hang-ups
Music: Stereolab: Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements (1993)
I just saw a commercial in which a weary woman in a business suit says, "I've not had a vacation since the third grade." I resemble that sentiment. I'm finally home for about a four-week stretch after many travels. This semester is the first time I've had off (including summers) for over ten years, and so I semi-deliberately tried to cram all my traveling wishes into 2008: Tempe and Phoenix, Denton and Fort Worth, Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Washington DC, New York, State College and College Station. Next up is Seattle for RSA, then Atlanta to visit the family, then Chapel Hill to hang with some friends, then a month off before a visit to Madison, Wisconsin in September, Fayetteville, Arkansas in October, and San Diego for the National Communication Association meeting in November. (I still want to go to Six Flags in Dallas . . . who wants to join me this summer?) By the time the religious holiday season is upon us, I will have been to thirteen different places. I normally do not consider myself someone who enjoys travel, but because most of these visits were for fun (with a little bit of research on the side), it's been quite enjoyable.
One of the things that enabled me to travel was "talking": if I could get a buddy at a university to host me as a speaker for this or that event, then I could find reimbursement for traveling one way or another. I also decided to do a bunch of guest talks thinking that I'd be going up for tenure in the fall, and in general it looks nice when you've been invited to share your work with another department. So here's a related question: how many times can one give a certain pre-packaged talk before ethically it needs to be hung-up and put away? When is a talk warmed-over? When, in other words, should one retire an old talk and create a new one?
The talk I've been giving for almost a year and a half is titled variously "For the Love of Communication" or "For the Love of Rhetoric," depending on the audience. The talk actually started here in 2005, on the blog, as a series of sketches for an essay I wanted to write (and yes, DB, the sketch did begin as I was going through a particularly painful break-up). It became a talk for a pro-seminar for entering graduates here at UT, and then metamorphosed into a keynote address for UNT's annual spring conference. I subsequently delivered shorter versions at the University of Minnesota in Duluth, at Arizona State University, Penn State, and two days ago, Texas A&M. Insofar as the essay upon which the talk is based will be published in The Quarterly Journal of Speech in about three weeks, the talk is effectively retired. I must admit it's a bit sad to let the talk die: it offended people so badly they left the room in a huff; it had people laughing so hard at Denton I didn't have to buy my drinks the whole weekend; it divided audiences. It was a fun talk to give. But, I think publication is its proper death knell.
My colleague Mark Knapp disagrees. At lunch last week he said often when one is invited to give a talk, folks want to hear what they are familiar with. He said he and Frank Dance often gave talks from published material that was years-old. Nothing unethical about that, he said. The same jokes were told over and over, but they were still funny. "People want to hear the author deliver the argument." Hmm.
So what do folks think? I was operating under the assumption that once a talk is published as an essay, it should be retired. I still think that's the right way to go about it. Any other opinions?
Also, one thing this year's travels has taught me is the importance of having a talk in your pocket. Once you're out of graduate school for about five or six years---that is, around the tenure years---you and your buddies are in a position to finagle for visits. Right now I'm scheming to get some of my buddies to come and talk to my class this fall. I have schemed with other buddies to come and talk to their classes. The problem with all this "free" visiting is that you gotta have something to share. Since I'm retiring the "love talk," this summer I have to develop another talk to share. I think I will try and develop my EVP/backmasking essay into a talk, 'cause it has a high show-and-tell factor (that essay has been accepted for publication too, though, so any talk developed from it will also have a pretty short run).
The "love talk," incidentally, was retired at Texas A&M at a nicely attended colloquy. In general I think it went old kinderhook. I'm not terribly smart on my feet, I must admit, but most of the questions I had at least half-baked answers to assuage. What was more fun, though, was the visit with buddies at A&M and all that this entailed! Jenn M. and Yogita toured me the Carter family plot, a sort of hidden paean to the "largest slave owner in Texas" prior to the Civil War. The shrine was admittedly bizarre, right down to the "evolutionary" depiction of progressive travel (note the most advanced mode of travel is a Winnebago!) and the odd "is he a slave or not?" and penis-less sculpture-in-the-weeds. Gallery of the tour is here.
Happy Hour after the talk was fun, but nothing beats an evening rounded out at the local VFW in Bryan singing country-western karaoke! Since I was retiring the love talk, I actually sang a duet of "Islands in the Stream" with Tracy. It was quite embarrassing and thoroughly terrible (and I was much too sober). One of Christopher's philosopher buddies, dude named William, did the most effing' brilliant version of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" I have ever heard! At evening's end I wanted his autograph and developed a guy-crush. This macho dude with a ponytail wearing a biker outfit literally got on his knees and bowed after that rendition of Steve Perry greatnes. All of this in smoky VFW with drunk bubbas and bubbettes woo-hooing and having a grand ol' time. Triumpantly, she reminded me that this is Jenn's world. It was an awesome finish to a semester of travels. (Gallery here.)
