Professionalism is the enemy of creativity and invention ~ Leonard Cohen
Bob
Dylan slept on floors, couches, benches—other people’s floors, couches,
benches. His hair was a weedy meadow he pomaded
with ouzo. Showers were what fell on him during rainy, un-umbrella-ed
walks. He peed out windows. He betrayed.
He forgot. He stole. He presumed. He played. He sang. He created. He is the first songwriter to receive the
Nobel Prize in Literature. He didn’t
pick up the award and he didn’t deliver the scheduled acceptance speech. We have his songs and his legacy. He is a reminder.
Toward
the other end of the spectrum (cf. diagnostic term), I have spent over thirty
years behaving as teacher. But, as my
lapel button sports, “Well behaved women rarely make history.” And yes, the benefits and joys of teaching
include choosing literature I want to read—we do learn by teaching, freeing up
students from school abuses they had sustained—and life-long friendships with
students and colleagues. Although an
immigrant child raised in poverty, I acquired a three-acre property with a thirteen-room
house; a pension and long-term care package; bucks for massages, yoga camps,
jaunts through Budapest and London.
One of the main curses of
teaching in an institution is the bureaucratization of the creative process,
orchestrated by those-who-ca(wo)n’t-teach-or-write administrators. I exploited my writing talents to produce textbooks;
taught too many courses under increasingly tyrannical strictures; wrote grant
applications for time to write (although no one issues contracts for poetry
books); tailored my writing projects to be granted time to write; committed (cf.
incarceration) myself to draconian disciplines to “get some writing done,” despite;
submitted (hm) my work to faceless, distant editors judging contests (the
university would “get” awards). But The Muse doesn’t come in little uniform
drawers, like ancient library card catalogs—ideas dutifully ranked
alphabetically and secured by unforgiving rods running through them. No self-respecting right brain will court a
slapdown-happy opportunistic left-braining. I would be amazed at the risks and
innovations of the Writing Poetry students I coached, secretly wondering when
will I get to mine?
The body doesn’t
lie. Mine was trying to head me off with
multiple embodiments of my self-abuse: multiple hand injuries from years of banging
away at the keyboard to get get-it-over-with tasks over with so I could write
poetry, music, whatever comes from authenticity instead of ambition, the
internal instead of the external—whatever else dedicated writers have for their
sacrifices of all of the above. Back
injuries, fibromyalgia, epic insomnia from the commutes and stress. Yoyoing weight. Premature gray.
Juggling
writing and teaching is like juggling work and child-care. Someone has to suffer. And juggling, while
focusing, is also limiting. I decided to
leave teaching, which I inordinately love, while there’s still time to discover
who I am and can be as a writer. The final blow was when my university foisted
course conversions on us which required lesson plans for every fifteen minutes to
be planned months ahead of classes; and grading students on every peep they
said or wrote. As often happens, our
tools became our masters. The faculty were enslaved to their digital
tools. Assessment instead of education. Micromanagement
instead of music and magic. I refused to do that to my “Writing Poetry” and
“Emily Dickinson” and “Shakespeare Survey” courses, among others. I was not willing, in Dickinson’s words, to
“Split the Lark” to find the music—either in my students or myself. (That metaphor became moot at my university,
as they abolished the music department.)
Yes,
my students benefitted from my being a writer—in both my writing and literature
courses. I know that who and how I am is
more compelling to them than anything I say.
If I wasn’t taking care of myself, I did bring my passion for literature
and the creative process to the classroom, as well as iconoclastic
practices. I forbade students to
summarize and paraphrase, in favor of original and quirky interpretations. I had them read as writers, questioning
Shakespeare’s choices, challenging the gushings of bardolators. I eschewed the
almighty writing prompt to unrelieve student writers of one of the most
important aspects of writing—cultivating inspiration. I lied and finagled
around assessment rubrics to protect us all. I submitted my syllabi, as I would
throw a bloody bone to a cur, and then blithely closed the classroom door to
create a space station for discovery and invention.
You’re
right, I wasn’t behaving. But I was
playing at it. I developed habits that are corrosive to a writer. I studied, instead of read auto-didactically,
in anticipation of engaging students. A nature walk was all about how I can
arrange for them to have the experience. What I fed my mind as I attempted
sleep were elaborate scripts with how to respond to administrative evils. What awakened me in the morning was solutions
to ephemeral, trivial problems instead of a new image for a poem. As I
encouraged my students to discover inspiration in the daily and personal, I
became a machine for identifying “that’s a poem” in our talks. That carried over into my obsessively hoarding
poem ideas—for when I got the time. All
it did was overwhelm and suffocate me.
Because I’m easily inspired and feared the tidal wave of ideas I had
trained myself to identify for students, I developed my own addictions to stop
the flow: stupid television, food, shopping—luckily, no drugs or alcohol.
Then there are the
numbers—the numb-ers. I love
mathematics, so it’s not fear of numbers—but the misuse of them. Institutional quantifications are all about
control and dominance—and the numbing of the messy experience of being creative
human beings. During the COVID crisis,
I’m taking my temperature and oxygen levels for peace of mind—that I don’t have
it, or if I do to get immediate help and protect loved ones. But human signs are more reliable—the cough,
the loss of taste and smell, body aches, dizziness and other clinical
symptoms.
Numbers—how long, how
much, how many did I write/publish—the only thing that administrators
acknowledge—is counter to what Csikszentmihalyi terms “The Flow.” Numbers are like putting multiple walls into
a river—at some point, if we’re lucky, the river will break them down. But the flood might be devastating and it
will fling walls wildly.
Then there’s the issue of
input. A Columbia University study
documented that the longer a writing teacher teaches—the more unconventional
spellings she sees—the more her own spelling skills will deteriorate. This applies, as well, to the myriads (that’s
tens of thousands) of student drafts I read.
Yes, some were brilliant and thrilling, but how much better it would
have been for me as a writer to read polished, accomplished writing. Responding (I hate the words “marking” and
“grading”) to student papers is for most teachers stultifying and onerous—one
of main reasons teachers retire early.
Through the years, I have devised creative ways to maximize students’
learning and minimize my crumbling paper glaciers. But what we practice is what we are. I practiced feeding myself unpredictable food
of varying temperatures on Styrofoam take-out trays. Not always.
But mostly. Practice cringing at
incoming work, cringe you will at reading, in general.
The bureaucratization of
the creative process, hoarding ideas, delaying projects, martineting myself to
produce, studying instead of reading, numbing myself with numbers, denying
myself nourishment and freedom—I betrayed my Muse. I did develop a 60-page vita of publications
and performances, but I abetted a culture of I can’t have for or take care
of myself—and students learn by example.
I am delighted and
gratified with my experience with students, but the greatest strengths of my
work were in how I rebelled against the status quo, and writing my way
into and through my iconoclastic ways.
That I loved to do. And that’s
what my students remember the most.
Who will I be? How will I recover? Write, of course.
Works Cited:
Cover Art: https://writerswhocare.wordpress.com/2018/04/30/embracing-the-identity-of-teacher-writer/
