Mr. Williams,
trustees, guests, colleagues, and you, class of 2016, thank you for asking me
to speak to you today. It is, as someone just wrote me in an email, a truly
inconvenient honor.
When I was growing
up in New York City, I went to an all boy’s Catholic school on the upper east
side – admittedly -- in a slender red-brick building with a chapel tucked inside
and a church across the street. It wasn’t a big school. Twenty students per
class, all in ties and blazers. Except on Wednesdays, there’d always be one or
two kids who would show up in their Knickerbocker Greys.
Specifically,
this referred to a pair of grey flannel pants -- peg legged, with a silk stripe
down the side seam -- and a matching long-sleeve button-down, with cuffs and
collar and chevrons and stars and what have you. Tucked tie. Shiny black shoes.
Polished belt buckle. Sometimes a garrison cap.
Pretty spiffy
look for an eight-year-old, but I wouldn’t say the rest of us were particularly
envious. I think the general consensus was that it was a little weird, coming
to school like this, mostly because we didn’t really know what the Knickerbocker
Greys were for. Training these kids to be young officers presumably. Something
between that and a citified version of the Boy Scouts, which meant what? Merit
badges for flagging a cab? Or dealing with the caterer?
So the other
thing you need to know about me is that I wasn’t a very social kid. All my
report cards had some line in there about how “Brooks should be encouraged to play
more with the other children.” It’s not like I had no friends. I just didn’t do
the play-date thing. I liked to keep it between the lines, if you know what I
mean. Go to school, have my fun. Come home. Do my homework. Bite to eat, then settle
down in front of Rangers game, maybe with a little piece chocolate, an orange,
drawing pad. Who has a problem with
this?
But my parents
read the report cards and so every so often I’d get pressured into going over
to someone’s house. It was like my version of paying taxes.
So this kid
named Brooke Mitchell invites me over this one time, and I liked Brooke. Nice
smile. Straight part. He looked like a little Ken Berry, for those who might remember.
So we set it up for a Saturday afternoon. My mother dropped me off around
lunchtime. And Brooke’s mother is there. Very gracious, lovely woman. Nice little
beehive. We sit right down for lunch, and Brooke comes out, and he’s wearing
his Knickerbocker Greys. Which I think is a little weird, but okay. I figure he
must have gone this morning, and he just got back. Fine. He’ll change after
lunch, we’ll get out the Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots, and I can be outta here by
three.
But so we’re
eating, and they’re being very kind. You know: “We’re so glad you could come.
Brooke was so excited could make it.” And I’ve got my little tuna sandwich,
sliced apple. Everything’s fine. But then Mrs. Mitchell says, “So we forgot
when we asked you, but Brooke has the Knickerbocker Grays this afternoon. We
were thinking maybe you could just go along with him.”
And my first
thought is, you know, ‘No...And that this exactly why I don’t do this sort of
thing, this bait-and-switch baloney
you people pull.’ But what am I going to do? They’re being very nice. I’m
eating their food, so I say, “Okay, sure.”
And I don’t
remember how we got there -- cab, bus – but right after lunch we head down to 66th
and Madison, the Armory, which is this giant fortress-like building that takes
up half a block, no windows. And you know how when you’ve kind of been picturing
something in your head that you know nothing about, and then you finally get to
see it, and you think, “Wow, this is completely not what I thought it was going
to be”… Well, this was pretty much exactly
like what I thought it was going to be.
We go in, and it’s
this enormous, open space like a track gym, except I think there might have
been some kind of artificial hill in the middle, made out of Styrofoam or
asbestos or something. (It was the ‘70s.) But everywhere else there are these
regiments of little boys, marching around in formation, divided up by age, or excuse
me, “rank” – little troop of five-years-old-here, nine-year-olds over there,
all the way up to fourteen or so, and they’re the cool ones, because they’ve got
the visored hats and actual swords with sheaths, which are pretty cool, I gotta
admit.
But again, I am not
feeling one angstrom of envy or authentic interest. This is all, as far as I’m
concerned, an absolute freak show, and I’m just working on the speech I’m going
to give my mother when I get home, about the fact that this is buying three
months at least of leave-me-the-hell-alone;
like, I should be good through the end of playoffs.
But then it gets
worse. Mrs. Mitchell leaves us there; she’ll come pick us up when it’s over. So
it’s just me and Brooke, but now Brooke turns to me like (shrug) “So…I think I
gotta go now. I’ve got to go march with my troop. See ya.”
So he goes off, in his twerpy little uniform, and
I’m left there with all the newbies, and the reason you know we’re newbies is
because we’re standing there in our alligator shirts and blue jeans, or the
khaki shorts with the metal hooks on them.
So we all get
led over into this alcove, and they stand us in formation, and then this man marches
up in front of us, and he’s in the adult version of a Knickerbocker Grey. He’s the
‘Colonel’ or something, and for all intents and purposes, he is George C Scott. He’s got the buzz
cut and the attitude, the riding crop, and he goes into this spiel: “Gentlemen,
I’d like to welcome you to our august
institution, dating back 150 years, yadayadayada – “ I’m not really listening.
I’m beside myself. “And I want to thank you for the interest you’ve expressed in
coming out here today.”
(And I’m
thinking, waitTime-out signal: “I had absolutely no interest…”)
And he says, “But
let me not assume. If you are here because you’d like to join the Knickerbocker
Greys, please step forward.”
And so every
other kid around me takes a step forward. “Yes, sir!”
And the colonel
says, “Good. So everyone.”
At this point, I
think I just went blank. Or I actually think my life may have flashed before my
eyes, only not my life leading up to that moment; my life afterwards. Like I
think I saw myself on Porkchop Hill, taking twelve slugs in the chest in slo-mo,
all because of this freakin’ play-date my teachers for some reason wanted me to
go on.
So I don’t
really know what happened after that. This is where my memory fails me, but my
educated guess would be that about three seconds after the Colonel was done talking,
I raised my hand to ask where the bathroom was. Then I went and spent the next
hour-and-a-half hiding out in a toilet stall. That seems like the soundest
approach under the circumstances.
But I also have to
confess that, in addition to not know what actually happened next, I also don’t
really know why I wanted to tell you this story this morning -- or this semi
story. And I still don’t. But I guess one of the things that strikes me about
it -- I think the reason I find it kind of entertaining, but also so deeply distressing
-- is just how firm my sense was back then of what I was willing to do, and
what I was not willing to do. Right there at the age of eight or nine, I seemed
to have had a pretty clear picture of who I was.
So maybe that’s what
I want to talk to you about…
…Because right
now, you’re a pretty primed group, and you’re about to take a giant step out into
a world charged with purpose – you are, and the world is, spurred by some very
real problems that need addressing, but also by an extraordinary amount of
progress that’s been made in relatively short space of time, I’m not sure
you’re aware how quickly, on certain significant social issues.
And there can be
no question that a lot of that progress has derived its energy from -- but also
focused a lot of energy on -- this idea of identity.
In fact, it almost begins to feel like maybe that should be our collective purpose
now, to encourage and to celebrate the ultimate realization of ourselves as
individuals. Maybe that’s how we advance not just as a society, but as a
species. This is actually not such a new idea, but we seem more determined now
than at any time I can recall to establish the specific terms according to
which we recognize and affirm our own particular identities. I’m talking about race, of course, and gender, and gender
identity, and sexual orientation, and political orientation, and
nationality, and class, and religion,
and culture, and cultural legacy, language, food preference, medical
conditions…The list goes on, and doesn’t even include those secondary indicators
such as: What do we ‘like’? What do we share? What do we purchase? What do we click?
Because that’s the other thing to keep in mind: the fact that these choices
we’re making, or the identities we’re confirming, are (a lot of them) being
etched into a tablet that cannot be erased. For the first time ever, there
shall be no forgetting our answers – only, god-willing in certain cases, ignoring
them.
The point is, as
active and engaged members of the 21st century, we are helpless not
to see ourselves reflected in these terms, and therefore helpless – or almost
helpless -- not to conclude that this is who we are.
And I’m certainly
not here to try to blow up the project on that account, or tell you not to
participate. On the contrary, I see the good and the sense of empowerment that
comes from being able to name and to claim the various aspects of your
identity. I see the value of recognizing how others perceive you, and I believe
that as an engine of social change, your voices must be heard on these subjects, as a way to influence attitudes, and
to influence policy as well -- public policy, private policy, education
policies, the law and social justice. For all of these causes, it is vital that
you stand, that you identify, clarify, and testify.
So what is my
concern? Because I definitely seem to have one…
I guess it’s
this: that by the same token as the world
needs you to do these thing in order to keep changing in all the positive ways
it has begun to, I just want to make
sure you give yourself that same
opportunity.
The concern, you
see -- and I don’t address this exclusively just to you. I address it to you (the
audience) and to myself , the boy we all left in the bathroom at the
Knickerbocker Greys -- the concern is that in the process of identifying ourselves
according to this increasingly particular, insistent, and politically charged set
of markers and indicators, we risk doing to ourselves precisely what it is that
we want to stop others from doing to us:
that is, limiting us. We risk treating ourselves, and those around us, as maybe
only being capable of seeing the
world in this way. Or that way. From that angle. Through that lens. Because of who they are. Or who we are.
The concern is
that these newly burnished and robust senses of identity become almost like
suits of armor: they help protect us, sure, and they empower us, and they embolden
us in a lot of important ways. But if we’re not careful, they might trap us,
too.
Why is this my
concern? Because no matter how articulate, how forceful, or how magnificent the
identity you claim for yourself may be, I say it still underestimates you. Vastly.
So let me give you
a couple reasons why I believe this and then I’ll leave.
Reason #1: I write. Fiction. And anyone who writes
fiction is -- whether they admit it or not -- constitutionally opposed to the
idea there are places they can’t go, feelings they can’t imagine, scenes they can’t
enter, or perspectives they can’t occupy. We don’t buy that. Quite the
contrary, the fiction writer of a certain stripe – or any artist of that same
stripe -- operates on an alternate premise: that the whole universe and all
history, and everything that’s ever happened, and every feeling anyone has ever
had, is available to you – of course it is -- and the only thing standing between you and that exhaustive record
of human, animal, and even botanical experience is…yourself. If you can somehow
manage to get that grandstanding piece of crud out of the way, tell it to be
quiet and go sit in the corner – or better, just get out of the office
completely, go – well, then, all the world and everything in it is only too
happy to come in and fill the vacuum.
Do I really believe
this? 100%. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Take it from John Keats,
take it Virginia Woolf. Take it from William Shakespeare, or Miles Davis, or Jacqueline
Du Pres. Take it from Stef Curry. What do all of their favorite and most
brilliant moments on earth have in common?
They weren’t
there.
Reason #2: I teach. You. Like all these
people sitting here to my right.
You ever ask
yourself what they’re doing here? Is it because
they love their various fields of study? To an extent, but if that’s what they
were most interested in -- the
scholarship -- then presumably they’d be teaching it at the university level, right?
They got the PhD’s, a lot of them.
So why are they
here?…other than the salad bar.
I’d suggest they’re
here because what really excites them -- even more than history or biology, Japanese,
statistics, or poetry -- is change. That’s what gets them up in the morning, is
the opportunity to participate in human transformation. And they’ve figured out
that there’s no better fix for that particular addiction than being around you
all at this stage of your life. That’s why
they’re here, and to your credit, you justify that choice – not every day,
let’s not get crazy – but season-in, season-out, you do; and you know that’s
true, because you know who you were when you got here, and you know who you are
now.
But so it would
be really weird to think that -- after all the effort that we’ve put in here together,
to turn you from that person into
this person -- that our hope looking forward would be for you to go finish the
job. Right? Go lock it down. Figure out
exactly who you really are once and
for all --
No. Again, you might
as well be trapped inside toilet stall waiting for the play-date to end (and I promise
that’s the last time I’ll go there).
I submit to you that
the hope looking forward is the same as it’s been since you got here. We want
you to go out and keep changing, keep adjusting, and revising; only you have to
do it on your own initiative now, and under your own guidance with the tools we
hope we’ve given you. But please keep surprising yourself, keep challenging
yourself, let yourself fail, let yourself miss, let yourself be dumb, and wrong.
That’s how you grow.
In fact, I would
submit to you that that is our even higher hope: that you treat this process
– of ongoing transformation -- as one of constant expansion and inclusion.
And what the
heck, might as well say it while we’re on the subject . No one’s going to hold
you to it, seeing as only a handful of humans have ever pulled this one off, but
it’s still worth stating for the record that the very highest hope that we or anyone
could have for you (this being the utmost aspiration of the human spirit) would
be that you transcend that barrier entirely – and I’m still talking about your ‘identity’
here. Move beyond the mindset that can only view the world in terms of category,
differentiation, subdivision and opposition. Look at the word “universe.” Consider
the possibility that maybe that’s right -- maybe everything really is, at essence, just one thing…
…And identify
with that.
You have your
assignment, class of 2016. Go in peace. Clearly, and happily, you will be in
our thoughts, and in each other’s thoughts, for a long time to come.
