When I began homeschooling Kieran in January, one of the things he said to me was, "You should start your own school."
It had never seriously occurred to me. His point was that many of his friends were envious of his new venture, learning at home. They liked the idea of gathering around a table, talking, moving at their own pace and led by their own curiosity. Or maybe they just think I'm cool. Or lenient.
Then Kieran said, "Grandpa had his own school. You should do that. It's probably like, your thing."
My dad, on the left, with his brother, Johnny on CBS radio.
At its height in the 1960s, my dad's school -- The Joe Stanley Accordion Studio -- had more than 125 students. He made his whole living between that and performing. He had his own office downtown, saw students in music rooms there, and then eventually saw some students at home too. He was at heart, both an artist and a teacher. (For a poignant piece about what it was like to be my dad's student, check out Dennis Page's piece, The Accordion and a Boy.)
Armed with this in my blood, this week, I launched a new effort. We've been, as I told Liam yesterday -- hustling: hanging flyers, making contacts, handing out business cards, building a new blog.
You can find out more here about summer sessions, private tutorials and editing.
Recently, out of nowhere, Liam said to me, "When you lose someone, you become a different person." Probably, that's just the thing I needed to step out. I'm going to try this thing on my own. If I'm lucky, I'll live up to a small part of my dad's legacy.
It was my most common report card comment: a joy and pleasure to have in class. Second to this one were comments about being too social, and comments about not working up to potential. Last week, in the midst of trying to teach Kieran statistics, I admitted to him that I only made it through half of what was then Sequential 3 math, also known as trigonometry.
I dropped out after I got a 50 on the midterm. It was really abstract. More so than any math I'd had. And while I wasn't opposed to abstraction -- I probably preferred it -- I just couldn't make my head pay attention.
Also, I had a novel to write.
I spent the 40 minutes of trig every day writing. I was working on my first attempt at a novel, and some stories that were really exciting to me. That year -- 11th grade -- I was reading Lolita and The Great Gatsby. I was immersed in French language and culture and wanted only to take more art than my school could possibly offer, or than I would be allowed after I'd filled up on all my requirements.
I remember going up to the teacher on the day I dropped and he said, What have you been doing all this time?
I said, Writing.
Really, he said. He was smirky. Smarmy. He used to tell us if we wanted to sit there and be stupid we could go right ahead. I'd told him I was writing so that he would know I wasn't sitting there being stupid.
Good luck with that, he said.
What might have happened? If I'd been immersed in writing back then, instead of taking math, instead of finding something to fall back on, something to make money with: a job teaching, a job at the bank, as a nurse. How much time did I waste, trying to be something that would earn a paycheck instead of something I loved? I did it again and again: in high school, in college, in graduate school. Any step I could take to get away from writing I would.
It probably matters less why now than it does that I have recognized it and stopped it. I gained something in the stalling, mostly in the form of people, especially in the form of children.
But get this: I wasn't outwardly subversive. I was a pleasure. A joy to have in class. I had learned early on not to be a thorn in anyone's side so I kept my rebellion to myself.
For too long.
What's to do now but move forward? And make sure that my own kids don't repeat the same pattern and shelve what they love for what's practical, for what an administrator tells them they should do, because that's what everyone does, everyone who wants to be uniquely just like everyone else.
There is no report card comment that says: this kid is crazy driven to do something we're not doing here, so we're encouraging her to do so. There is compliance and non-compliance.
I'm not suggesting a free-for-all, do whatever you want curriculum. I'm a huge supporter of the liberal arts education, especially when it's integrated.
But I'm just also a fan of what Nietzsche called "a long obedience in the same direction," because "there results, and always has resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living."
And that has nothing to do with compliance. I want that on my report card.
I have work quitting or at least work flipping out fantasies. Among the best of these: Tom Cruise's flip out in Jerry Maguire . . .
and my favorite, Jim Carrey's back to you, fuckers, from Bruce Almighty . . .
Last week, I gave up $10,000. And while I didn't exactly flip out, or flip anyone off, I did sort of come to a screeching halt.
Last spring I was contacted to offer a couple of creative writing courses at Syracuse University: a lucky break for me. It was part-time work (aka adjuncting) but it paid well, and . . well, it was SU. While I may have misgivings on the prestige of the big school for a lot of things (especially having gone to Le Moyne) I was not about to argue with the reputation of the creative writing program. Also, I could be teaching the next Lou Reed.
It went well. By which I mean to say, I liked it, but what I liked most about it was teaching creatively. I was also teaching a writing intensive on the interpretation of fiction: which is just what you think it is: a lot of interpreting, snow = death, inscribing pens = penises kind of thing.
In the fall, two sections of gender and lit opened up for the spring. Another writing intensive with even more pens, but with the added inscripted body, queer theory, and performativity too.
It was a lot of work. And a good opportunity to show my mettle: gender / queer theory would have been one of my field exams, had I finished my Ph.D.
Ok: I have a problem with quitting.
I did this once before, my first time around in graduate school, in 1996. I had lost my funding. My first year, I was fully funded, working as an editorial assistant for Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies (MRTS). When it closed, and moved from Binghamton, I was shit outta luck. In fact, that might be the official language of the English department. I remember a shrug, and a I dunno coming from the chair when I went in to ask where else they could place me.
So my second year, I took a full time job as a proofreader / styles editor at Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing. When I thought I was going to get to read all of the Norton Anthologies (and get paid $7/ hour) I instead got to read an entire textbook on bovine venereal diseases. Seriously, inflamed cow vulva is nothing to laugh at.
I was studying full-time, working full-time and by October, I was pregnant. By December, I had to quit something, and the only thing I couldn't quit was being pregnant. (Yes, I know I could have. The baby was planned. I know. Who plans a baby in grad school? I do.)
So I left everything. School (leave of absence). Work. Binghamton. I found I could do one thing right then and that was have this baby.
Now, fifteen years later, I'm in the same boat. After struggling through the middle school years and watching my brilliant, (yes, I said brilliant) under-motivated son go from top of his class in Liverpool to bottom of his class in Clinton,* I decided something radical needed to be done. In the midst of a whole lot of bullshit sometimes you need to focus on one thing.
I pulled him out of school.
No one at the school district knows what to do with him. When I say this, I mean I haven't gotten any idea or solution from them that says "lets try this" that isn't just punishment. He doesn't need punishment. He needs inspiration.
We're in the midst of liberating here. We're homeschooling. And unschooling. And for the time being, following our curiosity towards doing whatever the fuck we want. To facilitate this, I quit my two writing intensives for spring. My move was deemed "unprecedented" by the department.
Unprecedented because I pulled out so close to the start of classes. Also, I expect, because in a highly competitive academic milieu, leaving for family issues just makes you a mom, when they thought you were a professional. Unprecedented because how could you give up $10,000 to stop everything and figure out how to teach your most important student? If I were a legit, full-time employee I might have been able to finagle a leave of absence, but when you operate as a satellite, they just kind of cut you loose.**
As always, I second-guess myself. I asked for a lot of advice. I got a lot of advice. A lot of it was super helpful. And I'm still getting lots of advice. I expect it will continue. Everyone (but the school, apparently) has ideas about how to raise and teach a child.
We had a meeting with the principal and the guidance counselor last week. A meeting where I expected to be offered some insight, some proposal, but what I got instead was a version of them telling on him, and what the told me was what I already knew. What I was prepared to say, instead, and what we did say, in a longer, more formal way was I got this.
You know what, I got this. Thanks anyway. And for the time being, I have to let go and not feel bad about my unprecedented decision to stop teaching 60 students in favor of teaching one.
*I'm not pitching some east cost / west coast Liverpool / Clinton thing here. Chances are, he would have done the same thing in Liverpool. But the reality is that he never got the chance to shine at Clinton. He was tracked into mediocrity and stayed there, and partially, my gut tells me that's because no one tried very hard to get to know him or notice his particular understated sparkle. That's right. I said sparkle.
** Also, yes, I know I am privileged to be able to make this decision at all. In another household, mommy would just keep working, and junior would just keep failing. Losing 10k is hard for us, but it's not the end. I'm not the sole or even the main breadwinner. And I'm still teaching one class: the fiction workshop.
I'm a child of the 80s. All my first attempts at anything -- fashion, love, music, writing -- came out of that time period. Excess. Eyeliner. Fedoras.
This weekend we celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary (late) by driving down to Atlantic City to spend a couple of nights away by ourselves and to see Duran Duran in concert at the Borgata Casino. It was a great show. Exactly what it should be: dancy, high energy, sexy, with artsy graphics and a sea of women. All those women were fortyish, but still. Mark Ronson, decked in leopard Givenchy, made a guest appearance to play guitar on Girl Panic and Ana Matronic of Scissor Sisters came out to sing Safe with Simon Le Bon.
I have a long history with Duran Duran. I've harbored a celebrity crush on John Taylor since I was about ten. He's still hard to take your eyes off of. But then I also started thinking about what this actually meant to me, as I am now. When I discovered Duran Duran, almost thirty years ago, I was impressionable, and what they were impressing worked on me: I got different clothes. I bought a pair of white lace up oxford shoes and blazers. I bleached my bangs blonde. I taught myself how to play bass guitar (no joke: the first song I learned was Save a Prayer. Later, I learned a.) some songs are easier and b.) he is a really hard bass player to emulate.) And Simon Le Bon's lyrics were the first that made me want to write my own.
Go ahead, take aim. I was also familiar with Sting and The Police, thanks to having an older brother. And while Sting taught me big words (seriously, spiritus mundi?) -- what Simon Le Bon taught me was sex and longing, desire and loneliness. One night stands? check. All night parties? check. Sex with women who are being compared to wild animals? check. Desolation and disconnect? check.
It's what Robert Olen Butler refers to as the want. It's what drives every good piece of writing. And somehow I understood this, even then. Saturday night, in the midst of images flashed on the screen behind the band, one slide that says THE LITTLE GIRLS UNDERSTAND.
It's a line from Willie Dixon's "Back Door Man," which I know as a Doors song:
The men don't know, but the little girls understand.
This week, I start teaching Lolita. I almost always answer Lolita when someone asks me for my favorite book. I've never taught it though, and I'm a little afraid I'll get stuck on what A. S. Byatt refers to as not being able to get from "I love this," to "Here it is."
I'm going to do my best to get past the initial eww of Humbert desiring twelve-year-old Lo. And while the little girls need protecting, partially what we have protected them from all this time is what they understand. We're afraid of what they understand and so we take it away from them, or we turn it into something else.
I love this. Just like I loved those sexy lyrics, the driving bass, the bedroom eyes (and lips).
I've been thinking about the model of the workshop, how to make it better, what makes it work for the students, what makes it exciting. A lot of it is about trust, and even more of it is about doing the work. A careful and thoughtful reading goes a long way.
You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do—and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time. A lot of the people whose work they’ve taught in the schools for the last thirty years, I can’t understand why people read them and why they are taught.
Of course, he's right. Teachers do have prejudices. If you take enough workshops by different instructors someone contradicts someone else. We all mean to do the most good. What's a writer to do?
More than anything, I think, writers need to live, and they need to trust their guts. Live for real. Be risky. Get your heart broken, get in a fight. Have a baby. Go broke. Bleed a little, or a lot. Nothing's more boring than a story by a student who hasn't done anything. And then trust it. Trust yourself to know when you've tapped into that bloody pulp where the best stuff comes from.
Recently, I found a graffiti workshop offered at a local arts center, and I asked my teenage son -- who is fascinated by the artform and would like (with my blessing) to graffiti one wall of his bedroom -- if he wanted to take the class over the summer.
No way, he said. He looked at the brochure; read the description; weighed the possibility.
Why not?
Because, he said. I want to do graffiti. I don't want anyone to think that I learned it in a workshop.
I ran into a former student recently and we ended up talking briefly about a friend's novel-in-progress. I said it was great. I've read a lot of it, and I believe in it.
Well, the former student said, a lot of it still reads like a first draft.
I said something mundane, like Sure.
But what I was thinking, and what I'm still thinking is that of course it does. Of course it does, and that doesn't make it weaker, or less than what it will eventually be. It makes it a draft. A novel-in-progress.
I've been teaching creative writing for nine years. If I had been bothered by things sounding like first drafts I would have quit -- roughly nine years ago. Very, very rarely have I encountered students who probably shouldn't be writing at all. Very, very often I have students who are writing what will eventually become great, but that need encouragement. Along with the praise, they need to see the weak spots, the spots where they rested, where they didn't push hard enough, or trust enough, or bleed enough. Sometimes, these pieces could be way, way better. And when I tell you that, it's because I believe it can be. And even when these pieces are rough, it's important to look past them, at what they can be.
Annie Dillard says, "there's another way of saying this. Aim for the chopping block. If you aim for the wood, you will have nothing. Aim past the wood, aim through the wood; aim for the chopping block."
Not just with the writing, but with the critique too.
I try hard not to pretend I know more than my students do. I try hard to be entrenched. To be, like a war journalist, embedded with the troops. We're all doing the same thing, at different speeds, at different times, while juggling a lot of other stuff. I am my own first draft. You can stop there, or you can look past it, to what else I might be.
