unrepentant trespasser...

My story is non-linear and non-traditional, and I echo Lily’s attribution of folklore as one of my foundational experiences of “communication.” By now everyone knows that I used to be an engineer, etc. etc., ad nauseam, but I think it is particularly because I was a successful engineer that people are surprised by just how much I dislike science and engineering. As someone trained in linear and non-linear mathematics, I think this is where the non-linearity comes in. I genuinely want nothing to do with a major portion of my “previous” life, except perhaps someday to critique it roundly and soundly.

A couple of years ago, in the midst of my burned out phase Alexis asked me what I really wanted to do, and my gut-level answer was simple: teach. She pressed me on what I wanted to teach, and refused to accept my initial (and logical) thought that I would naturally teach engineering. She suggested to me, pointedly, that the very things I detested about engineering would be the things lauded as virtues by engineering curricula and therefore the things that I would be forced to teach! I couldn’t stomach the thought, but what else could I teach? Alexis has her degrees in Sociology and Philosophy, and she helped me through an intense period of mutually narcissistic navel-gazing.

Non-linear shift... Perhaps gazing at one’s navel is good after all -- it reconnects one with the messy humanity of one’s birth... Growing up as a “transnational” made me experience life in terms of stories. Certainly I had to tell stories over and over again, often to explain to yet another bureaucrat why my messy and unresolved life did not fit in the neat boxes on the forms they wanted me to fill out. Then I had to tell stories about my religion to my “friends” who believed strongly in the stories of their holy texts which told them to cleanse me out of their lands. Then I had to tell stories about my “friends” to my relatives “back home,” who were all too eager to draw confirmations of their own holy convictions. A childhood of conflicting and contradictory stories made me deeply skeptical of religious stories, especially the neatly packaged ones that I concocted for my own survival... And yet I found solace in the messy and unresolved stories of the Hebrew Testament when I was suicidally depressed in engineering graduate school at the turn of the century. So I became that most insidious of pop-culture villains: The American Evangelical Christian. I became a Sunday School Teacher, a Youth Group Leader, a Missionary-wannabe, one of the in-crowd, one of the ones who thought Bush was a Godly Man of Faith.

Uh-oh, my non-linear narcissistic survival instincts are kicking in again... It is no mere coincidence that I left the evangelical fold at about the same time that I became disillusioned with engineering -- my critiques of logical positivism are linked to my critiques of evangelical systematic theology. Story: I am currently searching for my immunization records -- UMass says I will not be able to register for Spring '09 unless I can show I have been immunized. I have been poked and prodded and inoculated and injected so many times since I was seven years old, every time I crossed yet another border, and I do not have any precious “records” to show for it. What are y’all trying to immunize against anyway? And maybe there is a metaphor here -- social scientists probably wonder if I carry the positivist disease, humanists probably wonder if I carry the scientific disease, and artists probably wonder if I carry the analytical disease... And everyone probably worries that I still carry the Jesus disease.

I often find myself performing the rhetoric of betrayal: “Don’t worry, I’m not one of THEM... I used to be like THEM but I am not anymore...” Sometimes I forget who I am not.

Let’s finish this thing. I want to teach stories, to teach young people (of all ages) to become more aware of the narratives that are alive and kicking all around them and in them all the time, to engage with people in hearing and performing and criticizing the world of stories that both form and change our identities. At least, that is what I told Leda when I met her a year ago. I had a vague sense that I wanted to do “folklore” but I did not know the terms or jargon or lingo of the “field” and I still do not know what “field” I want to be in. Leda encouraged me and invited me to sit in on her Comm Theory class last Fall. I also met Stephen Gencarella, who likewise encouraged me and invited me to sit in on his class titled “Theories of Language as Action and Performance.” Both classes blew my mind -- I still remember my reaction when someone mentioned Marxism in Leda’s class last Fall and I did a double-take. In my world of high-tech industry, my MBA friends hated unions and Marxism was a dirty word synonymous with “failed economic experiment.” I did not understand what Marxism had to do with Communication, but I was profoundly stunned by the very real connection of the work that Leda and Stephen did with critical social issues.

A couple of months later I had enough of an amateurish understanding to write a final paper on Marxism and folklore for Stephen’s class, based on Raymond Williams’ book “Marxism and Literature.” I enjoyed writing that paper so much that I applied to the M.A. program here at UMass as well as the Folklore Institute at Indiana University. [My shameless insecurity compels me to add that I got accepted into both places...] Alexis and I agonized over the decision, and I decided to come here mainly because I want to work with Stephen and Leda and Claudio during the first few years of learning my “new” career. At least, that is what I tell them -- UMass also let me teach (yay!) but if you really press me on it I’d have to say the economics worked out pretty well too, because IU gave me no funding. Sure, at UMass I make only 10% of what I used to make as an engineer, but it’s more than the absolute zero that IU offered...

So that’s my “story”... I am here as a brazen interloper and shameless traitor, with no “business” being here and with a long history of ungrateful betrayal. I don’t buy any talk of Founding Fathers -- I am a subversive subaltern with a non-academic chip on my shoulder. And I like my chip, I call it George :-) I am here to explore and to question -- this field is so broad that it encourages me to not feel insecure about being puzzled. And I am here to figure out where to go next!