A wonderful piece by Christopher D. Schmidt about my work and life had me protesting in my mind at first (“I am a lay cantor at most, and lately only on occasion,” etc.), but then I understood his larger points. I am honored by his appreciation and attention: not only to my work, but to its underlying spirit. (Follow the link to see the piece.)

Coming later today: the Traveler’s Guide to Hisztéria üzenőfüzete.

The week has been tremendous: on Tuesday I saw what seemed to me the most beautiful Majd ha fagy! – neoreneszánsz rally that I had seen so far. Maybe it was intrinsically their most beautiful performance yet. Maybe the present one is always the most beautiful, because it is happening right there. Maybe the time spent with the play made it especially beautiful for me; maybe it becomes more and more beautiful over time. In any case, “beautiful” is just an approximation; it was also rough, funny, mischievous, astonishing (even the sixth time seeing it), bare, and capacious, and still these adjectives just graze by the brightness that has stayed with me from the evening.

I also had rich class discussions at school: yesterday, in one of my classes, we compared Rilke’s “Archaic Torso of Apollo” and Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish” (these two have been compared many times before; this wasn’t my idea). The students had so many interesting things to say that I hardly needed to add anything. They pointed out that both poems start with one part of the “object” (which later stops being an object) and move along to every other part, until they arrive at the whole; that both “objects” are damaged, and through this damage tell a story, which the viewer receives; that in both poems the ordinary becomes beautiful; that the parts invisible to the eye are imagined, the layer between the visible and invisible being transparent, and more. We also talked about how letting the fish go (and “You must change your life”) can be understood not as a moral decision, or even a decision at all, but as some kind of departure from the comfortable and familiar, an encounter.

All of that came close to what Majd ha fagy! was like.

So here it is, the final stretch, the last three days. But the truth is, everyone but the very rich, the very sick, or the retired has to go back to work at some point, because that’s where the money comes from. Teaching is both more than a job and just a job. I have to look at it both ways. It’s more than a job because the best parts of it are the things beyond the official job description; it’s just a job because we often need to let go of the ethereal aspects and focus on getting the work done. Schools are filled with actual people (younger and older), and actual people have imperfections and don’t always appreciate each other. Moreover, the profession is disrespected on the whole; even in a great school you can feel this in hundreds of little ways. On the other hand, teaching contains everything, in endless combinations: subject matter, particular works, connections between subjects, ideas, creations, discussions, humor, discovery, patience, discipline, character, and all those things happening around the edges. If you are interested in many things, and if you like to initiate and carry out projects, high school teaching can approach paradise at times. And yet for teachers and students alike it’s a job; students don’t get paid, but the whole endeavor is for their sake, and they get grades and diplomas. Like teachers, they have to fulfill certain duties whether they like them or not. Like teachers, they don’t always feel respected or appreciated. In other ways teachers’ and students’ roles differ markedly: students are there to learn and grow, to associate with each other, to prepare for their futures, whereas teachers are there to make this possible. Students form close friendships with each other; teachers on the whole keep their relationshsips collegial, with few exceptions (it’s a workplace, after all).

This, I think, is why students and teachers alike look forward to the breaks so much: while exciting, meaningful, and packed with responsibilities, school cannot encompass or recognize us entirely. This has been true for me all my life. I grew up in the world of school: on the border of college campuses where my parents taught, surrounded by faculty. Some of this was wondrous: visiting the science centers, going to play rehearsals, or taking part in festivals. But it was an enclosed world. Just about everyone in our midst was a student, teacher, or professor. It was for this reason that I didn’t want to go into academia (that is, become a professor); it was too familiar and predictable, too safe, too consuming. With high school teaching, at least you can combine interests; you don’t have to do the professional dance of going to conferences, writing scholarly articles, etc. (I do some of those things because I want to, but not for the sake of career—and my writing isn’t scholarly or academic on the whole.)

I have brought a lot into teaching and out of it: directing plays from my first year of teaching onward (except while at Columbia Secondary School, where I led the philosophy program), bringing literature into my classes, creating literary journals for my students’ writing, holding philosophy roundtables, co-founding the Shakespeare Festival, and more. But this is perceived as something extra, not as the heart of the job. School has room for all of these things, but they happen on the periphery.

Many times in my life, as a student, I wanted to be done with school (though I loved the subjects themselves). I wanted room to live out combinations that school did not make room for. In high school I wanted badly to be in the fall play or spring musical; this never happened after eighth grade and was not allowed for me (because I was attending a very special school, at great sacrifice by my parents and others, and living away from home—and if I were in a play, I would have to depend on others for rides afterwards and would have less time for my studies and the cello. People perceived me strictly as an intellectual (with musical ability), not as someone with a physical, emotional, artistic life. I wanted to shake that perception, but within school I found this difficult. I rebelled ferociously against these perceptions in college and graduate school. But I have learned over time that some people (and society as a whole) will typecast you no matter what you do, whether because of your looks, your age, your interests, your manner, your background, or whatever else. Few people consider how many elements make up a single person: how many contradictions we have, how much we change, how much we go through even within a single hour. (Read Mrs. Dalloway! It’s all there.)

Theater takes interest in who people actually are, within the art form of the play. It has an openness and fearlessness. Music does too, in its own language. In these two and in literature, the world reveals itself through cadences and gestures that we can listen to or watch again and again.

But theater, music, literature also get to test things out, to risk failure, to risk being less than transcendent. This too is essential: to go beyond the known and safe, to see what’s there, what happens. This goes beyond curiosity: it acknowledges that life itself is risk, and that to do anything, you have to leave the expected results behind.

That doesn’t mean that the arts leave everything up for grabs. Not in the least: performers have to be consistent and precise while also responding to the moment. They have to practice and rehearse continually. They have to be good at what they do. The demands of these professions are intense. Literature has to reach readers; it too takes continual practice, precision, and discipline. But without openness and risk, the arts would not exist. (This includes the visual arts as well.)

At its best, school holds these principles too; it does for me at Varga, a school I have loved throughout my eight years of teaching there. But school often emphasizes the predictable routes to success: learning the material as it is presented, getting good grades, doing well on the tests, getting in to university, getting a job. All of this is essential and can open up into something richer. But in different ways we all know or sense that life holds something else.