An Unversion

I've been on leave this term, but in so many ways this has been an incredibly confusing and disorienting time. My father died over the summer. My girlfriend got a job where I teach. I taught a graduate class for the first time, on a topic I'm not formally trained in. I am moving back to the suburbs with said gf. There are more things, some private, some not especially so. Some people, I assume, wake up under the pressure of such an onslaught (and many people wouldn't even consider this an onslaught!)

Of course, much of this is good news, and substantially helps me with my grief over my father. But I've still been feeling in a daze lately. By "lately" I mean for the past four or so months. I've edited a journal issue, but that's about it. I never seem to want to write anymore.

Last night I was reading some entries in Lauren Berlant's blog, http://supervalentthought.com/. I've admired her as a scholar in American Studies for a long time. I've never met her, though we have so many Facebook friends in common that we friended each other. But the deep level of attention to the affective dimensions of the intellectual life resonated with me really strongly. It's something I miss from graduate school, from being around people like Eve Sedgwick. I worry that the undergrad institution where I teach is a place that doesn't cultivate, honor, nurture that particular aspect of the mind's life. I miss this level of engagement that I see still fueling the work and lives of other friends from graduate school. At the same time as I miss it, I also remember shying away from it. And I know it's scary to think so much. The scariest part is when you think and nothing happens, either on screen or inside your head. In such moments, the disconnect between your hereness and where you think you should be is a chasm of immense proportions.

I've been reading Jack Spicer. His manifesto for unverts is hilarious. "Vert" means turn, so the neologism literally means "un-turn." I'm not using the term in the same way he does, but it seems to fit what I am thinking will be a turn in this blog away from a purely musical focus, and toward, well, something more general yet more internal--and hence not a turn, or a movement, of any sort. Just staying there/here.