In Which Esteemed Professors Visit Campus
And our student body sits up straight // In my headphones: Lou Reed and John Cale—Nobody but You (1990)
At a very, very distinguished college in the snowy woods of New England, two visitors were happy to be there. At least, that’s what they said. One, the most famous public intellectual nationally and internationally (in the words of the other). The other, (in his own words) honored to speak with the first. They’d been traveling together for years-the rather healthy circus pony sprained its ankle only for the first time when the former left to seek tenure at an even more distinguished institution.
Their routine was well-practiced. Each was impeccably groomed. They were in sync like the knights of a chess board, one reaching in to grasp the audience’s throats while the other stepped back to give his partner’s gestures room for motion. It was a coordinated effort. One spoke and the other learned how to speak. One opened his body to the audience while the other learned to pose. One spoke in waves, turning frothy at the ends of his sentences; the other tuned his voice to a harmonica. They argued well. The famous one danced to his words like Martha Graham. Hey, let’s be for real.
They started off decrying identity politics in This Godforsaken World. Then one declared himself a Christian. The other claimed kin to the miners in the mountains. Markets affect real people. They have real effects on real people. That’s sound morality. There is no opposed to, that’s sound morality. The children are listening, lined up ducks in a row, upon row, upon row. That’s amore!
And it’s easy to eat the rich. You’ve just got to catch them first. Everyone in the room was Honored to be Poor. The tolerance in the room could bring a man to his knees, the humility would make anyone tremble. And the security guard locked each door, the camera man hid around every pole, the videographer stood back center. But it wasn’t anybody’s particular fault. Anything else just would have been voyeuristic. As when trapeze artists perform a flying catch and the crowd stares wide-eyed, we did not dare look away.
~
📍A small town in northern New England
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Yes yes yes
Great observation !