Being Human, Chapter One

I just recently went back to my alma mater, Santa Clara University, to speak to their students in a panel conversation called "Business of the Business." The talk is designed to help students understand what their lives could possibly be like after they graduate. There were alums going all the way back to 1981 and in various fields of study: dance, acting, costumes, tech and writing (that's me).

The panel conversation was the least interesting part of my trip, although it was great to talk to students and hear about their experiences as undergrads and compare that to my own a bit. But the real entertaining and enlightening part of my trip was seeing my professors again. These people shaped my life and set me on a course that I'm still on. I would have been a writer without them, but I'm a much better, fully realized artist because of them.

I have the utmost respect and admiration for them, but I've got to say that getting to know them as human beings and not just these icons of my personal educational experience was enlightening. I realize that they're people just like me, who are trying to fulfill themselves creatively and sustain that over a period of 20, 30, 40 even 50 years. It's pretty remarkable.

I had dinner with a bunch of the faculty from the theatre department (where I was actually NOT a theatre major, but a theatre and dance double minor), but I had made it a point to reach out individually to my two dance professors: David and Carolyn. I didn't even make the connection, until Carolyn dropped me off at my hotel on Friday night, that it was important to me to connect with them. I love my theatre professors, but David and Carolyn really nurtured me in the act of creating original work, which you could only do at the time in the dance department. As a course of study that is. You could write a play whenever you wanted, but most of the theatre students were concerned with performing already created texts--dead authors and the like.

David and I sat down and had a beer together. Very manly for two guys who spent hours and hours in tights and unitards. I heard about his family and the struggle to make more time for them. I listened to him tell me about how his body had changed over time. He went back to school in the time since I graduated. He now has tenure. He's still creating dances and performing his own work as well. Our conversation had an ease and a lightness that it had always had. I always teased David because we had that sort of familarity - taking things seriously, but not so seriously that you can't laugh at yourself and the absurdity of the act of creation. In that absurdity, I believe we also always found the grace in it as well. I was once described by a friend as "irreverently reverent" and I think that applies here. It was so great to see him again and share stories about what we're creating. I didn't feel like his student anymore, but more like a peer. That was a revelation.