Junot Díaz at Yale

I haven't been able to confirm this text, but it has been popping up all over the internets (I think I first saw it here and here, among other places.)  It certainly reads right.

Life is going to present to you a series of transformations. And the point of education should be to transform you. To teach you how to be transformed so you can ride the waves as they come. But today, the point of education is not education. It’s accreditation. The more accreditation you have, the more money you make. That’s the instrumental logic of neoliberalism. And this instrumental logic comes wrapped in an envelope of fear. And my Ivy League, my MIT students are the same. All I feel coming off of my students is fear. That if you slip up in school, if you get one bad grade, if you make one fucking mistake, the great train of wealth will leave you behind. And that’s the logic of accreditation. If you’re at Yale, you’re in the smartest 1% in the world. […] And the brightest students in the world are learning in fear. I feel it rolling off of you in waves. But you can’t learn when you’re afraid. You cannot be transformed when you are afraid.

This appears to be part of an address Junot Diaz gave at Yale on November 12, 2013.  At first glance, I'm not finding a complete transcript, or any 'official' source for that quotation, but it does mesh with the articles I was able to find.

And even if it's a little off, it's a damn good quote.

What Else Is to be Done?

“To hold our tongues when everyone is gossiping, to smile without hostility at people and institutions, to compensate for the shortage of love in the world with more love in small, private matters; to be more faithful in our work, to show greater patience, to forgo the cheap revenge obtainable from mockery and criticism: all these are things we can do.” — Hermann Hesse

Things Fall Apart

Yes, they do.

Ave Atque Vale Chinua Achebe.



photo AFP

"It is the story that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence. The story is our escort; without it, we are blind."

Fun with Engineering

A few words about some of the photos toward the end of the video in that last post with video (from Dec. 28).  Part of our walking tour (hey, there's a time and a place to roam free, and there's a time to listen to a guy who knows what he's taking about - some of those things are pretty amazing) involved the Thames Tunnel built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, along with his father Marc Brunel (who actually started the project, came up with the original designs, and whom some claim was the more talented engineer, though history has showered more acclaim on the fils than on the pêre).

Now, I'm not much of an engineering geek, though it doesn't take too too much imagination to envision a world where I might have become one instead of devolving into the theater, music, art and politics geek you see today.  [Ok, so maybe it does take some imagination.  But picture if you will: a charismatic math teacher in my high school rather than the language, drama, and history mavens I ended up with; some acclaim at a science fair or two; and a scholarship to M.I.T.  Throw in a cute girl who was into engineering, and I might not have noticed the social liberation of art and turned my creativity in a different direction.  It's possible.]

In any case, not only did we get a beautiful walk through the world of Oliver Twist, and a well-taught lesson on imperialism, and The Heart of Darkness, we also got a lesson on the immensity of the shipping traffic in London in general (and the piracy that went along with it), which demanded the construction of a structure to take people under a river, at a time when such a thing was unheard-of.  Crossing a river was done via bridges and boats  A tunnel?  Under the Thames??

A tunnel under the Thames.  And a story with a lot more twists, turns, and drama than I'd have guessed would accompany a construction project: from the invention of the caisson (ground too soft to dig a hole substantial enough for tunneling? build a huge stone cylinder so heavy it will just sink into the ground for you, and dig up the dirt as you go along. Genius.) and the tunneling shield, to budget overruns and investor discontent, to dangerous, noxious, and truly filthy working conditions and the inevitable labor strife that rightly go with them, to construction delays, to leaks and breaches and flood, and the chief engineer suffering a stroke.

Let's pause there for a moment.  Say that you're Isambard Kingdom Brunel.  It's 1827, and your team has been working on the first tunnel in the history of the world meant to allow people to pass under a river.  And you're way behind schedule, and the fumes down there are so bad that the workers are striking, and the roof has collapsed and a flood almost killed a bunch of the people on your crew.  And then your father, chief of this whole project, has a stroke.

Now, he is a renowned engineer, and you have access to world class, state-of-the-art medical care.  But let's not forget: it's 1827.  Medical miracles are pretty scarce. The public, and your investors, are, shall we say, a little skittish.

Did I mention that you are nineteen years old?

So what do you do?  You have a 300-foot long tube full of water. Your father has been passing control over the project to you over the last several months, so you assess the damage, repair it, pump out the water from the flood, dry it out, and throw a party.

In the tunnel.  

You throw a party in the tunnel and you invite high society to attend.  Which they do, and the party includes the Duke of Wellington, and it's a rousing success.  And by 'rousing,' I mean 'noisy.'  Because, this being a society banquet, you've also invited a brass band to play in this stone cavern under the river.  And between the band and that silverware clanking against china echoing off the walls, it was probably the loudest non-amplified party in the history of ever.  But I also mean rousing in the sense of magnificent, because this stunt worked: the public was won over, money was raised, and construction began again in earnest.

Oh, and here I guess I have an obligation to point out that the portrait of the Banquet above, by George Jones, is the only contemporary image of Marc and Isambard Kingdom Brunel that shows them together.  Which is ironical don't you know, because Marc wasn't at that party.  Remember that stroke he had?  Recovery took a while back then.

And then the next year there was another roof collapse and a major, this time truly serious, incident that took 6 lives and very nearly took the life of Isambard Brunel himself.

You guys! This story goes on.  It actually goes on another 15 years before the tunnel even opens to the public.  If you're interested, you can read much more about it here, here, especially here, and plenty of other places. For now, suffice it to say: after that tragic, fatal, flooding catastrophe, they shut down the project for seven years.  The Brunel team finally raised enough money and support to start up construction again in 1835.  They slogged through for another nearly 8 years of setback after messy, dangerous setback, and finally opened to the public in 1843.  [Along the way, they took care to make sure that the first person to make the entire crossing from Rotherhithe to Wapping under the Thames, in June of 1840, was the son of Isambard, grandson of Marc, 3-year-old Henry Brunel.]

And then things got interesting.

The tunnel was not accessible to horse and carriage, so they limited it to foot traffic, and it officially opened in 1843 (about 15 years behind schedule).  Economically meh, culturally fascinating.  Kiosks opened in the archways, and this place became the place to be - 2 million visitors in its first year, global acclaim as the '8th Wonder of the World,' a bustling, thriving thoroughfare under the Thames.  Shops, food, performers, "Fancy Fairs," scientific demonstrations, a vital marketplace and meeting place.

The glamor wore off after a few years, and the shops started to close as attendance declined, leaving vacant archways, which became favorite ambush spots for muggers and trysting places for young lovers and, more commonly, prostitutes.  Then, as sometimes happens in locations of former glory fallen into dilapidation, it became a focal point for adventurous partiers - massive underground gatherings of the young and hip; our amazing guide Robert called them "Victorian Raves"  This detail is harder to find in typical histories and resources, but Robert is one of the curators of the Brunel Museum and shared all kinds of items of interest that might otherwise go unrevealed (props to London Walks for suiting the guide to the walk so well!)

Our Amazing Guide Robert

Finally in 1865, around the time the American Civil War was wrapping up, they laid track through the tunnel, and in 1869 they sealed up the caisson and began running trains through the Brunels' Thames Tunnel, which has been functioning as a railway more or less ever since.

And in 2010, they reopened the caisson to guided visits (you need to grab a rail, clamber down, stepping carefully, pivot round, duck down for a 6-foot long walk through a 4-foot high mini-tunnel before descending the staircase to the open area, but it is open).

And, as chance would have it, they also floodlight the tunnel on Sundays in November.  And we just happened to be there in November, and just happened to be staying in Wapping, near the north end of the tunnel.  [Ok, ok; those are a couple of the reasons we chose, against anyone's educated guess, to spend part of an afternoon on a walk devoted to Rotherhithe, Bermondsey, and this feat of engineering, rather than on things we would have found interesting on our own.]  So we went back to the Overground station (they call it an Overground line, although this stretch of it is clearly underground and, rather famously, under the river.  People also drive on the parkway and park in the driveway) and got those couple of shots of this 8th Wonder of the World.

There you have it.  More about a tunnel than I ever thought I would write.  I'll post our final London video soon...

Go the F*#k to Sleep

Perhaps you've heard of Go the F#*k to Sleep, the new Not-Really-a-Children's-Book by Adam Mansbach & Ricardo Cortes. It's been getting more than a little media attention these days, and its press run has already crept up toward the half-million copies mark. Why? Because it's f*^king brilliant is why:

Mansbach, according to the official version of the story, was frustrated for the umpteenth time by the time and effort involved in getting his 2-year-old to go to sleep for the night, and posted on Fbook a joke to the effect of: "Be on the lookout for my forthcoming children's book, GO THE F%&K TO SLEEP." The reaction from his friends and fans (he was already an award-winning grown-up fiction writer) was so fiercely positive that he decided to write the book for real. He got himself an illustrator and, well, here we are: smash hit children's book that is utterly inappropriate for children, but all kinds of fantastic for adults.

And now, plug in your headphones and take a look at this little slice of amazingness - Werner Herzog (yes, the Werner Herzog) reading along with America's new favorite book.



After the bizarre media events of the last couple weeks (will there come a time when people look back and ask if we really spent all that time talking about a congressman's kinks when there was a war on? Sorry - three wars?) this just about made me weep tears of joy.

Later that day...

...we had a walk around the Latin Quarter and the 5th Arrondissement in general. It was chilly in Paris while we were there, and we had some rain to contend with part of the time, but this was a very nice afternoon. The strike was subsiding by the time we left the hotel, and we strolled up to some nice boulangeries and had some much-needed coffee. Among other things, we saw the Pantheon (from the outside)





and an outdoor market



and I insisted we take a peek at an experimental theater.



A reading at Shakespeare and Company that night tapped my inner James Joyce and the steak and wine we had at Chez Denise brought out my Hemingway and Henry Miller (though they were not the ones who graced the walls there. For whatever reason, the American who got a portrait up on their wall - at least the wall we could see from our table - was Norman Mailer. Who knew?)


At Shakes & Co., Adam Haslett and Nick Flynn read from their new books to a packed house that spilled out onto the sidewalk outside. Afterward, there was jazz in the library upstairs, but we were too tired and hungry to make that scene.

More Kindling

I'm not a luddite, or anything like one. But to add to my earlier mini-rant about the less-than-ideal properties of some of the new technologies, this aspect of the Kindle is the kind of thing that raises the hair on the back of my neck (on those days that I don't get around to shaving it).

Love Orwell. Always have. And this kind of ironic incident just affirms why. And it, you know, kinda scares me a little.



Don't neglect the little Editor's Note: "Amazon said it would not automatically remove purchased copies of Kindle books if a similar situation arose in the future."

How comforting.

Kindling

Is anyone else a little weirded out by the Kindle? The digital book-reader thing that they're pushing this week.

Not necessarily the device itself, which actually appears to be pretty cool (though vastly overpriced and somewhat underachieving, but that's pretty par for the course with new-ish technology). I'm bothered by the name. "Kindle," as in kindling; as in the wood that you use to start a fire; as in go burn your books now that we have this nifty new computerized gizmo; as in Fahrenheit 451 nightmare city.

Phhheeeeeeeeeeeuuuuuw! File under: craptastic.

Lou & Me

Cory and I went to see Lou Reed read from his new book of collected lyrics at the Paula Cooper Gallery. It was a good event; interesting to hear what he did with the songs without the element of music, and I really liked the moments when a line would remind him of something and he'd stop the reading to extemporize on the memory/free association. And there was a little discussion with Hal Willner afterward, where they sifted through questions that had been written on little scraps of paper by audience members and dropped in a bowl.



Then afterward a ton of people waited on line for Lou to sign their books and records (he also had some photography books for sale) and get some photos. He refused to look at the camera even when we assured him there'd be no flash (ok, I'll be kind: he declined to look at the camera), but we talked about Poe a little. A very little.

Hey - you don't go to Lou Reed for warm and friendly, now do you?

What are blogs for?

I was wondering why we do these things, and for whose benefit. Typing onto some website that some few or some many, or maybe no one will ever look at. And it may or may not mean anything to any of them, even yourself. Not exactly like a journal or a diary, because there is the possibility and even the hope that others will read it (as opposed to the presumed privacy of the thoughts one puts in that notebook he totes around in a satchel along with a subway map and this week's village voice; or some cleverly and maybe cutely bound book [with a lock?] one keeps in her top desk drawer next to photos of her last five boyfriends...)

And by some random turn of the psyche, that got me thinking about william arrowsmith. He was a serious classicist, by which i don't mean he taught priviledged white kids how to read homer (although he did that too). No, the thing is that he wrote important and alive translations of euripides and seneca and many others, while also writing plays and film criticism and teaching ancient languages, poetry and drama. He also turned me on to antonioni - via a simple twist of free association: a line in a lyric in a play i was in led me to a film director, who just happened to be the subject of a course taught by one of the greatest minds of his generation the following semester. So i took his class and opened up a visual aesthetic in myself. (i knew college was good for something)

Of course i wasn't aware of any of this until it had already happened. Odd like that. Anyway, he was one of the best teachers i ever had. Hero worship? No, fuck that. He taught me a lot about film and literature, drama and art (and more about writing than almost any english professor i ever had) and we got along well. But we didn't stay in touch much, and then, well, he died (may he rest in peace).

But one thing he used to refer to came back to me today - the 'great western intellectual butter slide.' Pretty self-explanatory, and perhaps a tad alarmist; but it's true that what is considered genius, brilliant, smart, even competent has, well, slid. We're at a point where starting and finishing a book, i mean reading one - in your native tongue - can be considered a significant intellectual achievement by altogether too many people.

SO maybe these blogs are an attempt to reach out to others, and bust out of this pattern. To escape from the habit of tv, mass-produced, commercially-driven advertainment. To cease to be a passive observer/consumer and actually do something, make something, say something.

Or maybe not. Maybe it's just some shit that people do.

Cause what are they saying? I had an entry typed out reacting to an article in the eyebeam journal on open source theory as it relates to fashion design (two areas about which i know almost nothing at all) but figured that it would be boring, not to mention ridiculously uninformed. But maybe that is just what this forum is best suited for. And after all, what do i typically end up posting? Plenty of nothing about haircuts and the shows i've seen lately. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

And of course, all of this rant may just be part of the butter slide. I could go on, but instead - one last quote from arrowsmith: “an alarmingly high proportion of what is published in classics—and in other fields—is simply rubbish or trivia.”

How 'bout that?