all the news that print will fit.
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| notes from underground - societal whispers all the news that print will fit. |
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Monday, May 12, 2003 np: silence. as brynn and i were driving out to get dinner or something on saturday evening i had to stop at a speedbump/stop sign, one of the many that litters guilford's campus. i laughed, ridiculously and said: "i have a college degree." there was something really weird about saying that. so i went on and got tacos. so, yeah. i graduated on saturday. i got dressed up in that oppressively hot black gown, on an oppressively hot may day and sweated. quite a bit. it was guilford's last barb at me, i'm sure. making me really earn my way up there. on my mortarboard, the simple phrase that has more accurately summed up the last few weeks than any other: 'hey, ho, let's go.' safety-pinned to the back of my gown, two patches: first, a wqfs patch. second, a gate city noise patch. i had bumped into andrew (one of the co-owners of gate city noise) and half-jokingly told him i was renting out ad space on my gown for commencement. when he said he'd like to, i took him up on it. they gave me one of the few remaining gate city t-shirts to chop up and apply. and i thank them for it. good guys. i gave my commencement speech and i think it went well. a lot of people complimented me on it and i was really flattered. i already miss guilford immensely. cos though i'll be around in the fall to complete my student teaching, and a lot of people will be in greensboro still.. it's not the same. nor will it ever be. and that's good. but it's still really sad. cos i'd made one hell of a home there. and an amazing collection of friends. a lifetime's worth of stories. but it's definitely time to light out for the territories. i like the way things look. i thought i'd share my speech with you all. so next time i speak with you, things'll be different. but that's the way truth shapes itself. and lord knows i'm a believer in that. commencement remarks - 10th may 2003 Howdy, Friends. The primer for speech writing said start out with a quote or an anecdote to get the audience’s attention, so here it is: Margaret Thatcher once said, “What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner ‘I stand for consensus?’” I’m standing in front of one of those great causes now. I’m standing here today because of the dedication of a group of educators 166 years deep. I’m standing here because I felt that idea call to me when I came here to visit over four years ago. Yes, Margaret, I stand for consensus. But consensus is not always the driving force for advancement. Rather than the quiet revolutions of compromise and dialogue, we prefer the loud, boisterous trench warfare of reductionism and plugging our ears to the ideas of others; we who insert our fingers into our aural openings and hum “The Stars and Stripes Forever” really loudly. Guilford has been holding onto a sense of, as a past graduation speaker put it, our “dogmatic liberalism” for the past half decade. And isn’t that comfortable? It’s easy to criticize freely from within the confines of 30 cultured acres of school and 300 acres of woods. It is easy to feel as if a true sense of dialogue and discussion is being attained when the viewpoints really differ so little. It is easy to feel as if the City of Greensboro itself is like crossing the border; as if we needed a passport to go to Jan’s House, or a visa to go to Gate City Noise. I like that I go to a school where people don’t shake their heads or giggle softly when I mention that I voted for Ralph Nader in the 2000 election. But shouldn’t someone feel the same safety to say that they voted for George Bush, Al Gore, Erskine Bowles or Elizabeth Dole? Guilford’s conservative population has grown in my time here. It’s good to see new ideas reflected in our day-to-day work. However, as is usually the case, it is the reactionary voices that are heard immediately from both sides. The Guilfordian this year featured an editorial back-and-forth between various students over the issue of abortion. Both sides, however, were guilty of reducing this incredibly complex issue into a series of clichéd, meaningless slogans that just further drive the wedge between people of various opinions. Now is not the time for acrimonious squabbling. Now is not the time for wasteful, textbook regurgitation of old, dysfunctional mores. The times are changing and in the great Quaker tradition of the constant search for truth, so should we be constantly evolving. What is now the time for? Now is the time for learning a different language to that you can communicate with someone new. Now is the time for smiling at a stranger when you walk down the street. Now is the time for an end to war and senseless, reckless death. Now is the time to take these last four years, and indeed, our entire lives up until this point and realize that we are agents of change. We are capable of so much that it hurts to think of the possibility. Cause we’ll never get it all done. But that’s half the reason we do it. That and a greater sense of what it means to really be part of the human race and to live on this planet with all living things. I am a liberal, and somewhat of a feisty one at that. But that doesn’t mean I can’t sit down and call you friend, and shake your hand and hear your mind. And that doesn’t mean that our discussions will be a waste of our time. Just the fact that we talked about it is a bigger head start than we can ever fully realize. As the Tragically Hip sang, “We will live to survive our paradoxes.” The late, brilliant comedian Bill Hicks once complained about people who shout, “The children are our future,” claiming there is no future. There is only now. Why are we living for some grand, golden future when the present is where the problem lies? The future starts now. There is no end to now. So let’s get started. Now. Thank you. posted by J. Neas | 5/12/2003 01:56:00 AM
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