My friends reminded me of an episode in French class a few years back. I wasn't the most, shall we say, dedicated student. I was, according to legend, a pretty funny guy. Actually, my gang very much like the Sweathogs. Teachers hated us as students but loved us as individuals. They were always impressed by what we knew outside the provincially mandated curriculum. Alas, they could not give marks for independent thought.
I remember sitting in detention with Miss Colbran; an English teacher I never had. We came to like one another through my many excursions out in the hall way. Aimlessly I would walk the school halls after being asked to leave class. I would eventually be joined by Pat, Claudio and Johnny. We'd talk about which girl we had our eye on, Aristotle, history, classic movies and music and bunch of other stuff. Often, hall monitors would join in on the conversation. Inevitably they'd wonder, "why are your grades so terrible?"
Rhetorical indeed.
Rumor has it she passed on but I've yet to hear confirmation of it. I'm going off on a tangent a little but I was over at Zeus is Watching and there I listened to a piece of music from Corelli. It brought me back to high school for some reason. And to Colbran. During my one hour incarceration, me and Johnny sat at the front of the class talking to Colbran. She was talking about Bruce Springsteen's lyrics as poetry. "Quiet" she'd occasionally shout to the rest of the class. One scruffy tough rocker wasn't pleased by the double-standard. But she didn't care. "Can you talk about O'Henry like these duds can?"
In that hour we'd, ironically, learn more than we did in most classes.
French was tough. In order to master this intellectual language, you had to work at it and we simply weren't prepared to do so. In my mind, my French was good enough because I hung out with my Quebecois friends on my street. Flagging baseballs and engaging in amorous flirtations with them was enough for me.
I never did my homework. What I put that teacher through. One day she said, "Commentateur, tu ne travail pas!" To which I blurted out, comically, "J'travail hostie!"
The class broke out in laughter. Nick and Patrick, buddies to this day and far more serious about their studies (which is why they became engineers), still replay this story.
And they did so recently.
Drole.
Well, I was an even worse student in French class. Despite my heritage and deep love of France and things French, I still couldn't get the language, or do the work required.
ReplyDeleteI'd probably do much better today. I might be a little bit better disciplined.
And all those rules and exceptions!
ReplyDeleteI had little patience too.
Fret not, I wish I took both French and Italian more seriously...and piano and guitar lessons.
Meh.
My dear Commentator,
ReplyDeletethere is always time, I often work with a guy who has become an engineer at almost 40, and see once in a while another who became a good musican at 50 (while I felt a flopped musician at 22!!).
I am about to get back to Greek and Latin after 40 years.
I liked so much the freshness of this post. You are always sincere, but, pieces of memoirs like that, you know, everyone did go to school, I was often a very bad student, still have nightmares about my Sicilian Math teacher calling me to her desk, and I flunked A LOT - in English, art history and Greek, ironically.
Sorry to talk about literature right now when life is there, but to me, good literature IS life. What I mean, this post was a bit J.D. Salinger-like. The guy, now sadly dead, was a great writer because he wrote true sincere stuff. Of course he had excellent technique, but technique is acquirable through toil and from the example of the good ones (every art is taught by example said Muzio Clementi, who was so good that Beethoven admitted that his piano playing and composing wouldn't have been as it was without Clementi, the real father of modern piano, who lived in the UK btw.)
[an Italian poet Franco Loi, I yesterday heard him saying on the radio he writes like in a trance, ie spontaneously. Afterwards he gets back to it and does some editing, careful not to kill the life that first sprung, although everyone is different]
I also liked the fact that Salinger flunked a lot too in school (my guess) since Holden, his character, was the King of flunking. I also loved the fact that as soon as J. D. Salinger attained BIG and unexpected success, and all the journalists, all the phoney literary circles were waiting for his verbum, the guy simply flew away, got lost and withdrew in himself.
Don't worry if you are not an engineer, dear Alessandro. You have something so don't give up. Calabrians are tough people (gosh I know it too well). Although remember that with talent deprived of solid technique, and toiling, whatever you do - plumber, painter, mason singer or writer - you've got nothing yet in your hands.
PS
A propos of Calabrians. "Since you are Man of Roma - my wife keeps yelling at me even at 3 or 5 am - you have changed!!!"
It is true, I have changed (*I just said* to one nice blogger minutes ago). The character has subjugated me. My tone has become prophetic. Call me The Searcher, The Seeker, The Prophet of Antiquity, your choice
:-(
Never wanted to be an engineer. I'm comfortable with my weaknesses.
ReplyDeleteIf I didn't know any better you're encouraging me to work on that part of my writing.
I would if I had any aspirations to be an author.
I am nor encouraging anybody. I am just ranting possibly. Now it is too late here to reflect.
ReplyDeleteEven though sometimes you said you had some writing ambitions.
And, let me contradict myself, being an author or an artist is not such a big deal. And one can be a bit during the weekends anyway.
Qui diciamo 'un pittore della domenica'
Don't you guys realize that you are published authors. You write and publish blogs. No, none of us seem to be rolling in the bucks, but write and publish we do.
ReplyDeleteC'est vrai.
ReplyDeleteZeus, le dieu Grecque, a raison.