How Do You Do That?

Summer goes slow around here, but what goes slow runs deep.

2 AM. I’m waiting on a bus to take me from the humid sidewalk to my nice, cool apartment.

“Hey, Steve? Is that you?”

I recognize him, but not in the suit he’s wearing. He’s recently graduated and explains to me he’s headed home after a day of work and a nice night of fun. He debated at 2 meetings, and attended many more, giving comments and asking questions of the speakers after the debate.

Now he works in the financial industry. He hands me a free copy of the Wall Street Journal. “I know these guys, I talk to them. It’s important to try to stay on top of this stuff.” He’s not an analyst or anything like that, someone who works in the media around the finance field. He likes his job, but is looking for advancement.

“How often do you read?” he asks. We are on the bus now. At this time of day, the WSJ headlines can’t help but take on the stink of leftovers. What has been important.

“Everyday. I love it. I read a lot” I say

“How do you do that?”

If you laughed, don’t worry I did too at first. But it’s a better question than it first appears to be. For reading, and reading every day, and reading well is a very complicated skill worth practicing.

I suggested to my former (?) student that it was like getting better at being healthy. “Control your diet and take up some exercise.” By this I suggested watching one less TV show a day, and trying to read something instead. Of course, this is tough because it’s not a question of ignorance or natural ability, but a question of culture and tradition, or perhaps even ideology.

My former (that word really doesn’t apply does it? How long should this relationship go on? The bus approaches my stop) student told me he never used to read, but now sees the utility of reading popular, best-selling fiction and non-fiction. The reason is career advancement. He can use his reading as an icebreaker, or a continue-er, in conversations. It also helps, he tells me, in conducting the kind of conversations he wants to have in social situations with people in his field.

Yes, yes, all this is good. Go to the gym (library). Read some different stuff, read broadly, learn to take notes this is my stop good talking to you!

As I walk home, I realize I haven’t answered the question.
As I walk home, I realize this is my question too.

How Do You Do That?

Summer goes slow around here, but what goes slow runs deep.

2 AM. I’m waiting on a bus to take me from the humid sidewalk to my nice, cool apartment.

“Hey, Steve? Is that you?”

I recognize him, but not in the suit he’s wearing. He’s recently graduated and explains to me he’s headed home after a day of work and a nice night of fun. He debated at 2 meetings, and attended many more, giving comments and asking questions of the speakers after the debate.

Now he works in the financial industry. He hands me a free copy of the Wall Street Journal. “I know these guys, I talk to them. It’s important to try to stay on top of this stuff.” He’s not an analyst or anything like that, someone who works in the media around the finance field. He likes his job, but is looking for advancement.

“How often do you read?” he asks. We are on the bus now. At this time of day, the WSJ headlines can’t help but take on the stink of leftovers. What has been important.

“Everyday. I love it. I read a lot” I say

“How do you do that?”

If you laughed, don’t worry I did too at first. But it’s a better question than it first appears to be. For reading, and reading every day, and reading well is a very complicated skill worth practicing.

I suggested to my former (?) student that it was like getting better at being healthy. “Control your diet and take up some exercise.” By this I suggested watching one less TV show a day, and trying to read something instead. Of course, this is tough because it’s not a question of ignorance or natural ability, but a question of culture and tradition, or perhaps even ideology.

My former (that word really doesn’t apply does it? How long should this relationship go on? The bus approaches my stop) student told me he never used to read, but now sees the utility of reading popular, best-selling fiction and non-fiction. The reason is career advancement. He can use his reading as an icebreaker, or a continue-er, in conversations. It also helps, he tells me, in conducting the kind of conversations he wants to have in social situations with people in his field.

Yes, yes, all this is good. Go to the gym (library). Read some different stuff, read broadly, learn to take notes this is my stop good talking to you!

As I walk home, I realize I haven’t answered the question.
As I walk home, I realize this is my question too.

The _______ Society

Not exactly the time for goodbyes and thank yous, but I got one today from a student unexpectedly as I sat on the campus enjoying the evening.

He thanked me for opportunities and for the experience, but mostly for something he couldn’t quite articulate. Something that went like this – “Although I didn’t really win a lot of trophies or help the reputation of the team much, I feel changed and better off for it.” As if a lack of competitive success and positive feelings were incommensurable.

I’ve said it before – here in New York I think we are up to something different. But when pressed to give details, it’s hard to articulate. It’s something about being trapped in a word, or around a word. What does it mean to be a debating society?

What are we up to? We are up to debating, but that’s a pretense. That’s what gets you in the door, so to speak. I wonder if we should call it a Debating Society at all. Today I got a call from the development office of my University asking me what to name the fund that people contribute to for the debate society. “Should we call it Debate Society General Fund?” Oh development officers, your creative sexy naming is second to, well, all. But I went with it because I couldn’t think of anything better.

Perhaps it should be called the languaging society. Doesn’t much seem like debate’s the thing we remember. We recall amazing speeches in equally amazing rounds, but the debate is really a scene. Nobody praises the stage in a good theater performance, we praise what the actor did on that stage, in that role – or the director in hers, on down the line.

Debating is what we do not what we are or what we get from our involvement. We get a chance to connect to something a bit beyond debate, as such, to something a bit more central to out human existence. We get a chance to practice our relationship to language and to each other. We get to inductively create a theory of how to persuasively and invitingly share ideas with one another from practice, trial, and re-trial.

This is a rare thing, and should be handled well. In my office we have trophies going back to the early 1950s. The University was going to throw them away, but I kept them. But they are not that useful. They don’t explain themselves, or why they are around. There’s no way to determine who won them, how they were won – nothing valuable remains of them except the circular: “They are trophies, so they are valuable.” They are in need of cleaning, but the narrative around them, their whole existence has been lost and cannot be recovered.

Trophies are important because of the “languaging”- best term we could come up with in the dusk on campus – for what it is that we appreciate about debating. The victories and other honors are nice, but the value comes from the stories, more specifically, the telling and retelling of the stories. If we can’t tell stories well, or appreciate them when told well, then we live pretty impoverished lives. Debate connects us over and over again, in very challenging ways, to the necessity of language and the incredible insufficiency of language to meet up to our rather idealized demands.

Debate teaches many things, and I think those traditional skills are good. It’s good to win. But it’s better to be able to ‘language’ – for without that, hope for understanding the importance of those skills, or the personalities involved in those victories vanishes.

If there’s one thing certain about debate it is that you will lose. Why did you lose? What will it mean? These questions in many ways are more important to answer, and a bit more challenging to answer, than any motion you face.

The _______ Society

Not exactly the time for goodbyes and thank yous, but I got one today from a student unexpectedly as I sat on the campus enjoying the evening.

He thanked me for opportunities and for the experience, but mostly for something he couldn’t quite articulate. Something that went like this – “Although I didn’t really win a lot of trophies or help the reputation of the team much, I feel changed and better off for it.” As if a lack of competitive success and positive feelings were incommensurable.

I’ve said it before – here in New York I think we are up to something different. But when pressed to give details, it’s hard to articulate. It’s something about being trapped in a word, or around a word. What does it mean to be a debating society?

What are we up to? We are up to debating, but that’s a pretense. That’s what gets you in the door, so to speak. I wonder if we should call it a Debating Society at all. Today I got a call from the development office of my University asking me what to name the fund that people contribute to for the debate society. “Should we call it Debate Society General Fund?” Oh development officers, your creative sexy naming is second to, well, all. But I went with it because I couldn’t think of anything better.

Perhaps it should be called the languaging society. Doesn’t much seem like debate’s the thing we remember. We recall amazing speeches in equally amazing rounds, but the debate is really a scene. Nobody praises the stage in a good theater performance, we praise what the actor did on that stage, in that role – or the director in hers, on down the line.

Debating is what we do not what we are or what we get from our involvement. We get a chance to connect to something a bit beyond debate, as such, to something a bit more central to out human existence. We get a chance to practice our relationship to language and to each other. We get to inductively create a theory of how to persuasively and invitingly share ideas with one another from practice, trial, and re-trial.

This is a rare thing, and should be handled well. In my office we have trophies going back to the early 1950s. The University was going to throw them away, but I kept them. But they are not that useful. They don’t explain themselves, or why they are around. There’s no way to determine who won them, how they were won – nothing valuable remains of them except the circular: “They are trophies, so they are valuable.” They are in need of cleaning, but the narrative around them, their whole existence has been lost and cannot be recovered.

Trophies are important because of the “languaging”- best term we could come up with in the dusk on campus – for what it is that we appreciate about debating. The victories and other honors are nice, but the value comes from the stories, more specifically, the telling and retelling of the stories. If we can’t tell stories well, or appreciate them when told well, then we live pretty impoverished lives. Debate connects us over and over again, in very challenging ways, to the necessity of language and the incredible insufficiency of language to meet up to our rather idealized demands.

Debate teaches many things, and I think those traditional skills are good. It’s good to win. But it’s better to be able to ‘language’ – for without that, hope for understanding the importance of those skills, or the personalities involved in those victories vanishes.

If there’s one thing certain about debate it is that you will lose. Why did you lose? What will it mean? These questions in many ways are more important to answer, and a bit more challenging to answer, than any motion you face.

A Break

Writing, writing away, and unaware of the time. You know how it gets you, it’s like Duke Ellington said – about it being close to midnight, and you really should go to bed, but there’s that keyboard over there. What harm in playing around a bit? And you start to play and look up – and it’s 3AM. Well, he said something like that.

Thunderstorms threatening. Until I noticed that, I was happy in my LCD universe. Now problems arise. Thunderstorms. Rain. No Umbrella. DinnerDrinks in Manhattan. Earlier in the day I helped a nice woman from Jamaica (Trinidad maybe?) figure out that her professor would not be around because it’s a Catholic holiday. They only schedule those, I assure her, when the University owes me money for some debate trip or conference. She explains, “Oh, you can’t be up here on a holiday! There’s a big, bright world out there!”  “Not any world I want any part of,” I reply. She widens her eyes and steps back, saying something about the wonders of books, to which I agree with a slight nod.

Writing, write. Time for a break, Cup of coffee and blog update. Who takes a break from writing with more writing? How is this a break? If there was a mad scientist who specialized in developing systems that generate madness, he would take one look at mine and his eyes would dilate. His breath would quicken, his lips would slightly part. And if you were close enough, you could hear faintly on his breath, “genius.”

The end of the summer – a sort of desert season for me in a lot of ways – always corresponds in creepy/beautiful ways with the start. In May, I was writing a lot, probably too much to be honest, spinning my wheels, typing words simply for the pleasure of producing them, filling space. These past couple of days, the same (with the exception of a 7 episode ST: Voyager binge). It’s been rainy and overcast, and cooler than it should be, like when a sweater gets wet. Same in May – I thought it might never become warmer. Friends come to visit, friends want to chill, and it was the same in May. In June and July, things were quite desertish. Not in a dead way, because only a fool believes a desert to be dead. Go read some Joseph Wood Krutch. It’s fine, I’ll wait. OK. He’s a little weird yea? But endearing? Yea? I think so too.

Well the break is over. Time to get back to it, after all it should only be about 2, but the time really flies when you are diddling away over the keyboard.