I Don’t Have an iPod, But My Mom Does

Since I was quite young, I have been told that I have an “artistic temperament.” By some, that was a compliment: I was sensitive, insightful, and curious. By others, it was not a particularly good review. When I made known my intention to be an English major to the professor of my freshman drama seminar, she told me that “you can’t be both a good artist and a good critic.” Her view was that if you identified as a writer of literature yourself, you would sympathize with the author, and this sympathy smoothed out the edges too much for you to be able to analyze and interpret “objectively.”  (As if “objective” reading exists!)

I’ve always known she was wrong. And this semester, the tenth anniversary of my first as an undergrad, I think I know how to say why. 

There is always a lot of talk in pedagogical circles about the importance of giving students the experience of writing their own poetry in order to understand the way the craft operates from the inside. Anyone who has ever tried to write a sonnet, or even a haiku, knows that it’s a lot more complicated than writing an email. In the case of fiction, though, that point may be more elusive. Most people would not bring The Oxford Book of Verse to the beach, but many would bring a novel. Poets are cloaked in mystery and romance, but writers of fiction prose are perhaps often seen simply as people who have the time to observe reality and write it down. Writing a poem takes magic; writing a novel takes discipline. Oh, please.

In terms of student engagement, my most successful units have been novel studies. My students tended to be very reluctant readers, nonreaders independently, and so there was a certain sweetness about one of them swooping up to me at the beginning of a period, asking breathlessly, “Miss, can we read the book today? Pleeeease.” In general, they hadn’t been read to, hadn’t been allowed to sink into a good story without the passive shock and awe of movies and television, into a story that required more than 90 minutes of their lives. Part of my job was to do what I could to give them the experiences with reading I had had that made me love it. 

If students are reading and enjoying it, it’s tempting (especially with rowdy, easily bored teenagers) to take the path of least resistance. But teachers fall short of their goals if they don’t get students to think critically about what they read, which can be difficult when the reading is pleasurable and more accessible. Untrained readers can “get into” a book, but when it’s time to talk or write about it, it sounds like the class is catching up on a soap opera. They blow past any implications of form and discuss the characters and their lives as if they were real. The key, then, is to get students to go beyond caring just about what the author is doing and begin to probe and appreciate how and why he or she is doing it.

First, one small confession: I am a massive Harry Potter fan. My interest in mythology, medieval literature, and teenagers, alongside my taste for British wit and flights of fancy, make it impossible for me to turn away. The first time through the series, I read as fast as I could, hundreds of pages flying by in a single day. Especially in the case of the seventh and last book, I was resolute that no one would spoil it for me, but popular media was so saturated with it that I knew I had to get to the end as quickly as possible. That kind of emotional investment is, I think, an important experience to have as a reader, but it is not literary studies. The second time through, when I was not so bound by suspense, I began to appreciate how clever Rowling is. Having done some writing myself, I noticed things like a device to get certain characters at the same place at the same time, speculated on why characters had certain names, and saw symbols and motifs emerge. (One example: Voldemort, as a half-blood who is obsessed with establishing a new order of only pure blood wizards, no matter what he has to do to rid the world of muggles, mudbloods, and blood traitors, must be an allegory for Hitler and Nazi eugenics movement. That’s deep!)

Writing fiction, that “beautiful lie,” is a series of decisions. As an author, you are trying to present something essentially true about the human experience, but it is a craft in which raw material is shaped into a story. Reality must be observed, considered, and finally cut down to size and packaged. Every author must contend with certain narrative conventions, even (perhaps especially) modern and postmodern authors who want to expose and explode them. People learn by doing, and there is no better way to demonstrate how fiction writers’ craft operates than to make students fiction writers themselves. Having written a short story, or even just a scene, students would understand the decisions authors have to make, like which conversations to have the reader listen in on, and which of the characters’ activities are part of the plot and which are not important or relevant enough. They would, as all fiction writers do, have been forced to create systems that operate as analogues to reality. 

The creation of literature is not a mystery, and neither is literary analysis. So let’s be democratic about it. Making students into authors themselves makes them more likely to care about another author’s craft and gives them a way to talk about the hows and whys because they have asked themselves those questions from the inside looking out. And once people, of any age, have a way to talk about something, they usually can’t be stopped. This post proves that.

So, Professor X, you might have a Ph.D. from Yale, but you got this one wrong.

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Yesterday, I hosted a new ESL Teaching Fellow in my classroom, a bright young woman I already know and already like. My principal hired her to fill the vacancy I will leave behind. I’m leaving, quite by choice and after considerable effort, and that means IS 162 will require an ESL teacher. A third of my current students are moving on to high school anyway, so I couldn’t hold onto them even if I stayed. The nature of school is that people come and go. Those are the facts. The purpose of education is to be off and out, right? Isn’t that a bit like what I’m doing, by leaving the world of middle school, probably forever, for grad school?

Yes. But.

In his iconic all-synthesizer classic “Cars,” Gary Newman sang, “Here in my car, I feel safest of all.” I had never given it much thought, until I headed home yesterday and wanted to cry but couldn’t because I don’t have a car. If you cry on the subway, especially at rush hour, you have to do it standing up, your own face very close to the those of people you don’t know. People who will either try very hard not to notice that you are crying or will stare at you curiously. In either case, there is no sympathy and no comfort.

I didn’t want sympathy or comfort though. I wanted privacy. I wanted to be in a space that was mine enough so that I could have a few moments to grieve the loss of a beginning, an experience, an experiment that is about to be over and continued by someone else.

As I sat on that train, I was filled with images, mostly faces. And names, so many names. Names from every year, every class. Armando. Natalia. William. Said. Diana. Joana. Melissa. Karina. Jairo. Ilina, oh Ilina. Jose. Kasandra. Wanderlin. Damian. Abner. Sebastien. Lyze. Edwin. Jenill. Koralina, my birthday twin. Graciela. Stephanie. Stefania. Estefanny. Don’t cry, don’t cry.

New York fills you up with sights and sounds, with passion and mission. The place bulges with humanity. But, central to all its smaller cruelties is the inescapable fact there is no space and no time to react with any humanity at all. But, tired as I am, it is a little hard not to keep trying.

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A few people (okay, mostly my dad, my most loyal reader) have asked me what my blog title means. The truth is that, until I had written a few posts, I wasn’t sure myself. It just sounded right. Once I had thought of it, I couldn’t even think of what else might be a title.

Really, the title is about a two things that are different but related.

I am a music fan. I listen to music often, read Rolling Stone, feel nostalgic when I watch VH1 Classic, and am a formidable opponent at music trivia. I care that Group A is working with Producer B, and that they are recording in the same studio in which Group C recorded the legendary Album D. I love liner notes, especially on resissues, to which members of the band usually contribute. Liner notes come with albums, collections of songs which, in the best cases, have been carefully chosen and arranged. Albums mean CDs. You know, CDs, like in the 90s.

From the title of the blog, you already know that I don’t have an iPod, but its more than just the lack of the actual device. I haven’t made a single move in the direction of digital music. I don’t have a single music file on my computer. I have never been to the iTunes website. I don’t have any idea how to burn a CD. When my mom declares that she has to charge her iPod, or when my dad tells me about an old song he unearthed and downloaded, they are speaking from a world that my generation created but that I am not part of all.

So, part of the reason I don’t have an iPod is simply that it isn’t how I listen to music. I like albums, but I also like the act of buying a CD and bringing home to pour over the packaging and listen to it from start to finish. And I don’t even want to have my whole music collection available all the time–I don’t want to listen to music all the time, period. I’m more committed than that. The other reason is the discomfort with my generation that I’ve felt for as long as I can remember. When I get that feeling that “everybody” is doing something, I have to resist it. That’s not a matter of being too cool, it’s not conscious enough for that. For better or worse, I guess I’ve never done that well with the group identity thing.

But as I get older, my generational identity is becoming more complicated. The baby boomers, who I confess I have always idolized, frustrate me more and more as I get older. Their self-indulgence and narcissism looked better on them when they were younger I guess. And it’s hard not to resent inheriting the Social Security crisis a little bit.

I’ve been hoping since I was about 10 that my own generation (Gen X.5, I guess you’d call us) would look better to me as we grew together, and I’m still hopeful. Still, at least for now, I’ll stick with the Sony CD changer I took to college. I hope that answers your question.

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There is a moment that happens at parties which I absolutely dread. Not with fear or despair; I mean the kind of dread that mixes frustration with deep annoyance. Loathing makes me nervous, being nervous makes me self-conscious that I am nervous, and my self-consciousness (what could be more uncool?) deepens the dread the next time it happens.

Those who know me may know that the moment I am talking about is the one in which a fellow party-goer suggests that we smoke pot. There is maybe nothing else that makes me feel so completely alienated, unnecessary, and maybe even unwanted, like being out with a couple on their anniversary, but on a grander scale. It is like how it would feel if everyone in the room suddenly, quite by choice, began speaking another language. At once, I am awkward and useless. The scene has switched, gone where I can’t follow. (I suppose it is won’t, not can’t, but that isn’t how it registers emotionally.)

What I have just written seems a little dramatic, even to me, but that is only because nearly 15 years of dealing with pot smokers and navigating social situations has softened my rhetoric and dulled the visceral reaction a bit. I can play it cooler now, but it is acting. My true reaction to pot smoking–to drug use, period–is something like disgust, if disgust could raise a lump in your throat and make you feel vaguely like calling your parents.

With the passing of each of these 15 years, I suppose it has become more and more remarkable that I have never tried pot. My peers and I, after all, were raised by boomers, many of whom still use drugs recreationally. The adults we grew with (my own family being an exception) assumed that we would “experiment” with it, and so, most of us did. It’s true that in college I did become a somewhat enthusiastic reveler, very comfortable, say, organizing a drinking game. As a result, new friends often casually assume that I smoke pot. That moment in a budding friendship, when this assumption is revealed, is one I dislike also, because it insults me a way I find difficult to hide. My convictions are mysterious and passionate, and once public, I have to explain them and even defend them. I have to be prepared to have them dismissed, or worse, to be condescended to.

Even now, I feel a little hesitant about clicking the “publish” button. But I will. Maybe then I can exhale. 

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