the right track, trying to focus on "being" rather than "doing," as they say. The "something else" that the artist does in order to remain fresh may be nothing other than what the Zen folks call "beginner's mind," a way of seeing, eyes wide open. If I can only become an old master, with the constant gleam of Joseph Campbell, or the twinkle of Huston Smith, then the next time a student tells me about her struggle with the Old Testament God it will not be like I've heard the complaint a hundred times before. I can smile at the "something else" in her voice, in our evanescent interaction, and wait for inspiration -- genuinely not knowing what will happen next.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer Sound off - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Search Salon | |||
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
