Ask The Experts: David McCullough

--> "So here we are: commencement. Life's great forward-looking ceremony …

Commencement is life's great ceremonial beginning, with its own attendant and highly appropriate symbolism.  Fitting, for example, for this auspicious rite of passage, is where we find ourselves this afternoon, the venue.  Normally, I avoid clichés like the plague, wouldn't touch them with a ten-foot pole, but here we are on a literal level playing field.  That matters.  That says something.  And your ceremonial costume… shapeless, uniform, one-size-fits-all.  Whether male or female, tall or short, scholar or slacker, spray-tanned prom queen or intergalactic X-Box assassin, each of you is dressed, you'll notice, exactly the same.  And your diploma… but for your name, exactly the same.

All of this is as it should be, because none of you is special.

You are not special.  You are not exceptional.

Contrary to what your … soccer trophy suggests, your glowing seventh grade report card, despite every assurance of a certain corpulent purple dinosaur, that nice Mister Rogers and your batty Aunt Sylvia, no matter how often your maternal caped crusader has swooped in to save you: you're nothing special.

Yes, you've been pampered, cosseted, doted upon, helmeted, bubble-wrapped.  Yes, capable adults with other things to do have held you, kissed you, fed you, wiped your mouth, wiped your bottom, trained you, taught you, tutored you, coached you, listened to you, counseled you, encouraged you, consoled you and encouraged you again.  You've been nudged, cajoled, wheedled and implored.  You've been feted and fawned over and called sweetie pie.  Yes, you have.  And, certainly, we've been to your games, your plays, your recitals, your science fairs.  Absolutely, smiles ignite when you walk into a room, and hundreds gasp with delight at your every tweet … Now you've conquered high school - and, indisputably, here we all have gathered for you, the pride and joy of this fine community …

But do not get the idea you're anything special.  Because you're not.

The empirical evidence is everywhere, numbers even an English teacher can't ignore … across the country no fewer than 3.2 million seniors are graduating about now from more than 37,000 high schools.  That's 37,000 valedictorians; 37,000 class presidents; 92,000 harmonizing altos; 340,000 swaggering jocks; 2,185,967 pairs of Uggs.  But why limit ourselves to high school?  After all, you're leaving it.  So think about this: even if you're one in a million, on a planet of 6.8 billion that means there are nearly 7,000 people just like you.  Imagine standing somewhere over there on Washington Street on Marathon Monday and watching sixty-eight hundred yous go running by …

"But, Dave," you cry, "Walt Whitman tells me I'm my own version of perfection!  Epictetus tells me I have the spark of Zeus!"  And I don't disagree.  So that makes 6.8 billion examples of perfection, 6.8 billion sparks of Zeus.  You see, if everyone is special, then no one is.  If everyone gets a trophy, trophies become meaningless.  In our unspoken but not so subtle Darwinian competition with one another - which springs, I think, from our fear of our own insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality - we have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement.  We have come to see them as the point - and we're happy to compromise standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that's the quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece, something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole.  No longer is it how you play the game, no longer is it even whether you win or lose, or learn or grow, or enjoy yourself doing it. Now it's "So what does this get me?" As a consequence, we cheapen worthy endeavors, and building a Guatemalan medical clinic becomes more about the application to Bowdoin than the well-being of Guatemalans.  It's an epidemic - and in its way, not even dear old Wellesley High is immune: one of the best of the 37,000 nationwide …  I said "one of the best" so we can feel better about ourselves, so we can bask in a little easy distinction, however vague and unverifiable, and count ourselves among the elite, whoever they might be, and enjoy a perceived leg up on the perceived competition.  But the phrase defies logic.  By definition there can be only one best.  You're it or you're not.

If you've learned anything in your years here I hope it's that education should be for, rather than material advantage, the exhilaration of learning.  You've learned, too, I hope, as Sophocles assured us, that wisdom is the chief element of happiness. (Second is ice cream - just an fyi.)  I also hope you've learned enough to recognize how little you know - how little you know now, at the moment, for today is just the beginning.  It's where you go from here that matters.

As you commence, then, and before you scatter to the winds, I urge you to do whatever you do for no reason other than you love it and believe in its importance.  Don't bother with work you don't believe in any more than you would a spouse you're not crazy about ...  Resist the easy comforts of complacency, the specious glitter of materialism, the narcotic paralysis of self-satisfaction.  Be worthy of your advantages.  And read - read all the time, read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect.  Read as a nourishing staple of life.  Develop and protect a moral sensibility and demonstrate the character to apply it.  Dream big.  Work hard.  Think for yourself.  Love everything you love, everyone you love, with all your might.  And do so, please, with a sense of urgency, for every tick of the clock subtracts from fewer and fewer; and as surely as there are commencements there are cessations, and you'll be in no condition to enjoy the ceremony attendant to that eventuality no matter how delightful the afternoon.

The fulfilling life, the distinctive life, the relevant life, is an achievement, not something that will fall into your lap because you're a nice person or mommy ordered it from the caterer.  You'll note the founding fathers took pains to secure your inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - quite an active verb, "pursuit" - which leaves, I should think, little time for lying around watching parrots roller skate on YouTube.  The first President Roosevelt, the old rough rider, advocated the strenuous life.  Mr. Thoreau wanted to drive life into a corner, to live deep and suck out all the marrow.  The poet Mary Oliver tells us to row, row into the swirl and roil … The point is the same: get busy, have at it.  Don't wait for inspiration or passion to find you.  Get up, get out, explore, find it yourself, and grab hold with both hands …

None of this day-seizing, though … should be interpreted as license for self-indulgence.  Like accolades ought to be, the fulfilled life is a consequence, a gratifying byproduct.  It's what happens when you're thinking about more important things.  Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view.  Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.  Go to Paris to be in Paris, not to cross it off your list and congratulate yourself for being worldly.  Exercise free will and creative, independent thought not for the satisfactions they will bring you, but for the good they will do others, the rest of the 6.8 billion - and those who will follow them.  And then you too will discover the great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself.  The sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the recognition that you're not special.

Because everyone is.

Congratulations.  Good luck.  Make for yourselves, please, for your sake and for ours, extraordinary lives."

- David McCullough

2012 Commencement Speech, Wellesley High (Wellesley, MA)

Ask The Experts: Michael Chabon

--> “The pop artisan operates within the received formulas – gangster movie, radio-ready A-side, space opera – and then incorporates into the style, manner, and mood of the work bits and pieces derived from all the aesthetic moments he or she has ever fallen in love with, in other movies or songs or novels, whether hackwork or genius (without regard for and sometimes without consciousness of any difference between the two: the bridge in a song by the Moonglows, a James Wong Howe camera angle, a Sabatini cannonade, a Stan Getz solo, the climax of The Demolished Man, a locmotive design by Raymond Loewy, a Shecky Green routine). When it works, what you get is not a collection of references, quotes, allusions, and cribs but a whole, seamless thing, both familiar and new: a record of the consciousness that was busy falling in love with those moments in the first place. It’s that filtering consciousness, coupled with the physical ability (or whatever it is) to flat-out play or sing or write or draw, that transforms the fragments and jetsam and familiar pieces into something fresh and unheard of. If that sounds a lot like what flaming genius gods are supposed to be up to, then here’s a distinction: The pop artisan is always hoping that, in the end, the thing is going to be Huge. He is haunted by a vision of pop perfection: heartbreaking beauty that moves units.”

- Michael Chabon

Introduction: Chaykin and Flagg!

(2008)

Ask The Experts: Alfred Bennett

--> “In 1868 a burlesque, The Merry Zingara, by W.S. Gilbert – a skit on The Bohemian – was produced at the Royalty with a bevy of attractive girls – there were pretty girls in every burlesque but they had to be clever ones as well, not merely manikins …

Burlesques were parodies on plays or stories, written in ten-syllable rhymed lines which, in harmony with the accepted wit of the day, abounded in puns and whimsicalities and were interspersed with songs, choruses and dances borrowed from opera, music-hall or other sources. The music was never original. The hero was always a girl, and there was often a female character depicted by a man, in which respects the wont and usage of pantomime were closely followed …

Incongruities were frequent in burlesque and puns were sometimes more than verbal. For instance, in Burnand’s Paris, Orion was got up as an Irishman with knee-breeches and shillelagh, spoke with a brogue and was called O’Ryan – “the only Irish constellation in the skies.” Topical allusions likewise abounded …

A few specimen lines will show at what our fathers deigned to laugh in their hours of ease. This excerpt from Paris was rendered funny by the makeup and delivery of the speaker, a man in female disguise:

            “Last night he smiles on me, my husband do,

            And says ‘I’m going out.’ Says I, ‘Where to?’

            Says he, which ain’t polite, ‘What’s that to you?’

            ‘Nothing to me,’ I says, ‘I only ask;

            Of course, if ‘ollow ‘arts will wear a mask,

            Then, as the poet says, the time will be

            When, hubby darling, you’ll remember me.’”

… A verse from a set called “What’s a burlesque?” contributed by W.S. Gilbert to one of the magazines, may perhaps fitly wind up this sketch of a by-gone amusement:

            “Pretty princess – beautiful dress:

            Exquisite eyes – wonderful size:

            Dear little dress (couldn’t be less)

            Story confused – frequently used:

            Sillified pun – clumsily done.

                        Dresses grotesque.

                        Girls statuesque.

                        Scene picturesque –

                        That’s a burlesque!” ”

--Alfred Rosling Bennett, London & Londoners In The 1850’s & 1860’s (1924)

Ask The Experts: Dawn Powell

--> "For the first time it came home to her how comfortably she had counted on reputation to make up for minor personal disappointments. A crutch, a cushion, a veil, a safety net for all missteps, that knowledge of work recognized and admired whether she was old or young. Without it she felt vulnerable and exposed, a woman in her thirties whom no one knew, an everyday woman with no protection of love or fame, with no banner to bear but that of pleading mistress begging for a crumb. Left standing unnoticed for a moment it struck her how soft and spoiled she was, never venturing on any path that was not especially paved for her, innocently astonished that the paving could wear out and torches on dark corners would not be lit.” 

—	Dawn Powell, The Locusts Have No King (1948)

Ask The Experts: George Peck

--> “Pa and I put in a good deal of time during the afternoon and evening performances in the dressing-room, near the door leading to the main tent. That is the nearest to being in an insane asylum of any place I was ever in. The performers get ready for their several acts in bunches or families, all in one spot, and they act serious and jaw each other, and each bunch acts as though their act was all there was to the show, and if it was cut out for any reason, the show would have to lay up for the season, when in fact each one is only a cog in the great wheel, and if one cog should slip, the wheel would turn just the same. These people never smile before they go in the ring, but just act as though too much depended on them to crack a smile. When a bunch is called to go in the ring, they all look at each other as though it was the parting of the ways, and they clasp hands and go out of the dressing-room as though walking on eggs. When they get in the ring they look around to see if all eyes are upon them, and bow to people who are looking at something going on in another ring, and who don’t see them, and then they go through their performance with everybody looking somewhere else.

When the act is over the audience seems glad, and clap their hands because they are polite, and it don’t cost anything to clap hands, and the performers turn some more flip flaps, and go running out to the dressing-room, and take a peek back into the big tent as though expecting an encore, but the audience has forgotten them and is looking for the next mess of performers, and the ones who have just been in go and lie down on straw and wonder if they can hit the treasurer for an advance on their salaries, so they can go to a beer garden and forget it all.

An average audience never gets its money’s worth unless some one is hurt doing some daring act.”

- George W. Peck, Peck’s Bad Boy With The Circus (1905)

Ask The Experts: David Wong

--> "... Because that's the step that gets skipped -- it's always "How can I get a job?" and not "How can I become the type of person employers want?" It's "How can I get pretty girls to like me?" instead of "How can I become the type of person that pretty girls like?" See, because that second one could very well require giving up many of your favorite hobbies and paying more attention to your appearance, and God knows what else. You might even have to change your personality ...

"But I'm not good at anything!" Well, I have good news -- throw enough hours of repetition at it and you can get sort of good at anything. I was the world's shittiest writer when I was an infant. I was only slightly better at 25. But while I was failing miserably at my career, I wrote in my spare time for eight straight years, an article a week, before I ever made real money off it. It took 13 years for me to get good enough to make the New York Times best-seller list. It took me probably 20,000 hours of practice to sand the edges off my sucking.

Don't like the prospect of pouring all of that time into a skill? Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that the sheer act of practicing will help you come out of your shell -- I got through years of tedious office work because I knew that I was learning a unique skill on the side. People quit because it takes too ling to see results, because they can't figure out that the process is the result. The bad news is that you have no other choice.

If you want to work here, close."

- David Wong, 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You A Better Person