Last year I became the first faculty inductee in our school's Cum Laude society. In a new tradition, the faculty inductee has to give the address. The motto of the society translates as justice, honor, excellence. Here are my remarks:
The most difficult thing about this speech is figuring out who the audience is. Is it the folks on-stage? Congratulations by the way. You’ve worked hard. If you want to take a nap now, or play on your phones, or whatever, go for it. You’ve earned it. You don’t need to hear anything from me. Is it their parents? Good work by the way. We all know it was your good parenting that led to your children being up here and that any problems your children give you are strictly the fault of genetic mutations or your in-laws. You also probably don’t need to hear from me. Is it the faculty? They here me bloviate every Thursday in faculty meeting and most of them can’t believe that somebody has actually given me a microphone to address you all unedited. So definitely not them. So that leaves all the people facing me. All the students not on the stage. Some of you may be up here next year, some may never be up here. And most of you are really wishing you were at snack right now instead of listening to me. So, you’re who I’m going to talk to. Especially the folks who are positively, absolutely sure they’re never going to be up on stage. I don’t want to take anything away from the folks on-stage. Good work! Congratulations! Well-done! Hard work paid off and all that. Anyway, last year, when I was inducted into the Cum Laude society as an adult, it was far more meaningful to me. And I want to explain why that is and why, if you think you’re never going to be on this side looking out, you’re probably wrong.
So we start with a question. What’s the point? Not in Douglas Adams’ terms of “Life the Universe and Everything.” We know what the point is of all that. It’s 42. Rather, what’s the point of school? Hands? Anyone? No the point of school is not to get a better job, that is merely a pleasant side effect. Somebody else?
Okay, I’m going to tell you the point of school. It’s to make you a better person. And to prove this, I’m going to discuss a couple of really important texts that I think sum up everything humanity has learned since we separated ourselves from the Neanderthals up until about 10 minutes ago..
The first text I’m going to discuss is a dark, dystopian film about what happens when people immerse themselves in technology and completely disconnect themselves from authentic human relationships. The anti-hero in this film, and you have to call it a film because this is serious stuff not one of those popcorn superhero movies, was orphaned, bullied as a child, but phenomenally intelligent. He uses his academic gifts to invent technologies designed to harm rather than help as he seeks revenge on those who wrong him and he creates virtual experiences that only he can participate in. While his genius attracts some loyal followers, he pushes even them away until he ends up alone, isolated, quite mad, and surrounded by nothing but mushrooms. This modern classic, is of course, as many of you have recognized, the Sonic the Hedgehog movie. Mismarketed as a buddy movie about a space alien and his cop friend, it is actually Jim Carrey’s tour de force performance that carries this cinematic masterpiece. Carrey’s character is an object lesson in how intelligence alone, unanchored by any moral framework or care for his fellow humans leads inevitably into insanity.
Our next text is one song by an artist I hope you’ve heard of, David Bowie. The song is Heroes. Inspired by seeing friends kiss near the Berlin Wall, Bowie, who had recently kicked a drug habit that nearly killed him, wrote a song about lovers separated by the division of Germany into two states, one communist and one capitalist after World War II. In the divided city, where trying to cross the border could mean instant death, Bowie’s lovers meet in no man’s land. “Though nothing will keep us together, we can beat them for ever and ever” sings his protagonist. What magical weapon does Bowie possess here that can vanquish Cold War hostilities (and the cold eye of East German marksmen who killed at least 140 people trying to cross from East to West)? That weapon is love. Despite the “guns shot above our heads” Bowie’s lovers kiss “as though nothing could fall.” Bowie here is reminding us about the transformative power of love to fight evil. It is our innate capacity to love each other that has been behind every successful social movement since recorded history started. And, of course, it was Jim Carrey’s character's failure to nurture this most important ability that led his Dr. Robotnik’s untimely exile to an outer dimension.
Now, we might not have the opportunity to turn the awesome power of love against a totalitarian state. At least, I hope we don’t have that opportunity. So when can you do this? When can you use this awesome talent each and everyone of you has to change the world though the thing that makes you human, your capacity to love.
For that answer, I turn to another music artist, Alt-country/folk singer Robbie Fulks. Who I think is worth quoting at length on this topic.
When you're really needed,
You can rise to meet it,
Or you can fall. [Fulks’ narrator warns his son. But he continues]
Where you're headed now is not really mine to say,
You've been more than patient
To hear my story through,
And now you are ... on your way,
here are some few simple things I wish for you, [And I would echo Fulks’s sentiments for all of you]
That you will steer past shallow freedoms as you follow your own star,
When your life is at it's darkest please remember that you are
Needed,
Something about "needed"
Leaves every other word
Weak and small.
Needed,
I hope you know that you're needed,
That you'll rise to meet it,
And never shall fall.
I first heard “Needed” on my 50th birthday at a Fulks concert in a small venue in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. I went with my friend from college, because my wife of almost twenty years had broken her ankle earlier that month and was trapped at home on crutches and unable to navigate the steps out of our house. A few weeks later, a blood clot would dislodge from that same ankle and end her life. And I thought, at the time, mine too. But I was needed, needed by my children, and by my mother-in-law, and by my students, and by my colleagues. The transformative power of their collective love for me brought me back from a place I thought I never would leave. You all were part of the community that loved me so hard I had no choice but to love you back. It was a work of justice, and of honor, and most definitely excellent. And so each of you, in some small way, shares this stage today. And that, that, is just one small example of the transformative power of love. With every transformative act of love, you can enter into our secret little honor society I’m creating right here and now. And each of you can ascend that stage again and again. So hug your loved ones, mend your fences, do some good. This life is too short.
Thank you.