My dad would be 58 today.

The influence that both of my parents had on shaping how I see the world and interact within it cannot be overstated. As I’ve spent much of this past year focused on schooling and teaching, it’s been useful for me to come up for air now and then and reflect on the experiences and moments of growth that have guided me. I typically avoid acute personal information on this blog, but feel that this process of reflection is as integral to our learning and progress as anything else.

Someone asked me a while back about this, so below I’ve copied my speech from my father’s memorial service that took place a bit over three years ago. If you’re interested in reading through it, maybe you’ll also want to listen to one of my dad’s songs as well.

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I’ve been thinking about surfing.

I don’t, by the way.

Surf, that is.

I shy students away from the word “can’t” but invoke it when it comes to my ability in navigating water where I am unable to touch bottom.

But the look in a surfer’s eyes.

Brings to mind Freire’s “patient impatience.”

One doesn’t consume a wave. Can’t own it. But space is carved, claimed, challenged on lurching canvases. Improvised rhapsodies of pecking order and unspoken code.

The passing of one, a hunger for the next one.

We’d do well to learn the lessons of letting hair get tussled and sandy. Of the bite of frigid confrontation with the sea. You can’t read convincingly about the brackish aftertaste the ocean leaves. Or the way language twists back upon itself when describing the journey with a wave – into, along, within. Do we teach these lessons or hope they are experienced? A knowledge lost as we lay waste to the experiential in our race to the top.

We disregard the self-guided learning communities on the ground, toweling off next to PCH.

You chase waves hungrily like an endangered species you want to savor before extinction.

Each tide a microcosm of loss,

A “tiny apocalypse”

Lips set, pursed, tightened,

In determination.

Wires have been crossed and I’ve been making lapses in judgment. I find myself signing off letters with one name when I should be using another, for instance. Growing up as “Andy,” I acknowledged but never relied on my given name, “Antero.” Andy was simply the name I heard and used as I grew up. As I moved toward more professional endeavors of late, it felt both useful and refreshing to go back to the name that appears on actual legal documents. And so, I live in two worlds: in much of my personal life and in the exchanges at my high school, colleagues and friends interact with Andy. As I cross the city and head into the towers of academia, I quickly change – like Clark Kent? – into Antero. It’s a silly shift and one I’ve been struggling to maintain. As doctoral peers become friends I find myself unconsciously signing off as “Andy.” The context of interaction shifts and my positionality with it.

Likewise, I think the name “Andy” comes from a history of (not-so) subtle assimilation. Looking at my father and his three siblings, it’s a telling rendition on “Mexi-pino” identity politics: My father, Jose, was always “Joey.” His brothers? Leonard is “Uncle Skip” and Antero (surprise) is “Uncle Andy” (aka Big Andy, perpetually making me Little Andy at family gatherings). The youngest of my Grandmother’s children was born years later and stuck with the already anglicized name Leslie. What shift in understanding and in need for naming lead to such a duality in names?

At Manual Arts, 10th grade teacher, Peter, gave many of his students last year nick names of the awesome variety: Silent Assassin, Senor Silencio, Sgt. Pepper, Skullfyre, and many others (what’s with all of the “S” names?). It’s interesting to see how, a year later, many of these students still use these names happily in my classroom. In being recognized and individualized in such a large school, they don the name and context given by a caring teacher.

And again, I’d like to extrapolate further – the concentric circles of naming and context moving toward the unified & unedited heart muttered upon here. A class I initially balked about to whoever would listen concluded yesterday. Unequivocally, it changed my life in a way I didn’t think a graduate course could. And I left realizing that naming the context of interaction and of communication with one another is a necessary process of being. We may not have a perfect batting average, as the professor reminded us on our last class, but for us to understand the world and – more importantly – for us to be understood by the world, that uncomfortable step towards the precipice of recognition need be labeled. It is a part of our “infinite spiral path of empty fullness,” that Luis Valdez mentioned.

Rob Fischer’s current installation at the Hammer (a snapshot of which is at the top of this post) is another example of context shifting. I initially went to look at this in terms of its implications related to classroom space, but felt transformed by the magnitude of reconstruction within and around the Hammer foyer. A new layer of history and context uprooted and applied to the walls.

For the umpteenth time, this version of “Wild Heart” is stuck in my head. I’ve never been crazy for much of Fleetwood Mac’s studio music, this song included. But again, the context is what’s at stake. Spontaneity and uninhibited expression move beyond the confines of studio wankery. This song always makes me think of Gloria Anzaldua – stranger bedfellows, there have been few. Along the lines of music, I’ve also been thinking about the mythological construction of Parliament and the world and characters created; I think there’s a direct connection to how we teach students about mythology, but I’ll return to this in a future post. (I’m currently in an argument with Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk.)

As I write this, Jack Rose’s first album on the VHF label unwinds calmly in the background. The sudden loss of this gifted musician dealt a significant blow last night. Another gentle spirit on the ghost ship on the blue.

I think I’m trying to sneak around myself lately. I wonder if this is something I can elucidate in a way that sheds light on my wariness of academia in general.

For starters, I should say that I’ve spent much of this quarter reflecting on how academic talk gets in the way of meaningful talk. (There’s a longer story around process and methodology here, but not one that’s necessarily relevant to this post.)

In any case, I realize that, as a graduate student, I have a perspicacious eye for self-editing. Papers are to be … polished. They are to exude clarity and they are to be a-personal, right? At least the ones that are accepted, are widely read, are seen as real literature. I realize all of these categories are heavily problematic; they are still a part of the reality within the current Ed. research regime.

And all of this is a digression to the real story:

Saturday morning, I woke up with an envelope sealed on my dining room table. I remembered writing a letter to a friend in the early hours of Saturday morning before going to sleep. I apparently failed to save a copy on my computer and also decided to seal it away with nothing but a name on the envelope, until an address could be ascertained.

On the back of the envelope, in my typically messy scrawl, lurking around the southwestern corner, I’d quoted Quincy Troupe for some reason: “There is nothing on the flipside of time but more time.” And that was it. Here I was, faced with the fact that I’d tried to deceive myself – in my weary state, I didn’t want the discerning eye of the alacritous critic and academician to edit the words I’d written. I can vaguely recall anecdotes and thoughts that likely went into the letter, but I can honestly say I don’t recall all of it.

And so I faced a dilemma: Do I send the letter sight un(academically)seen? Or do I pilfer the envelope that is not addressed to me, no longer mine, and sneak into my previous night’s thoughts to ensure I don’t embarrass myself?

I mailed it. I don’t even know if it has reached its intended recipient yet, so there’s no and then to this story. I guess I’m interested in the idea of removing the editor, the academic, the intellect from writing. Not all of the time, of course, but at least during the important times.  I’ve been reading a collection of essays by Ander Monson and I’m struck by the way he both distances and confronts the personal in content and form that are unlike anything else I’ve read recently.

I’ve found files and loose papers of random writing that I don’t remember constructing. In one instance: a poem I remember writing – to the day – while sitting at the newsstand at Book Soup, never quite finding the one word that was missing. I remember the feeling of having lost this word at some point – that it was known by me, perhaps in a dream, or in the shower, or walking the dog, or any of the myriad places that words topple in front of us only to make a just as haphazard getaway. This scrap of paper sits on my table, it’s not awaiting an audience or an editor or a thesaurus; it’s awaiting completeness.

And I think that when I was writing that poem – a casual homage to a tertiary character from the adventures of El Gaviero – I was in a different space. Perhaps a different person. The approach I take to writing without the tearful eye of mind and research is one that feels different. It uses different muscles, the script in which I write literally changes (though it’s still just as messy). And I wonder what would happen if this were allowed to be an unsuppressed voice in research. What would theory, epistemology, pedagogy and all of those terribly overbearing words & ideas look like if we extended things toward a more fluid heart, toward a feeling, toward a hermeneutic of emotion and connection, “to lead you to an overwhelming question…”

Like the letter, perhaps this thought is still en route towards an unexpected conclusion. And like the letter, perhaps it’s better to simply click “publish” before the reigning king of academia returns to change this clause or that.