It was a normal Thursday. I went to work, as one normally does. We stopped by a grocery store for fruit and water. I’d also carried a large bin of cut cantaloupe for the ride over.
Campus is just 15 miles, 25 or so minutes, away. We weren’t stocking up for a journey. So the fruit I cut last night was our in-car breakfast. The fruit tray and water was for our beginning-of-the-year department meeting. It was scheduled to run for five hours, including lunch. The meeting ran five hours, and then just a few extra minutes for the traditional grousing and venting that can occur in any meeting, anywhere in America. It was well plotted and well conducted, then.
The meeting began with a few ice breaker. We were asked to list our favorite movie from when we were younger — which was left deliberately vague in an ad hoc way — and how that impacted us. There were 15 people in the room, but it went pretty smoothly. Here are people who have given this thought, live the sort of examined lives that included this precise question or are pretty good at the ol’ razzle dazzle. Since they stand in front of college students and talk for a living, any of these things, all of these things, are possible.
I said The Princess Bride and Spaceballs, which have each, I suppose, informed an irreverent sense of humor. But, I said, lately I’ve been working on another project, which is to each day incorporate a line from Road House into conversation in a contextually appropriate way. The guy sitting nearest to me, an earnest, high energy, fast talking fellow who gives you the impression that he’s seen it all and came back again, said, “Be nice.”
Later I asked him about the message of his t-shirt. It was a direct reference to a British comedy and, he explained, a direct commentary on …
I’d only just met him, but told him we were going to get along just fine.
Much talking was done. Some writing was done. Advice was shared. People had questions. Sometimes there were answers. Other times, the answers would be forthcoming from other series of meetings. Academia in a nutshell.
And while this was happening all afternoon I received an email from the technology people that my new computer setup was in. I’d previously been told it would take a few weeks to arrive. Now, I’m under a barrage of emails, but it hasn’t been a couple of weeks. So a pleasant surprise. I made an appointment to stop by after the faculty meeting to get the new hardware.
There’s a place setup on campus designed to be evocative of Apple’s Genius Bar and that’s where the hardware distribution is taking place. The people there were perfectly lovely, pre-fall-term enthusiasm is a great vibe. I had a nice conversation with a young man where he came to realize that he could talk to me almost like a person who actually knew what was going on. I am not that person, but I know those people, and I have learned, over the years, the deft art of faking it. I walked out a short time later with two armfuls of things.
I did not sign the first document. I assume that they assume I am me because I knew my password.
And tomorrow I’ll start setting up some of that equipment. It was then, a productive day.
Just one song today, so I can cover the whole week. This is the first track from their 13th studio album which is turning 13 this fall. I mishear the chorus. It might be a deliberate choice because, sometimes I’ve finally learned, those are just better versions for you.
(Remember, I was shooting that from a ZIP code away, but the audio is pretty good.)
I take it as share the mood, rather than the moon. You can see why the latter works, but the thing that binds us to other people is the shared moment, of course, and that could be something with or without a celestial satellite. We just need a personal satellite, or to be the one orbiting others, maybe. Probably I’m overthinking this. Probably it’s just always been clunky hearing.
I mean it’s right there in the title of the song. I have the album, of course. I’ve seen Amy and Emily play this song live at least three or four times. Doesn’t matter. What is important is the mixture of what it all brings forward. There’s a certain tiredness, a resignation, in the lyrics, but in that third verse, above, there’s something more fundamentally aspirational at play. And it’s all underpinned by the E, by the mandolin and wrapped up in Lyris Hung’s beautiful violin. Who has not been on that road, going somewhere? Hoping to head to someone?
See? It’s a mood.
But I overthink, which is the prelude to overwriting.
And sometimes the prelude to underwriting, too, if you think about it.
So just a normal Thursday, then.
