What the hell does work mean in this wretched day and age? You write , drink, teach, make art, eat and try to bring your kids up right, that is what it means to me , I guess. The other day a student , on his final day, was kind enough to say I was the best teacher he had ever had.
This worried me for a while. In fact it worried me a lot. And it continues to nag at me now. I know what it feels like to say something reasonably sincere in a second or third language.
Some years ago I had decided that I actually hated teaching. I still do. But then I remembered good old Joseph B, the guy who crawled from the wreckage of a mythical German aircraft on the Russian Front.
The man who changed art and politics in Germany. The man who changed the way I thought about the visual and the political. The man who many people thought was a nutcase and a threat. Well, he was a pro.
He said some thing about society being a sculpture. I took that to mean that language and people could be a material, some thing to play with and change.
I am not sure that I can teach anymore, and I wouldn't want to. But I reckon I can build a social sculpture and give it the tools to produce authenticity and creativity. I sure hate being called a teacher, that is all I know.
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