Autobiography: The Sweet Torture of Learning

Two days ago I wrote about the "wonderful life" that I have at the moment, a life which enables me to focus on learning and sharing the fruit of that learning with the world. I was going to follow that essay up with "part II"--which would explain how I was going to shift my attention in 2009 from almost sole focus on "learning" to the other categories of "friendship, intimacy, service." I was going to say that my exploration of words would just about leave me satisfied by the end of 2008, and that in 2009 I could thus leave them aside for other pursuits. Why? Because I was going along at a clip of about "10 words to the essay," and an additional 400 or 500 (40 to 50 essays) words would just about make me satisfied. They would provide such a rich set of additional "images" for me that I would simply have to "stop" for a while to let them "settle" in my brain and heart.

Yet, something happened today that tends to bring that into question, and I want to share that with you. I do so because it gets to the heart of what learning is for me--a sort of sweet torture, an energizing but enervating pursuit, a task that allows me to grasp, at the same instant, how much and how little I really know about the world. I realized, in an instant of time, how the quest for learning both gives me extreme joy and unmeasured despair. Let me illustrate.

On Caporal

Today I was going to "breeze through" about 15 words beginning with "c." Oh, I knew that my ambition was a bit too high, since words like capoeira brought me up short and made me want to explore in more detail this beautiful Brazilian expression of dance/martial arts, but I was going to try my best to "get through" the material. In adopting this mindset I was returning to an unproductive approach to learning, adopted by almost all I know in higher education (I taught at colleges and a law school for almost 20 years), which is a sort of "coverage" model of learning. In a course one "covers" a field. Of course, that is not only a myth, but it is an excercise in self-deception. One could have an entire course on one Supreme Court case--quite easily I might add--or one event in history. Thus, my desire to "get through" the list of words was a rather desperate expression of a man who wants to gorge himself on everything on the buffet table, without realizing that the best thing for diet as well as taste is to savor a few things with patience. But it was, in my mind, the only way to go because there were so many other things waiting "on my plate" to do. After all, I had languages to learn or refresh, new fields to learn (all I can about autism, for example, and the biological/medical realities of it), literature to sink myself into, the financial system to "understand" (since my generation seems to have screwed that up big time), and in general, a lot of physical skills to develop (dance, working with my hands, piano, etc.). Then, I need to get back into the "productive economy" by making some money so that I can survive in the next decade or so. All of these things were in the 'back of my mind' as I made my decision to force myself through the 13 words beginning with "c" that I mention here. Then I was struck with a double whammy--of delightful and delicious learning, but learning that has made me slow to a crawl.

I decided to try to investigate the term caporal, for which I had a simple and correct definition. Why would I do that? Why not simply leave well enough alone, define the term, and move on? I think it was because something in me wanted to try to explain to myself why a word which meant "corporal" would be a word describing a brand of tobacco. So, I began to dig and came up with the information leading to that essay linked above. Digging a little below the surface led me from the "tabac de corporal" to the American artist Stuart Davis to the role of tobacco in American life in the post-WWI period, and to the development of the American advertising industry. It was a feast of immense proportions for me today.

Then, I was going to rush back to the "c's" and admit to myself that I could only get through one more word (cacique) in the next essay. Why? Because I found an interesting article bringing alive the concept of cacique from the 16th century, and I feel I need to explore it. Well, that was bad enough, from one perspective (i.e., it wouldn't allow me to get back to my "list" of words), but then another "hitch" developed. While I was thinking about caporal and the advertising campaign of the American Tobacco Company, mutely memorialized by Davis in his 1921-24 tobacco paintings, another thought came to mind. Wasn't this about the time that Bruce Barton, the New York advertisting executive, wrote the wildly successful The Man that Nobody Knows comparing the mission and ministry of Christ to that of a modern advertising exectuive?

I just had to do some checking. And, of course, it was the time. Barton (1886-1967) published The Man Nobody Knows in 1924, just when Davis was painting his paeans to the America advertising industry. In Assembling Art: The Machine and the American Avant Garde (2004) Barbara Zabel makes some connection between Davis' work and Barton's goals. She quotes Davis's skepticism or critical distance from the advertising word's "inflated power" (67). He wrote: "According to all reason, there...still are thousands of Christis but they came at a time when advertising is given to tobacco."

Bruce Barton--A Word

Barton's depiction of Christ in his best-seller (250,000 copies in the 18 months after publication) was a person who was "the friendliest man who ever lived,...[who] would be a national advertiser today, I am sure, as he was the great advertiser of his own day." What Barton offered was a very "masculine" Jesus (recall the attempt of the American Tobacco Company to 'masculinze' cigarette smoking at this time?). Barton was the principal in the one of the "hottest" new ad agencies in NY City at the time: Barton, Durstine and Osborn (BDO). By elevating the adman to a new superstar status in the 1920s, his book not only gave himself a big pat on the back but tried to ground or root it all in the mission of Jesus Christ.

Well, I readlly didn't have time or interest in exploring Barton in detail because I think I got enough of the "gist" of it for my tastes today. But then the "masculine" references to tobacco sparked off another firestorm in my brain, a sort of open-eyed muscae volitantes. I thought, wasn't it at this time that the Academy Award-winning 1981 film Chariots of Fire was set, a film that had a great scene about the importance of "muscular" Christianity? Here is the YouTube video of that scene. And, indeed, that is the case, because Chariots of Fire was centered on athletes who performed in the 1924 Paris Summer Olympics. Thus, it seemed to me, as I sat staring wonderingly off into space, that I was taken back to the year 1924 in such a powerful and real way that I just couldn't get on to my "work...." I had to take deep draughts of air and express my gratitude to the universe for the privilege of sharing these insights.

Conclusion

Well, I haven't really brought out the pain I feel at all of this. Indeed, I will need one more essay to develop the idea--a sort of mini-pain in itself...

3845