On NPR’s blog, they’ve highlighted some of the key takeaways from the long history of commencement speeches: Be kind, dream, remember history, embrace failure, don’t give up, etc. Right above, you can see NPR’s new animation featuring former Clinton and Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett at Pitzer College’s commencement.
Graduation season is upon us and, last weekend, the great Jimmy Page had a busy weekend at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. The school gave the Led Zeppelin guitarist an honorary doctoral degree in music, before letting him present — or rather “busk” — a short commencement address to nearly 900 hundred graduates at the Agganis Arena. But probably the highlight came the night before, when Berklee students performed for Page, playing renditions of Kashmir,Stairway to Heaven, Dazed and Confused and Whole Lotta Love, among other Led Zeppelin classics. Happily, some footage from that performance has popped up on Facebook. Watch it right below:
Ever since he was first published in The New Yorker back in 1992, George Saunders has been crafting a string of brilliant short stories that have reinvented the form. His stories are dark, funny, and satirical that then turn on a dime and become surprisingly moving. And the maddening thing about him is that he makes such tonal dexterity look easy. Over the course of his career, he has won piles of awards including a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship in 2006. In 2013, his collection of short stories The Tenth of December was selected by the New York Times as one of the best books of the year. You can read 10 stories by Saunders free online here.
Last year, Saunders delivered the convocation speech for Syracuse University where he teaches writing. Most such speeches are dull and forgettable or, as was the case when Ross Perot spoke at my graduation, incoherent and churlish. Saunders’s speech, however, was something different — a quiet, self-effacing plea for empathy. When it was reprinted by the New York Times last July, the speech seemingly popped up on every third person’s Facebook feed.
Brooklyn-based group Serious Lunch has created an animated version of Saunders’ speech, voiced by the author himself. You can watch it above and read along below. You’ll probably want to call your mom or help an old lady across the street afterward.
I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than try to be kinder.
In seventh grade, this new kid joined our class. In the interest of confidentiality, her name will be “ELLEN.” ELLEN was small, shy. She wore these blue cat’s‑eye glasses that, at the time, only old ladies wore. When nervous, which was pretty much always, she had a habit of taking a strand of hair into her mouth and chewing on it.
So she came to our school and our neighborhood, and was mostly ignored, occasionally teased (“Your hair taste good?” – that sort of thing). I could see this hurt her. I still remember the way she’d look after such an insult: eyes cast down, a little gut-kicked, as if, having just been reminded of her place in things, she was trying, as much as possible, to disappear. After awhile she’d drift away, hair-strand still in her mouth.
Sometimes I’d see her hanging around alone in her front yard, as if afraid to leave it.
And then – they moved. That was it. One day she was there, next day she wasn’t.
End of story.
Now, why do I regret that? Why, forty-two years later, am I still thinking about it? Relative to most of the other kids, I was actually pretty nice to her. I never said an unkind word to her. In fact, I sometimes even (mildly) defended her. But still, it bothers me.
What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.
Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded…sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.
Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope: Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable feelings of warmth?
Those who were kindest to you, I bet.
But kindness, it turns out, is hard — it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include … well, everything.
Jonathan Crow is a Los Angeles-based writer and filmmaker whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hollywood Reporter, and other publications. You can follow him at @jonccrow.
On June 1, 1997, Mary Schmich, Chicago Tribune columnist and Brenda Starr cartoonist, wrote a column entitled “Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young.” In her introduction to the column she described it as the commencement speech she would give to the class of ’97 if she were asked to give one.
The first line of the speech: “Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ’97: Wear sunscreen.”
If you grew up in the 90s, these words may sound familiar, and you would be absolutely right. Australian film director Baz Luhrmann used the essay in its entirety on his 1998 album Something for Everybody, turning it into his hit single “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen).” With spoken-word lyrics over a mellow backing track by Zambian dance music performer Rozalla, the song was an unexpected worldwide hit, reaching number 45 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States and number one in the United Kingdom.
The thing is, Luhrmann and his team did not realize that Schmich was the actual author of the speech until they sought out permission to use the lyrics. They believed it was written by author Kurt Vonnegut.
For Schmich, the “Sunscreen Controversy” was “just one of those stories that reminds you of the lawlessness of cyberspace.” While no one knows the originator of the urban legend, the story goes that Vonnegut’s wife, the photographer Jill Krementz, had received an e‑mail in early August 1997 that purported to reprint a commencement speech Vonnegut had given at MIT that year. (The actual commencement speaker was the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.) “She was so pleased,” Mr. Vonnegut later told the New York Times. “She sent it on to a whole of people, including my kids – how clever I am.”
The purported speech became a viral sensation, bouncing around the world through e‑mail. This is how Luhrmann discovered the text. He, along with Anton Monsted and Josh Abrahams, decided to use it for a remix he was working on but was doubtful he could get Vonnegut’s permission. While searching for the writer’s contact information, Luhrmann discovered that Schmich was the actual author. He reached out to her and, with her permission, recorded the song the next day.
What happened between June 1 and early August, no one knows. For Vonnegut, the controversy cemented his belief that the Internet was not worth trusting. “I don’t know what the point is except how gullible people are on the Internet.” For Schmich, she acknowledged that her column would probably not had spread the way it did without the names of Vonnegut and MIT attached to it.
In the end, Schmich and Vonnegut did connect after she reached out to him to inform him of the confusion. According to Vonnegut, “What I said to Mary Schmich on the telephone was that what she wrote was funny and wise and charming, so I would have been proud had the words been mine.” Not a bad ending for a column that was written, according to Schmich, “while high on coffee and M&Ms.”
Full disclosure: I love George Saunders. Can I say that? Can I say that George Saunders rekindled my faith in contemporary fiction? Is that too fawning? Obsequious, but true! Oh, how bored I had become with fourth-hand derivative Carver, cheapened Cheever, sometimes the sad approximations of Chuck Palahniuk. So boring. It had gotten so all I could read was Philip K. Dick, over and over and over. And Alice Walker. And Wuthering Heights. And Thomas Hardy. Do you see the pass I’d come to? Then Saunders. In a writing class I took, with one of Gordon Lish’s acolytes (no names), I read Saunders. I read Wells Towers, Padgett Powell, Aimee Bender—a host of modern writers who were doing something new, in short, sometimes very short, forms, but explosive!
What is it about George Saunders that grips? He has mastered frivolity, turned it into an art of diamond-like compression. And for this, he gets a MacArthur Fellowship? Well, yes. Because what he does is brilliant, in its shockingly unaffected observations of humanity. George Saunders is an accomplished writer who puts little store in his accomplishments. Instead, he values kindness most of all, and generosity. These are the qualities he extols, in his typically droll manner, in a graduation speech he delivered to the 2013 graduating class at Syracuse University. Kindness: a little virtue, you might say. The New York Timeshas published his speech, and I urge you to read it in full. I’m going to give you half, below, and challenge you to find George Saunders wanting.
Down through the ages, a traditional form has evolved for this type of speech, which is: Some old fart, his best years behind him, who, over the course of his life, has made a series of dreadful mistakes (that would be me), gives heartfelt advice to a group of shining, energetic young people, with all of their best years ahead of them (that would be you).
And I intend to respect that tradition.
Now, one useful thing you can do with an old person, in addition to borrowing money from them, or asking them to do one of their old-time “dances,” so you can watch, while laughing, is ask: “Looking back, what do you regret?” And they’ll tell you. Sometimes, as you know, they’ll tell you even if you haven’t asked. Sometimes, even when you’ve specifically requested they not tell you, they’ll tell you.
So: What do I regret? Being poor from time to time? Not really. Working terrible jobs, like “knuckle-puller in a slaughterhouse?” (And don’t even ASK what that entails.) No. I don’t regret that. Skinny-dipping in a river in Sumatra, a little buzzed, and looking up and seeing like 300 monkeys sitting on a pipeline, pooping down into the river, the river in which I was swimming, with my mouth open, naked? And getting deathly ill afterwards, and staying sick for the next seven months? Not so much. Do I regret the occasional humiliation? Like once, playing hockey in front of a big crowd, including this girl I really liked, I somehow managed, while falling and emitting this weird whooping noise, to score on my own goalie, while also sending my stick flying into the crowd, nearly hitting that girl? No. I don’t even regret that.
But here’s something I do regret:
In seventh grade, this new kid joined our class. In the interest of confidentiality, her Convocation Speech name will be “ELLEN.” ELLEN was small, shy. She wore these blue cat’s‑eye glasses that, at the time, only old ladies wore. When nervous, which was pretty much always, she had a habit of taking a strand of hair into her mouth and chewing on it.
So she came to our school and our neighborhood, and was mostly ignored, occasionally teased (“Your hair taste good?” – that sort of thing). I could see this hurt her. I still remember the way she’d look after such an insult: eyes cast down, a little gut-kicked, as if, having just been reminded of her place in things, she was trying, as much as possible, to disappear. After awhile she’d drift away, hair-strand still in her mouth. At home, I imagined, after school, her mother would say, you know: “How was your day, sweetie?” and she’d say, “Oh, fine.” And her mother would say, “Making any friends?” and she’d go, “Sure, lots.”
Sometimes I’d see her hanging around alone in her front yard, as if afraid to leave it.
And then – they moved. That was it. No tragedy, no big final hazing.
One day she was there, next day she wasn’t.
End of story.
Now, why do I regret that? Why, forty-two years later, am I still thinking about it? Relative to most of the other kids, I was actually pretty nice to her. I never said an unkind word to her. In fact, I sometimes even (mildly) defended her.
But still. It bothers me. So here’s something I know to be true, although it’s a little corny, and I don’t quite know what to do with it:
What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.
Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded…sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.
Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope: Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable feelings of warmth?
Those who were kindest to you, I bet.
It’s a little facile, maybe, and certainly hard to implement, but I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than: Try to be kinder.
How could David Byrne never have given a commencement address before? As an experienced public speaker, a well-known creator who has carved out his own cultural niche, an advocate of things (such as cycling) beloved among world-changing young people, the founder of a band with a surprising multi-generational appeal, and a man with no small command of Powerpoint, he’d seem to make an appealing choice indeed. His first commencement address ever came this year at the Columbia University School of the Arts, and, viewable from 1:17:00 in the video above, it has certainly made an impact in the internet. The message some grads and fans have taken away? “If you chose a career in the arts,” as the New Yorker’s Rachel Arons puts it, “you are, basically, screwed.”
“A pie chart, based on 2011 data, showed that only three per cent of film and theatre grads, and five per cent of writing and visual-arts grads, end up working in their areas of concentration,” she writes of the visual aids delivering Byrne’s grim initial message. “A subsequent bar graph showed that, according to those stats, fourteen writing and fourteen Columbia visual-arts graduates will go on to careers in their fields, and eight theatre and eight film grads will go on to careers in theirs.” But firsthand reports from the ceremony don’t describe a too terribly shaken Columbia graduating class, and even Byrne took pains to emphasize, or at least emphatically imply, that truly worthwhile careers — such as, I would say, his own — lay outside, or in between, or at the intersection of, definable fields. And why would you want to work in the same field you studied, anyway? To paraphrase something Byrne’s friend and collaborator Brian Eno said about technology, once a whole major has built up around a pursuit, it’s probably not the most interesting thing to be doing anymore.
If you watch enough commencement speeches, if you gather the collective wisdom of people who “have made it” in life, you start to see a trend. The key to life isn’t being smarter than the rest, though that doesn’t hurt. The key is resilience — your ability to deal with inevitable failures, learn from your mistakes, dust yourself off emotionally, physically or financially, and then move forward. It’s easier said than done, but essential. J.K. Rowling, who went from homelessness to writing Harry Potter, delivered that message at Harvard several years ago. Now Oprah Winfrey, who emerged from the Jim Crow South to become America’s most enduring TV personality, returns to Harvard to tell students her version of that story:
There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction. Now, when you’re down there in the hole, it looks like failure. … Give yourself time to mourn what you think you may have lost, but then here’s the key: Learn from every mistake because every experience, encounter and particularly your mistakes are there to teach you and force you into being more who you are. And then figure out what is the next right move. And the key to life is to develop an internal moral, emotional GPS that can tell you which way to go.
For more insights into constructively managing failure, you can visit these talks below:
David Foster Wallace was a hyper-anxious chronicler of the minute details of a certain kind of upper-middle-class American life. In his hands, it took on sometimes luminous, sometimes jaundiced qualities. Wallace was also something of a metaphysician: reflective teacher, wise-beyond-his-years thinker, and (tragically in hindsight) quite self-deprecating literary superstar. In the latter capacity, he was often called on to perform the duties of a docent, administering commencement speeches, for example, which he did for the graduating class of Kenyon in 2005.
He began with a story: two young fish meet an older fish, who asks them “How’s the water?” The younger fish look at each other and say, “What the hell is water?” Foster Wallace explains the story this way:
The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning.
Foster Wallace acknowledges that the anecdote is a cliché of the genre of commencement speeches. He follows it up by challenging, then re-affirming, another cliché: that the purpose of a liberal arts education is to “teach you how to think.” The whole speech is well worth hearing.
In the video above, “This is Water,” The Glossary—“fine purveyors of stimulating videograms”—take an abridged version of the original audio recording and set it to a series of provocative images. In their interpretation, Foster Wallace’s speech takes on the kind of middle-class neurosis of David Fincher’s realization of Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club.
It’s a dystopian vision of post-grad life that brings vivid clarity to one of my mentors’ pieces of advice: “There are two worst things: One, you don’t get a job. Two, you get a job.” Or one could always quote Morrissey: “I was looking for a job, and then I found a job. And heaven knows I’m miserable now.” I still haven’t figured out what’s worse. I hope some of those Kenyon grads have.
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