A month ago today, while in New York, I visited the much-
ballyhooed Magritte exhibition this fall at the Museum of Modern Art. Magritte
is a witty artist, sometimes seen as a “lightweight” in the art world, but like
most of his fans, I enjoy his assault on the complacencies of common sense. As
I read the entrance text to the exhibit, I hastily wrote down on my MoMA map
some of the commentary written about Magritte: “He sought to de-familiarize the familiar and make everyday objects
shriek aloud.” (Question to self: Now is it okay to throw away the familiar
map since I finally wrote down the words???)
As I walked through the exhibit, seeing many of his iconic images,
discovering some new (to me) works, I was struck by how Magritte spent so much
of his artistic time warning us against trusting the images and words we think
we see and know. Hmmm…is Magritte offering us a cautionary note for the
Internet age? Anyway, I came upon his 1928 painting, The Titanic Days (seen above, right there!) and of course I loved
the cryptic title, and I thought this is more than just a clever painting about
what’s real and what’s not real. The painting is a depiction of a nude woman
being groped by manly arms in suit sleeves, yet the man isn’t a separate
figure: he appears almost to be clothing that the woman is taking off or
putting on. This isn’t a joke-y painting like his Ceci n’est pas une pipe painting—there is some anguish in her face.
The painting, and whatever is happening, has consequences.
In many ways, this past week felt like I was caught
in a Magritte painting! There is the one where a steam locomotive is blithely
coming out of a nice ordinary fireplace. No, that’s not it. But I felt sort of
chasing things, chasing the week actually. Advisor reports were due at the
beginning of the week (the third of the big writing assignments of the last six
weeks, the first being the comments for every student, then the annual parade
of college recommendations that must be submitted) and I had been asked to
teach class for the headmaster (he thought it would be nice if I did an
overview of 5,000 years of propaganda; that is a nice idea, it just takes a
little time…) and then there are classes to teach and the professional
development seminars to run…it just felt a little more chase-y than usual. Then
the try-outs for the Harvard Model Congress came up, and I needed to judge the
candidates. Then I needed to write my final exam. Then the first glances at the piles of
resumes for next year’s teachers. Not too much, just a chase-y, chase-y,
week—and everything has consequences!
So on Thursday, just before I was going to sit and wait for
some students to take some practice essays,
I pilfered from our library a copy of my favorite magazine, The Week (don’t worry, I returned the
magazine after the little invigilating session!). I love The Week; however, it never arrives in Jordan anywhere near the
week it chronicled. The sub-heading of this weekly magazine, kind of an
intelligent Reader’s Digest, reads:
“the best of the U.S. and international media.” The best part of the magazine
is when it takes a subject and provides 6-10 perspectives on the same topic. If
it covers the default crisis, let’s say, it provides perhaps a dozen
perspectives on it. [As a tangent, I learned that Justice Antonin Scalia
doesn’t like to get ‘get upset’ in the morning, so he only reads news from
sources with which he agrees…what I love about The Week is that it offers exposure to a wide variety of views.]
Anyway, it is Thursday afternoon (our ‘Friday afternoon’
for the Sun-Th work week world), and I want to relax, watch a few students
write an essay, and then relax after chasing my week. So I page through the
‘U.S. at a glance…’ section of The Week
and am struck at the ridiculous stories going on (remember, this is a month-old
issue in the U.S. but hot off the slow-boat-to-China-presses here).
First of all there was the gun massacre at a Navy
facility in Washington—what a strange Magritte-like moment. But far weirder was
the cannibal plot in Worcester, MA of a man who was sentenced to jail for
plotting to kidnap, kill and eat a child. His basement was outfitted with all
such equipment, but his lawyer argued that his basement was merely a “theater
for fantasies.” Next I read about the boardwalk fire in New Jersey wiping out
all or parts of 68 businesses, starting in a store that sells candles. Then I
read about the Miss America pageant and the racist insults hurled on Twitter
about the new Miss America. She is Indian-American and many on-line called her
“Miss 9/11” and “Miss Terrorist.” Historic floods battered Colorado. In Florida
a robber stole a cash drawer from a church gift shop, but was caught when his
baggy pants slipped down around his ankles.
Then there is a shooting tragedy in Charlotte, shooting an unarmed car
accident victim…I paged over to the section on the “Best Columns: U.S.” and
read about various rural counties in Maryland, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, and
Michigan that want to secede from the United States. This was the U.S. at a
glance, but whoa, when people are worried about ME in the Middle East, I
suggest they just take a look at the U.S. at a glance.
By Thursday, either the week had caught me or I had
caught the week: I had finished every assignment on time, and enjoyed that
satisfying glow of a week of items crossed off the all-mighty, guilt-producing
To Do List. We had a speaker on Thursday, Mitch Kapor, an entrepreneur whose
name I did not know previously. Julianne interviewed Mr. Kapor on our stage, and
Julianne could now join the ranks of Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters as a
crack interviewer.
Kapor rose through the ranks of Silicon Valley, but
what resonated the most with me was his explanations of why you don’t give up, and
how you try and think of “the next big thing.” (Kapor invented Lotus 1-2-3, and
when he was bought out, he had invented the Excel spread sheet.) He spoke about
the genius of Facebook, but when a student lamented that he wished he (the boy) could have invented it
(because of the money) Kapor suggested that he look for a problem that hasn’t been solved instead. “The way to strike it rich is not
to think about the money, but scratch an itch that you have, a problem that you
have that hasn’t been solved.” What a concise and great formula, almost
Magritte-style in its simplicity and elegance. And it can have consequences.
He answered questions for nearly an hour, this man
worth almost a billion dollars, who has failed in life, dusted himself off, risen
again, risked, and then as he said, “I used my son’s time in high school to
vicariously do it all over better this time.” Kapor had wonderful words about
his high school math teacher. He said he (Mitch) was as socially inept as
someone might be, but the most important thing that teacher did was “pay some
attention to me. I knew I mattered to him.
Nothing else was as important or profound as that.”
The familiar—what we know—shrieking aloud with
simple truths. While the week was chasing me, or, did you see this pun
coming??? The Week was chasing me, it
ended with the utterly simple and profound reminder to make sure we let people
know they matter. As the down-to-earth, totally un-smug Kapor reminded us,
nothing else is as important…
And it has consequences…
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