In just two weeks’ time I will start my 34th year teaching and working as a university faculty member (or faculty member ‘equivalent’), and my 22nd year as a professor at UW-Eau Claire. I am enthused about the classes I will be teaching, and the same in relation a number of other projects and activities I will be simultaneously pursuing as well. As always, I have been preparing quite strenuously, in multiple, complex, interrelated and overlapping stages for quite awhile, and will continue to do so throughout the semester, as I never precisely determine exactly what we will do, and especially how so, in any specific class session until we have completed the immediately preceding session. Likewise, students are always co-creators of everything, and therefore what we do, as well as how we do it, depends on who these people are and what they bring to bear. I find being well-prepared helps me be highly flexible, and to allow room easily for spontaneity and change of direction, whenever and however need be. I find being well-prepared also most helpful in teaching as I do, involving a premium emphasis on discussion as opposed to lecture, and a premium emphasis as well on highly active and interactive learning. The better prepared I am the readier I am to embrace whatever the students in the class bring in, and to connect this up meaningfully with what we are engaging and striving to better understand, and appreciate, together. It is most demanding but also extraordinarily fulfilling to be a teacher, and it involves continuously ongoing self-critical self-reflection along with continuous experimentation and innovation.
But my aim here, with this blog entry, is not to focus all that directly on teaching, or other aspects of my job as a professor. Given this will be my 34th year doing this kind of work and 22nd at UW-Eau Claire, I think it is an apt moment to reflect on ‘growing older’–what might well be identified as ‘aging’, even though ‘aging’ tends to bear a more negative connotation than ‘growing older’. Yet, such negative associations, and how at least I deal (or attempt to deal) with them are in part what I aim to reflect on here. It has reached the point in my life, including as someone who is now 57 years old, where I readily recognize the majority of people around me, often, and not just in classes I teach, but also as my co-workers, are younger, even much younger, than me. I don’t necessarily think that makes me simply ‘old’, as I do tend to think being ‘old’ versus being ‘young’ is often thought of, talked about, and written about in overly simplistic and reductive terms. People ‘age’ in different ways, at different paces, and differently as well along multiple different lines. And, yes, this whole issue of how ‘old’ versus how ‘young’ one is can indeed prove exceedingly relative as well as frequently variable.
In my case I do experience the shock that so much time has passed seemingly so quickly and that I can vividly recall being one of the younger people around, doing the work I was doing–and the work I continue to do. At the same time, I simultaneously experience a sharp sense of a great deal of time having passed, and of having lived so much life, even having lived so many different lives, that it seems quite apt I am now 57 and this will be my 34th year teaching and working as a university faculty member, and my 22nd year as a professor at UW-Eau Claire. Frequently these days I remember traces of what I realize I had long forgotten, and I am stunned to recognize what once was so vitally central a concern of mine had long altogether disappeared from my memory. Physically, despite chronic illnesses, which amount to invisible disability, I am doing well, overall, at present. But for quite a few years now I recognize I have begun to feel the impact of limits I cannot transcend, limits which were not at all part of my experience even when I was in my late 40s. I need more rest, and, to be frank, more sleep, while I grow tired more quickly, more thoroughly, and more frequently. I cannot stay up all night all that easily, even occasionally–and I find it somewhat hard to imagine spending all day wandering about and touring a new city, a new metropolis, followed by then spending three to four hours late night into the early next morning dancing non-stop at a club (or clubs!). It is striking to me now, to think I used to do that so often, and indeed I could do it so often. I also recognize I can get rattled about some things more easily (much more easily?) than I did when I was younger, even than when I was not all that much younger (i.e., in my late 40s)–I do believe a significant upsurge in my own struggles with anxiety the last couple of years has much to do with a deep sense I am less capable of handling what I could more readily at least strive to handle in the past, and I am readily worried (with worry quickly becoming anxiety) about the consequences of becoming overwhelmed by what is far more than I can reasonably take on when I’m physically clearly older (and sicker?) than when I used to struggle, even so, to do this often enough, accepting I wouldn’t always succeed in avoiding becoming overwhelmed but not too bothered by what becoming overwhelmed would mean–or would feel like, or would leave as a lasting impact.
Recently, I’ve come across a number of people sharing perspectives on growing older, and on how long as well as in what ways they would like to live their ‘later years’, especially when and as they get to be undeniably ‘old’. Some of these people advocate accepting aging with grace, and the same versus the inevitability of ‘death coming to us all’. Some of these people advocate dismissing efforts to ‘strive to stay young’ as indicative not only of complicity with (or victimization by) cultural ageism but also of a refusal to come honestly to terms with a fundamental, essential, inexorable dimension of being human–that we are all mortal, that our mortal lives are finite, and that we all will and must grow old and die (if we are lucky enough not to die much sooner than that). Some of these people insist they would never want to extend their lives, or live all that much longer than the average rate of mortality for people like them, at present, in 2018, here in the US or in the UK, and certainly would never want ‘to live forever’. Some of these people insist they are ready, or will be ready, quite confidently, comfortably, and serenely, ‘when the time comes’, to give way, and to move gracefully aside.
I am not one of these people. Ever since I was a young boy I have found Dylan Thomas’s “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” highly personally compelling. I knew, even then, in an epiphanic instant, this would be me. So, yes, I do get seriously frustrated, and I have come to accept, respect, and appreciate my own frustration, when I recognize the impact of aging upon me, and that, as a result, I cannot always any more do what I once loved to do, or not always do this all that easily or often. I continue to dream of venturing far and wide, exploring and inquiring into a vast array of intense and exhilarating new experiences, discovering vast new areas of knowledge and joining and contributing as part of vast new avenues for active engagement. And I dream of doing this for a great many years yet to come. When I was a high school and undergraduate student I found the fictional work of Sherwood Anderson personally deeply compelling, and in doing research on Anderson for my senior honors thesis at Wesleyan University I loved finding out what Anderson asked to serve as the epitaph on his gravestone: “Life, not death, is the great adventure.” I immediately reacted with a forcefully intuitive sense of powerful identification with this sentiment–and I knew, instantly once again, this would be at the heart of my own outlook, for the rest of my life, as well.
Yes, dramatic changes do damage and even destroy what I have in the past experienced and valued, earlier in my own life–and I do worry, and even fear, these happening, or steadily more and more of these happening. Yet, at the same time, I am abundantly eager to experience the latest developments of myriad different kinds, and along myriad different lines (including ‘new technologies’, and I am thinking of ‘technology’ in a broader sense than many people often do today, especially many of my students–consider the etymological roots of the word to recognize what I mean). I am thrilled to discover whole new areas of creation, by many people I had previously not known about, and to visit entirely new places and learn entirely new things again, and again, and again. I likewise eagerly, even at times quite impatiently, want to see what happens, as continuing ‘plotlines’ play out, and that includes non-fictional ‘plotlines’ ‘in the news’ as well as fictional plotlines (in a considerable array of forms, genres, and media). I want to be around when all this happens–and in fact I want not just to ‘be around’, but rather actively to participate in the new social worlds and new cultural activities I can at present dimly perceive on the furthest horizon of the currently conceivably possible.
Many years ago, I listened to a public radio show broadcast, while in Syracuse, New York, where a futurological scientist discussed enthusiastically the prospect of eventually being able to replace sufficient elements of our carbon-based bodies with silicon-based ‘improvements’ so that our life-spans could be enormously extended, and this would include enormously extending our active, healthy life-spans at that. I immediately found this prospect personally highly appealing. I talked with my students about it, and many reacted in diametrically opposing ways to me: many thought it would be wrong for scientists to ‘play God’ like this, it is and must remain human destiny to live a highly limited life-span, and to live any longer would only lead to greater and more destructive epidemics of excessive arrogance and horrifying hubris; many thought they would become tired and bored with life lasting longer than a ‘normal’ life-span and thereby end up hating the prospect of living any longer; and many were appalled by the idea of becoming ‘cyborgs’–this was, aesthetically at least, highly repulsive to many of these students. In addition, even though the same futurological scientist discussed collectively planning ways to limit births to compensate for people living much longer, and to allow for people to voluntarily choose to die at many different ages, while also transforming human social existence into an ecologically much more sustainable and earth-friendly direction, many students found the whole idea ‘socially irresponsible’ while others were horrified at the prospect of humans collectively planning births and voluntarily choosing deaths as well as radically changing and altogether abandoning familiar (and familiarly comfortable) advanced capitalist lifestyles and standards of living. I recognized of course this prospect raised many difficult questions if it were ever to become other than science fiction, yet I still believe my intuitively highly enthusiastic reaction was quite self-revealing.
Of course, like a great many other people what scares me most about growing older, aside from increasing disability and more severe along with more persistent physical pain and discomfort, is the prospect of being isolated, cut off, alone, and, especially, lonely. I often do feel I really wouldn’t want to live without human companionship–and I worry and fear this may yet someday be a challenge I have to face, when I’m already otherwise so physically weakened that it would be much harder to take than at times when I felt exceedingly lonely as a youth or as a young adult. I note well many stories I have read recently of large numbers of elderly people in many locations worldwide living in virtually complete isolation, today, often starved for human companionship and feeling like they have been effectively abandoned, discarded, and forgotten. Likewise, I am deeply troubled as well by the plight of elderly people experiencing the desperate need for costly ‘care’ support, which is all too little available, and with those who are professionally trained to provide it receiving pitifully low levels of compensation. I can all too readily imagine myself in the situation of these elderly people, desperate for this kind of assistance in order to be able to maintain a minimally dignified day to day existence, yet unable to access and especially afford to pay for the service of those who can offer me that kind of care.
I dream fantastic dreams. I don’t often remember details but I know these dreams often are intensely dynamic and dramatic, involving characters and adventures that don’t always ostensibly represent me at all (that is, in other words, don't always include any overt representative of me), and, even when they do, I am often extraordinarily different than I am in waking life. Many times I feel reluctant to wake up because the dreams are so exciting while tantalizing enigmas remain which I suspect might become clear with just a little more time to dream on. I mention this about my dreams, which otherwise might seem like an abrupt tangent, because I can readily imagine myself as potentially many different people, and long have, so I have often found it fascinating to imagine alternative lives, alternative vocations (or alternative avocations), and even, yes, the possibility of reincarnation–and, of course, as aforementioned, an incredible scientific breakthrough that makes possible the radical prolongation of my own healthy, active life. Most often I imagine what kind of ‘work’ (i.e., ‘job’ and ‘career’) I might have pursued, if not having become a university professor. When I was a high school student we filled out a questionnaire for our guidance counseling office, which prompted recommendations of possible career paths for us, based on our answers to these questions. I recall, oddly enough, ‘private detective’ was a top recommendation for me. Yes, that did seem quite bizarre, even then, because the actual demand for private detectives is and long has been nowhere as high as it often seems in crime fiction, but nonetheless I found this a personally most compelling and appealing kind of recommendation. I have frequently recalled this recommendation as I have taught, read, and written about a great variety of different kinds of crime, mystery, and, yes, especially, detective fiction for many years. At other times in my life I have on repeated occasions imagined I might have sought to become a full-time, independent, alternative music radio disc-jockey–yes, again, I know not a widely available means of sustaining a living, but certainly fun to imagine.
Another periodically recurrent fantasy of an alternative (‘job’ and ‘career’) pathway is that of actor. Not only does this have much to do with my life-long love of theatre, and my considerable academic, intellectual, and professional engagement with film and television, but also this prospect appeals because I love the idea of being able to play at being a wide variety of different people, and not be limited to ‘yourself’, or what others most often perceive ‘yourself to be’, or what you feel ‘you must be’ or ‘you need to be’–even as I definitely believe we all, always already, are multiple different –and continually changing–people, virtually all the time. But I think an individual identity, in a particular location, as part of a particular occupation, can come to feel like a ‘trap’, especially in a relatively small-sized community, and especially if one entered this community as I entered Eau Claire–experiencing pronounced culture shock and at the same time extremely conscious I bore a considerable weight of responsibility, to represent a wide variety of different people (i.e., I really had to take seriously the idea I would function as a ‘role model’, positively or negatively, whether I wanted this to be the case or not). Not only did I experience this weight of responsibility on account of being ‘openly gay’, and seemingly therefore needing to be careful about how I might be perceived to represent ‘gay people’ and ‘gayness’ in general but potentially also all ‘lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-and-queer people’ and ‘lesbianness-gayness-bisexuality-transgenderism–and queerness’ all the more broadly. And that was not all: I was also an ‘openly’ Marxist socialist, and I knew that was likewise quite strange and unusual in Eau Claire, and I was also a ‘Northeastern US educated intellectual’ which was further strange, unusual, and, to be honest, suspicious. I felt a burden of responsibility in terms of how I might well be perceived to represent all these categories of people, and all these ascriptions, affiliations, and experiences. While a visiting assistant professor at Arizona State University I naively imagined if I simply ‘am myself’ and ‘do a good job’, it wouldn’t matter how ‘radically different’ I might be, or seem to be, versus what had been conventionally normative, as people would respect and even appreciate me for my integrity, and welcome the variety, the diversity, the difference I brought to bear. I could not imagine some colleagues would be so threatened by the prospect of me continuing there long-term they would collaborate in secret, ‘behind the scenes’, to undermine my candidacy for a tenure-track position, and do this in a way that struck a surprising blow at the very last moment when it would then be impossible for me to do anything about it, anything to counteract it, and for any of my supporters to respond with other than flustered surprise and outrage. Yet this was so and some of those so involved frankly admitted as much, not seeing what they had done as in any way unjustified. I can see where they were coming from–they did what they thought they needed to do to protect the kind of department, college, university, and larger community they wanted to maintain. So, when I got the position at UW-Eau Claire I was determined to be as open, candid, and forthright as ever, but also to anticipate potential uneasiness, resistance, and opposition. I knew too I would have to work hard to learn how both to ‘make a difference’ as well as to ‘fit in’, and do so in an environment which I initially found quite strange. I knew, what’s more, many long accustomed to this kind of environment as entirely normative and ‘natural’ likely initially found me quite strange. When you are markedly ‘different’ from the ‘majority’ along lines widely recognized and interpreted as highly significant, and in which this difference has been the locus of a vast expanse and a long duration of discrimination, harassment, prejudice, abuse, violence, and systemic, structural, institutional oppression, you always maintain a heightened awareness of who and what is around you, an awareness that includes recognition that all of a sudden you can be in serious danger–or at the least you recognize a shift can rapidly take place, or suddenly reveal the truth that you are not included, you are not welcome, and you are certainly not ‘at home’ (even when this is your ostensible ‘home’). Add to that the kinds of burdens of responsibility and the prior history I have just described, and yes, I certainly did feel extraordinarily ‘ultra-visible’ early on in Eau Claire, and at UW-Eau Claire, and often enough desperate to escape from what I felt like was a ‘glaring spotlight’ upon me, and on what I was perceived to represent, everywhere I went and in everything I did. That led me to be cautious about pursuing too many ‘outings’, beyond work at my job, directly in Eau Claire–and that quickly developed into a deeply entrenched habit, which I continually struggle to try to break, to this day. Oddly enough, but, as I have just suggested, quite explicably so, I often save up all my energy to ‘go out and about’ for vacations or other breaks from time spent living in Eau Claire–and otherwise I often tend to ‘hunker down’ while here. I am making progress (some), especially in taking frequent long walks, and in continuing to be active in community organizations, in breaking that habit. But I still feel strong residues of that early experience of being ‘way too exposed’, and way too vulnerable as a result, that I experienced in my first years here, and those residues do continue to influence what I do–and don’t do–in Eau Claire.
Allow me to get back, however, to my fantasy of ‘being an actor’. Here, to begin, I will add, simply, I can never identify with Edith Piaf’s famous declaration “Je ne regrette rien.” I know Piaf maintained personal reasons for making this her motto, and these made a great deal of good sense in her case. But I do regret many things, not all of them my responsibility, even if I don’t ‘blame’ myself for what I regret, and even if I don’t feel ‘wracked with guilt’ on account of what I regret. Mostly I regret experiences I did not pursue, or no one around me thought to encourage me to pursue, when I was much younger. (Ah, yes, you see, I am getting back to ‘growing older’ and to ‘aging’). I regret, because I was a shy boy, or at least perceived (labeled) as shy, I did not pursue opportunities to act (as an ‘actor’) when young. I well recognize now that ‘being shy’ by no means necessarily limits one’s capability of being an actor–and even by no means necessarily limits one’s capability of being a good actor. Besides which, I was only ‘shy’ in some ways, and in some situations. In others, I was the most aggressively and persistently outspoken, and even the most wildly daring and non-conformist of my peers. I well remember a friend of mine, Brendan, telling me why he voted for me as ‘shyest boy’–‘we just wanted to make sure you won one of those awards; the really shy people no one would even think of voting for because they wouldn’t know them at all’. But back to being an actor: I can well imagine pursuing acting, from early on, would have actually helped me combat my shyness, or others’ perception of my shyness, insofar as shyness represented any kind of problem (unfortunately all too often I perceived, while a young boy, shyness as a ‘fault’ or a ‘deficiency’–it was embarrassing to be labeled ‘shy’), and I can well imagine I would have simultaneously developed even greater confidence in what I was capable of being and doing. And it would have provided me yet a further outlet for creative exploration and play (including ‘serious play’–I used to play lengthy games involving living and pursuing various quests within highly complex and elaborate imaginary worlds that lasted for many hours, and indeed many days, weeks, and months as that; I created many imaginary countries, states, and cities, with intricately detailed histories and cultures). Now, yes, since that time I have engaged in numerous often highly ‘performative’ roles, which I indeed welcome and even without a doubt relish, but I regret that missed early opportunity–which might have set me on a different pathway. I regret also that by the time I do eventually retire as a university faculty member I really likely will be too old to ‘start up from scratch’ in potentially pursuing a ‘second career’ as an actor. Not a huge regret, no, but a regret nonetheless. This regret is on the level of my regret for taking Advanced Introduction to Organic Chemistry as a first-semester, first-year undergraduate student at Wesleyan University and working extremely hard to earn a C-, from a professor who was simply brilliant, so I fully deserved exactly the grade I got. And, likewise, I still do regret taking many courses in economics, thinking I might major in economics. As a result, I didn’t have a chance, as an undergraduate, to take a class in Art History (which I made up for subsequently, very shortly thereafter), or to take classes in a foreign language such as French or German (which again I made up for subsequently, not long thereafter). None of my choices really hurt me, though, and certainly not in the long run–but I still ‘regret’ not making what would have, ideally, been a more ultimately satisfying set of choices in these instances I have just named. Recently, I have ‘regretted’ soccer was not available anywhere in my community to play, for boys, when I was growing up, as I am certain I would have really liked to play soccer, and probably have been decent at it–I loved to run around a lot, and was fairly fast. And of course it would seem altogether foolish to declare ‘I regret nothing’ when I do regret, more seriously, that I have not always been the kind of person I aspire to be, and I have not always treated everyone around me the way they deserved to be treated and the way I truly _should_ have treated them.
But ‘regret’ is not really where I want to focus now. I think it remains exciting to imagine alternative possibilities for what I might yet be and do. I have thought of ‘acting’ once again in significant part because of my reaction just this past week to watching and listening to the performances, on Netflix and Britbox as well as on TV earlier this summer while in the UK, of stand-up comedian James Acaster. Acaster is a 33 year-old, from Kettering, Northamptonshire, England. He has been working as a comedian for more than ten years now, and has attracted considerable acclaim, but I only recently discovered him, while I was recently in the UK, as he was a guest on successive episodes of Mock the Week. Immediately I found his mode of personal presentation, and his overall comic demeanor, compellingly intriguing–this encompassed not only how he used his voice (which was indeed quite fascinating), but also his employment of facial expressions, gestures, bodily posture, tone/volume, and pacing/timing. He struck me as performing ‘weird’ or ‘wacky’ in a highly appealing, and remarkably controlled, manner–‘weird’ and ‘wacky’ in the sense of provocatively unusual, distinctive, and bizarre, not in the sense of disturbing or creepy (although he can verge quite close to appearing ‘menacing’ without ever getting too close, or ever really crossing that line). Acaster struck me as someone who had crafted an elaborate ‘James Acaster comic persona’, which he assumes in a highly theatrical manner, and from which he can then readily spin off a protean series of versions of or variations on this persona. Acaster is talented enough to challenge audiences to follow his monologues quite closely (I find myself hesitant sometimes to laugh when I otherwise would as I’m afraid I’ll miss the next slight twist or turn in his performance if I do), because he doesn’t readily give away where he is going, and he in fact readily convinces us he is quite capable of, and indeed quite likely, to continually surprise us. Acaster maintains a kind of relentlessness in his performance, as he smiles relatively infrequently, keeps an enigmatic dimension to his facial expressions even as these certainly frequently mutate, and he otherwise makes outstanding use of physical comedy to both charm and creatively mislead. Much of these observations I have garnered from watching and listening to his full-length, nearly hour-long, stand-up solo performances as part of his own series Repertoire. But it was after initially catching Acaster on Mock the Week, and then, especially, Would I Lie to You?, that I knew I needed to seek out video versions of his live stand-up performances. Acaster is quite shrewd and clever in his writing, as he creates many, continually developing and successively layered, swooping and spiraling, intra-textual references in (and across) his performances, and he is deftly able to use pauses and silences along with extremely rapid speech and movement (along with dramatic shifts in vocal register) to powerful effect. Besides commenting on everyday foibles, and offering quirky comments on and insights into a range of familiar situations as well as playfully outlandish scenarios taking off from these familiar situations, Acaster can and does offer quite aptly cutting comments on major political issues, past and present. At the same time, his stand-up performance contains many familiar elements (I do periodically watch stand-up comedians and long have done so): considerable emphasis on autobiography, not at all easy to tell how much of which might be ‘real’ or not; a great deal of commentary on struggles involved with various other people who he, or one of his persona’s versions, have ostensibly found frustrating to challenging; a certain brusque feistiness along with mock sulkiness that oscillates with recurrent sharp self-deprecation; and an overall repeated focus on issues of isolation, loneliness, self-doubt, regret, struggles to make and sustain close connections, feelings of meaningless and futility, recognition of the transcience of life and of life’s pleasures, along with wonder at large (generally considered unanswerable) questions, cosmic as well as existential. (He really is far from as ‘downbeat’ as this list might suggest–and in fact often I find his material is ‘about' the value albeit as well as the difficulty of finding and keeping _friendship_.) Even when trodding these broadly familiar pathways Acaster fills out the details of the terrain in ways that feel quite fresh and distinctive to who he is performing to be. Acaster certainly makes highly impressive use of at first seemingly quite minimal props, of sound effects, and of blocking/choreography of positioning and movement. Acaster definitely seems quite knowingly aware of how his physical self-presentation is most likely most readily to be perceived, and interpreted, which allows him to play expertly off of and subtly allude to his acute awareness of the same in his sketches. I recall, when first seeing Acaster would be a guest on an episode of Would I Lie to You?, I thought to myself this will be fascinating as I can readily believe just about anything Acaster might say about himself, and about something he does or has done, so I would therefore find it exceptionally hard to discern ‘truth’ from ‘lie’ in his case. Certainly that turned out to be what I experienced with Acaster’s signal contributions to this episode. After watching his own stand-up show, now, I can better predict some of the directions he is likely to pursue, and some of the themes he is likely to emphasize, as well as some of the mannerisms he is likely to adopt, but I find this only adds to my appreciation of how cunning and agile he is. And he certainly strikes me as someone who has worked long and hard to carefully craft what he presents. I will well remember his comic send-up of the museum legacies of British imperialism and of his novel yet convincing analogies for what the Brexit vote was like, and is like now, two years' subsequent to that vote. But that is hardly all–even some of the most absurdly over the top scenarios he recounts with such commitment to playing them full out, to driving them all the way forward, stand out as, upon reflection, quite profound as well, as critical commentary on the politics of everyday life, on the politics of contemporary popular culture, and on the politics of commonplace habits and conventional rituals of social communication and social exchange widely operative across contemporary Britain.
I have written about Acaster at length not only to share my appreciation for a ‘new discovery’ (for me at least) but also to serve as a prelude to discussing further directions I might well pursue myself. Not stand-up comedy–although, interestingly enough (despite how surprising this likely will seem to some who at least think they know me well today, from the guises I have revealed most often to and around them), I have actually often, in the past, especially before coming to Eau Claire, been told by friends, and students (even urged by a good number) to give this a try because ‘you can be incredibly funny’ and ‘you already often come across like a stand-up comedian’. Again, that might seem shocking to some who have only known me in my more familiar roles here in Eau Claire, but I allude back to what I, earlier in this entry, have written concerning what I have found I needed to be like, and how that has defined me (and, yes, to a significant extent, constrained me), in my life and work here. I recall at our wedding, our initial wedding at the Unitarian Universalist church here in Eau Claire back in June of 2000, Andy’s and my vows both contained references to my ‘silliness’ and how important we both considered this to be, in our relationship–something we both cherished and pledged to continue, always. Listeners, at least some, found this a bit startling, as they, I certainly understood why, had not come to associate me, or to think of me, as ever acting in any way, or to any degree, as ‘silly’. I was even asked to aim to share this ‘silliness’ of mine more widely more often. But, of course, I knew I couldn’t–it would not fit with the kind of personae I needed to assume, and the burdens of responsibility I carried, as well as the weight of experience I maintained (with the latter reminding me how dangerous it could be, and had been, when I in my past had trusted I was ‘safe’ simply to be, or to act, however came most readily ‘naturally’ to me, and however I simply, most freely and independently, ‘wanted’ to act). I am sure I have publicly shared bits and pieces of this inclination toward and capacity for silliness now and again, and perhaps even more often as time has passed, but what I haven’t is, again, as I have earlier in this entry discussed, most explicable.
But no, James Acaster has not encouraged me to want to become a stand-up comic artist. However, James Acaster has encouraged me to consider I might well want to teach a class–or, perhaps even classes–focused on topics in British comedy. I am unsure at present, as this is entirely a new and certainly embryonic idea, what parameters I would set, defining what specific areas, or periods, or styles, or kinds of media, or themes and issues, and so on I would pursue in teaching such a class, or classes, but I am excited, and intrigued, by the idea. This would require immense research on my part, first-hand (‘field work’) in the UK as well as finding and studying a vast array of primary work along with considerable work in critical studies, most of which I as of right now know nothing about, yet none of that daunts me. Pursuing such an amazing new pathway, with the potential to learn so much and to share what I learn with students I teach, is what I love to do. I have invented so many classes, or so many focuses for classes, myself, over decades now, often in areas where I needed to work exceedingly hard to teach myself how to make sense of and to navigate largely altogether new territory (for me) before I could even begin to teach others–but I love doing exactly that. Sometimes I have been puzzled when students tell me, or colleagues of mine, I come across as notably ‘smart’ (that this is, in other words, a characteristic impression of me that leaves the strongest mark upon them) because that seems like what one would obviously expect of just about any university instructor. However, I suppose my ability to teach myself whole new areas of intellectual and creative work so I could then teach them to students, and come across as if I know what I am doing, even to come across seeming like something of an ‘expert’ in these areas, is indicative I must indeed be ‘smart’ (at least in this respect).
I know eventually, and perhaps all too soon, I will need to retire. I still would rather not think about it all that much. I will hugely miss all of what is involved in teaching–including the great motivation teaching always offers me to teach myself a vast amount I did not previously know so I am prepared to be able in turn to teach others, and to keep doing so in more and more new areas. I would like to create a free university here in Eau Claire, for after I retire, where I and others could teach classes, for free, on a variety of subjects, to a diverse public audience, in a variety of formats, and that would be a graceful segue to retired life. However, I don’t know if I can organize such an institution, and especially if I have the time or energy to find and convince sufficient numbers of others to become major players, or ‘partners’, in making this happen. Nonetheless, I am going to need to be actively engaged in challenging projects that keep pushing me, or retirement will prove highly dissatisfying. I will be too restless, and too miserable, otherwise. Yet, because I not only frequently have imagined myself in many vastly different roles as part of many vastly different scenarios than those I have ever (yet) experienced, and because I have indeed reinvented myself so many times, and know well I am, and always have been, simultaneously so many different people, I am hopeful I will, upon retirement, find new directions that will prove satisfying–and fulfilling. Yes, as is typical of a hyper-enthusiast like I am and long have been, my past is littered with shard-like remnants of many glittering projects I never fully realized, and in a good number of cases never even got going all that far, but I like that about myself–I am a ‘big ideas’ person, a vision person, and one who likes to be creative and adventurous and ambitious and innovative whenever and however I can. Yes, ‘aging’ added on to serious chronic health issues, mental and physical, as well as to invisible disability, does impose stark limits upon me, but I am going to keep pushing against those limits, and ‘raging, raging against the dying of the light’ for as long as I have yet to come. As James Acaster indicates, at the end of his first performance in the Repertoire series, ‘death comes to us all’, and, as he further indicates late toward the end of his third performance in the same series, we all have those moments ‘when we look at ourselves in our kitchen mirrors and feel extremely badly about ourselves’ but while I still have any means of doing so at all I will keep on living and turn away from that disappointing self-reflection to pick myself back up and go forth, finding inspiration in what life has yet to offer. At least that’s my aim, at present.
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