Hi Matt, I also wrote the text for the marriage ceremony of my wife and I a couple years ago. I'd be interested to read yours as well as your words for your friends' ceremony if you'f be willing to send it along.
Best, Steve > Matt: > I think that's a pretty good counter-display of common sense. In > academia, we're graded--if you will--by our ability to distinguish > ourselves by a combination of newness and betterness. There's a > certain sense in which this process of new generations of academics > replacing old ones in this manner might risk imploding, but I'm still > not sure there's a better way to do it. > > However, you don't need to be an academic to feel like cliche is a > bane on your personal existence. An entire movement of people, the > one's Pirsig called "the antisystem people," people of whom we might > say are attached to the word "authenticity," grew out of the Romantic > movement at the beginning of the 19th century and gradually seeped > into the culture at large, in America through Emerson and Thoreau > most of all. These people have, we also might say, a "touch of the > poet," and do not just turn up their noses at cliche like snobs (though > a lot of these types are just snobs), but sometimes genuinely fear > that cliche doesn't cut it to express the real emotions they feel. > Some just disdain Hallmark; some genuinely feel anxious about > expressing themselves. > > I don't go in for authenticity-talk for the sake of authenticity-talk. I > don't think there's anything wrong with well-worn phrases in the > expression department. If "rock" is fine for us, why not "love"? It's > frustrating, to be sure, to see the commodification of anything, but I > doubt we should let that, by itself, make us turn our backs on > expressing love, coming up with theories about it, or anything else. > > I come from southern Wisconsin. My newly minted wife comes from > central Minnesota. We're both over-educated snobs with too much > irony to not giggle at the platitudes. Yet, express ourselves we must, > and I indeed tried my hand at genuine expression through letter and > poem. And I wrote the whole script used at our wedding. And two > weeks ago, one of my closest friends asked me to be the only > speaker at her secular wedding. What did all these occasions have > in common? To purge myself of the anxiety of cliche, I always begin > by making fun of the cliche, then noting the impossibility of doing > anything else, and then trying to make up a few new ones myself. > The trick, I think, is to be self-conscious without derisive. Especially > in front of people who have their own codes and proprieties for > expressing their love to each other, you don't want to invalidate > them by saying they are full of shit. Everyone knows cliches are > cliches. But you can tease them without falsifying them. > > The wedding I spoke at consisted of more heartlanders, a much > bigger group than at my own small wedding (100+ compared to 30), > and hardly any of them knew who I was. I was just a friend of a > niece or step-niece, or step-niece of a friend, getting up to speak. > (Oddly enough, all from the same areas, too: southern Wisconsin > and central Minnesota.) A very tough crowd to successfully speak in > front of, and I made it harder on myself by choosing to read a sonnet > by Shakespeare before saying "a few more words about love, since > clearly we haven't heard enough yet," as I put it in the moment. > (The officiant had already trotted out wheelbarrows full of cliches > ahead of me, which I had not expected.) When all was said and > done, it was the only time the bride almost cried (my friend is a > particularly difficult nut to crack: she despises cliche so much that, > when she intoned her lines in the ceremony--unlike her soon-to-be > husband who inflected soft care and adoration into his lines--she > sounded like a robot with a shotgun pressed against the small of > her back) and a surprising number of strangers walked up to me > to congratulate, or thank, or tell me that it was just what they > thought. The cherry, however, is that amidst these regular heartland > folks was my friend's aunt who is an English professor. I heard > through the grapevine that she, too, had been impressed, and I'm > guessing by a slightly different sense than the others. > > I don't mean to toot my own horn (and what kind of horn it, > anyways?), but I do mean to suggest that these kinds of things are > possible. We can, if we so choose, reach higher than platitudinous > cliche without invalidating those who are comfortable with well-worn > proprieties of expression. We can please the heartland and the > authentics. We can say something a little new that wraps up > together the old, and seems to tap into what everybody thinks > already, even if they didn't know it at the time. I believe this in > theory, and I think I occasionally succeed in practice (though how > new? who knows). As Emerson said well ahead of me: "the artist > must employ the symbols in use in his day and nation to convey his > enlarged sense to his fellow-men. Thus the new in art is always > formed out of the old." It's not easy, but what is? Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
