Professor Morrissey

The British pop media have been debating the incident in which Morrissey walked off the stage during a concert, because someone in the crowd had tossed a beer bottle on stage, hitting him on the head. http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/nov/09/morrissey-walks-offstage The question was whether Morrissey was justified in refusing to continue the concert, thereby denying a crowd their 30-40 pounds worth of pleasure.

It is not too hard to imagine why Morrissey walked off the stage: he did not really want to be there in the first place. Twenty-five years after his youthful stardom, it must be no fun slogging around small venues in the north of England when you have become accustomed to Los Angeles. But the bills must be paid, and discs sold, so even aging dandies need to mount a well-lit platform to woo and wow the masses.

Professors can be a little like petulant rock stars, too, without the high pay, stimulants and groupies, of course. They, too, can grow tired of their audiences, they, too, can wish for anything but to teach the same course over and over again. Tom Jones may have enough work class grit in him to belt out "She's a lady" for decades on end, but lots of high strung professors get really sick and tired of teaching "Ode to a Grecian Urn," or Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," or subject-noun agreement in both English and French. I bet even chemists run through the definition of a mole with the speed of Dylan revisiting an old tune.

But not all of aged stars, and professors, feel so. The key is never to blame the students—or the audience in Morrissey's case. It is a weary old saying but alas it is so: They are there to learn, as well as be entertained. That they can't properly form the passive voice should not be held against them. It is incumbent on professors to explain. And if they only know the lyrics to "Girlfriend in a Coma" and nothing else, then, sadly, Morrissey needs to show them once again how the song goes.

Instead of walking out on the crowd, you can turn your ire against the system that obliges you to teach the same courses over and over again. You can blame the university press that did not accept your manuscript last year. You can blame your spouse for not wanting to take that job in Oregon. Whatever you like, just don't blame the audience, even if they give you a hung-over explanation for why they did not turn the paper in on time. Beer bottles get tossed around on campus, perhaps not directly at professors, but some of it splashes out in the class room,--in the form of lethargy, lateness and all around ignorance. And in the end, professors have options old rock stars lack.

Plenty of old professors are pleased to have an audience. They may have no connection to the undergraduate life, but they are glad that folks are still showing up to hear them run through their greatest hits. Once they realize that the house in the Hamptons is not a natural born privilege, they don't mind singing "Luka" one more time-- with feeling.

Even though a make-up concert is the planning, http://www.nme.com/news/morrissey/48330 my analogy can only go so far: professors almost never leave a class halfway through their own lecture and Morrissey was always a bit of a whiner (unlike us academics).

Finishing

While in grad school, I worked for a dear friend who ran a massive used book shop, a big red barn on the side of the road. I loved the smell of the place, the dusty piles, the rare finds and I was grateful for the extra money in the summer when I had no stipend. There were a few of us who did odd jobs there. My allotment was to schlep heavy boxes, mow the old farm field that surrounded the barn, befriend customers and occasionally run the cash register.

After a busy three-day weekend when I had filled in for a cashier who had suddenly quit, we were sitting around chatting and I asked my friend whom she was going to hire to work the register. She answered with a line taken from her parents, who also ran several used book stores: "The best clerks are grad students who think they are going to finish their dissertation." The point being that they never will, but they hang around forever trying. They are bookish and appreciative.

For me this comment was one of those moments when the curtain gets raised and you see the control room. I decide no matter what, I was never going to fall into this trap.

Mind you I really liked hanging out in grad school. We lived in a funky upstate town full of old hippies and the security that comes from being centrally isolated. I had lots of friends who were still hanging around Ithaca, didn't want to leave the lifestyle, thought the outside world was fascist, loved their girlfriend too much to apply for a job.

And to this day there are people, companies and institutions willing to give a place to those highly educated, almost finished academics. How many ABDs do the grading, the driving, weeding, and generally helping around the place without which relationships, stores and universities could not function? How many of us have been grateful just to be accepted and to be left a little time to write? But in truth, that's not enough.

The augury of pop culture.

A basic premise of our society is that the young know a truth everyone else ignores at their own peril. The triumph of the sixties and rock music was so complete that even the hoariest conservative knows not to get caught out grumbling about “those kids and their music,” and succession of styles, punk, hip-hop, have been taken seriously by many who care not a wit about its content, simply because they do not want to miss out on the secrets they may reveal.

Even when youth culture is steered by studios, it presents its message always in the guise of subversion that might overthrow the uptight adults. This is not just cynical manipulation, it is also the real expectation that the tastes of the young do represent the future, that somewhere beyond the maneuverings of film-makers and recording executives there still remains a kernel of truth. If all the girls want to see Twilight just as they once all wanted to see Titanic, they are acting according to some principle that augurs the future.

The truth of teen tastes is easily equated with the invisible hand of the market. Even universities now run on this principle, what the young want represents truth and the future.

There are of course other modes of education: wherein the young receive knowledge garnered from the past or from those who have studied the world longer. The market approach to education means that universities teach what students want, as opposed to students learn what universities teach. The difference is crucial, for it shifts the presumption of knowledge onto the students.

Those who learn already know something the professors have forgotten. They know what courses matter, they already know how to organize an education.

According to this Liberal thinking, the function of the university is learn from its students, so that they can teach what the students already know they need to learn. This is the implicit rule behind so many university decisions.

If students don’t enroll in a class, then it must not be important. If a department does not have many majors, then it must not deserve to continue. Never mind that the subject may be difficult.

If they do not come, then we will dismantle the discipline.

Professorial Voice

Went to a lecture given by an old professor of mine, a famous fellow, who has written more books than years I will probably stay above ground. Eighty books to Sander Gilman’s name:

Sitting back to take in his talk, I was immediately struck with how unchanged he looked, and then most remarkably the sound of his voice. If you don’t see someone for a long time, the voice is the feature you most thoroughly forget.

The sound of a human speaking does not linger like an image or a piece of advice once given. If he is real person, we don’t hear the voice over and over again as if he were Robert Plant. Yet when the voice returns, once you hear your old teacher again, the satisfaction and pleasure of recognition is quite remarkable.

I had heard him speak many times, in class and down the hall, yet this intimate apprehension had been replaced after leaving graduate school by reading and professional commentary. “So what do you think of Sander’s latest book?”

But today what really mattered to me sipping coffee in the audience was the childish happiness of hearing an authority who had trained me speaking familiar truths again, and yet not without surprising turns of thought that reminded me of his continued mastery.