After reading my post here a couple of days ago about playing music at my high school graduation, a friend asked me to transcribe and publish my speech from that same ceremony. So I dug out the one and only recording of that event, which is on a 40-year-old cassette tape, listened to the speech again and typed it up. It appears below.
What strikes me as I read it now is --
1) How earnest, how optimistic, and how generous I was toward my classmates because, as I have noted earlier on this blog, I was most definitely not earnest, nor optimistic, nor generous as a high school senior. I can only think that my having to compose in the wildly over-determined genre of the commencement address somehow called me up and out of my little world, helped me become something bigger and better -- at least for a little while, anyway.
2) How much of it concerns the dialectic relationship between community and identity, themes I would explore as an undergrad in literature courses, and again in my Master's thesis, and again in my scholarly publications as a professor of rhetoric and writing. In fact, I am teaching a course titled "Community and Identity" this semester for engineers and technologists here at Virginia Tech.
3) How many times I reference music and musicians in this short text, including two hidden Todd Rundgren references (I was clearly delighted with my own cleverness) and a closing quotation from one of his songs.
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Fellow Classmates and Guests:
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak with you on this, our graduation day.
Motion is what we need. Movement is all the things we love. Fast cars, with their high-speed panic; sports with their collisions and power; and our music, rock and roll, probably the most exciting musical form ever invented. I know for a fact that all of us like to travel. Who wouldn’t like to be on the road to somewhere, right now?
It is our love of motion that breeds our discontent with our community because, apparently, nothing ever happens here. We need change, excitement, and movement. Without them, things begin to wither, atrophy, rust, and decay. Unfortunately, this is exactly what I feel has . . . happened to my cards . . .
[This is the point where my carefully crafted note cards blew off the podium and the principal gave me his copy of my speech. ].
Unfortunately, this is exactly what I feel has happened to America over the last decade. After the tumultuous 60s, the period of perhaps the most change in modern times, America grew tired, sat back to lick its wounds, and take up the good life. Sadly, while we were so wrapped in ourselves, the real world, with all the problems we were trying to ignore, stalked up behind us and at this moment is preparing to strike back.
As we are now being thrust out of our too-sheltered lives at home, we may find ourselves trapped in a world that we never made.
[Hidden Todd Rundgren Reference #1 — a line from the Utopia song “Trapped”.]
It’s no good to say, “I didn’t cause it, I don’t have to fix it.” Who’s going to do it for you? It’s no good to moan and cry about it. Something has to be done. So let us take our motion, and give it some direction, some force.
We all admire a great football player or a rock star. To get where they have gotten took discipline, practice, patience, and perseverance. You know they put in a lot of sweat and hard work. But what about an opera singer or a great scientist? What about a prima ballerina or an artist or a violin virtuoso? Is it too difficult to see the love in their efforts or the pain *they* have gone through to be as good as they are?
We must remember that we are *not* all equal. Every person is distinctly different from everyone else. Wouldn’t it be a boring world if everyone was exactly the same? We must realize that everyone sets their own rules to follow. Each is their own person, as you are to yourself. To criticize, to hate someone just because they are different is absurd because you, too, are different from even your closest friends.
It is difficult to tell here in Wantagh, with its sea of denim jackets, fetish for southern rock, and its endless “hanging out,” just exactly where the group ends and the individual begins. Our groups give us a sense of belonging, comfort, and protection, but in the process they discriminate against anyone who doesn’t conform to the group’s norms.
As this school year ends, all our circles will be broken — forever. I can promise you that next year will be very different, for most of us, anyhow. Life will begin again, and as in the case of a newborn, everything should be strange and intriguing for us. Let us keep our minds open for changes in ourselves, remembering that they won’t come *by themselves*. We have to make them happen.
Like the rock and roll idols we worship, it takes heart, work, and discipline to make ourselves better than we were, and, more importantly, to keep the process going. For our own sake, let us start soon. Let us not stagnate. Everyone can be good at something, anything!
[Hidden Todd Rundgren Reference #2 — Something / Anything is the name of his landmark 1971 double album.]
But we can’t be good at it unless we work at it. Natural ability only takes us so far. But let us remember, nobody can discipline us but ourselves. If we don’t want something badly enough to go out and do something about getting it, we shouldn’t complain when it isn’t handed to us on a platter. It’s our own fault.
I have faith in *all* of us, fellow classmates. I know that all of us are mean and gritty enough to do anything we want to. We *can* change things, so why not start to do so? Let us be involved, be informed, and most all, be heard. What’s the first step to this new world? Vote! Are America, democracy, and its freedoms so insignificant as to let them go down the drain without a fight?
It is true that we, as a nation, are slipping. But, fortunately, it is a new decade, with a new wave. We all know that things can be better, so let us, as the first class of the 80s, cast off the apathy we have gathered about ourselves, our community, our country, the *world*, and spearhead the rebuilding of our society as a whole. I would like to leave you quotation appropriate of my farewell wishes for success in all your endeavors. It’s from a song by Todd Rundgren, and it’s a good summary of my hopes for all of us. “Worlds of tomorrow, life without sorrow. Take it because it’s *yours*.” Thank you. Good luck.