Interview with Andrea Stover, November 19, 2019

Andrea Stover: When I went to college, I was very naive. I see students now and they seem much more savvy about things than I was--

Calla Quinn: What kinds of things are they savvy about?

AS: Maybe what they want to do and who they are in the world. I was very wide eyed and I was very young, but my interest in English grew from an influence by a friend who was in graduate school at the time. Very smart, very-- He just made me very excited about English. I think I always had an inclination for loving it, but I didn't identify that. So we talked a lot and he pulled me into the modernist poets which I love. He just opened me up to it. Then I remember I took a theory class. He asked us to, just a little thing, a little assignment, but he asked us to memorize a passage from a text that was interesting.

CQ: Any text?

AS: Yep. And I did. It was from (sic). It's a very different passage. But anyway, once we did, we had to choose the music to play in the background while we recited our piece. And it was a real challenge. Sort of what you guys did, but to this music while I'm speaking--

CQ: You had to be very intentional about what you chose.

AS: Very intentional. And so it made me-- I always remember that project. I loved it. You don't always love your assignments. And I loved that one. That was just something I remember.

CQ: What piece did you choose, do you remember? Or what kind of music?

AS: It's from a book, and it's this final passage about a man or child in a woman's arms and she was a field worker, and the child was probably destined to be a field worker also. He was just anxious and thinking about their future.

CQ: What music piece was it that you played?

AS: I played a jazz--

CQ: That's an interesting choice.

AS: Anyway that is a small thing, but let's say my biggest influence was my friend Ann. We waitressed together after we graduated, and that's what I did. I'd go to school, get a degree, and then I'd waitress for years. Then I worked in a library as a secretary-- So leadership. You know, it's kind of funny to pick me.

CQ: I don't think so because you are a leader. And I think it's more than just the positions you've held officially, even though now you are definitely seen as one. It's quality.

AS: I've learned that what people see as dead-end jobs, every one of them will be (sic). My friend, Ann, from our waitressing, she decided to go on to grad school, even before I did. And I had been out of school for many years. We would talk. She's the kind of person that as you talk, she'd get out a napkin, draw diagrams to get your thoughts down, she's a brilliant person.

CQ: Oh my gosh. I love that.

AS: I'd talk about my love life, all the mess I was going through, and she'd start writing it.

CQ: That was supposed to be private!

AS: It was someone like that that got me interested in going back to graduate school.

CQ: Where did you go to school?

AS: I went to the University of Vermont, undergraduate. I went to Boston College to get my Masters. Then I was kind of stalled for many years before I went to get my PhD. All that waitressing and stuff.

CQ: Where did you get your PhD?

AS: At University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

CQ: Are you from the north?

AS: I'm from Vermont.

CQ: I actually applied at the University of Vermont.

AS: Did you really?

CQ: When I was doing that whole process. I don't know why I didn't go, looking back. I mean, I'm glad I'm here. Now, but that's funny.

AS: It's cold up there.

CQ: It is cold, isn't it?

AS: I remember the winters, the wind would come up, blow, and you'd almost be crying.

CQ: It's right near water, so that almost makes it worse

AS: By Lake Champlain.

CQ: It makes us down here look like wussies.

AS: It does, I know!

CQ: Yeah, It's 45 degrees, and we're crying with icicles hanging off. We can't handle it.

AS: Another influence on me when I was a secretary at the Potent Library, which is a rare book library, I was the secretary for the one the curators. I adored Roger. And there was this man, and he was old, in his late 80s. He was a book binder for the library. And he'd come every now and again with books that he had repaired. And I remember saying to Roger, my boss, do you think Arnold would teach me how to bind books? And he said, "I don't know, but you'd better ask him quick. He's going to be 90 next month."

CQ: Oh my goodness. Some sweet old man was doing this. That's precious.

AS: A sweet, German man, So I asked him, and he said, "No, I'm too old. I'm much too old." And the next time he came in, he said if you want to book bind, I will teach you. I would drive to his house about an hour and a half away in Connecticut every Sunday, and he taught me how to book bind. He had beautiful papers from Europe and he had leathers. He had this huge book bind, this huge workshop full of equipment, and I learned how to hand tool the leather and do beautiful.

CQ: I've never seen anything like that.

AS: I'll bring some of it in.

CQ: I didn't even know. I guess it never occurred to me that book binding was a job that someone had.

AS: Isn't that something? You just think it's all a machine. You learn how to sew the pages. They are getting old, so you learn how to sew them and put the beautiful pages here and here.

CQ: You are probably the only person who asked him to show you how to do it.

AS: No, he showed a lot of people.

CQ: No, really? That's funny.

AS: He used to do it, but he was probably the only person who worked at (sic) Library.

CQ: You were maybe the only person who was intending to do it as a job. That's interesting.

AS: That's right, he trained people wanting to do it.

CQ: And you were willing to drive. That was quite a drive.

AS: It was a neat experience.

CQ: That's amazing.

AS: He'd just say, "Andrea, you are so 'happyluckygo.'" He had his English all wrong, but anyway--

CQ: The sentiment was there, though.

AS: I worked with him until he died. So that was another just a little joy in my life going towards.. Even now I would like to do a class like where we wrote like we do here and then bind our work.

CQ: That would be amazing-- to be able to do that.

AS: I would like to be able to do that, really able to do that.

CQ: That would be something. If you could make a portfolio that was something you actually made with your own hands. You wrote it, it came out of your mind, and now it's something you can mold.

AS: You chose the papers.

CQ: That's so cool. Again, never occurred to me that that's something that could happen.

AS: When I was getting my master's at Boston College or actually, after I graduated, and I told you I was flailing around with it, and I got a call that said would you be willing, interested in teaching as an adjunct, but it was because someone had died and the semester was about to start. Of course, I said yes.

CQ: Of course!

AS: It was great, but I was scared to death.

CQ: Not planning for that.

AS: It was a great role shift. It was "hi, I'm a teacher." It was a very big shift.

CQ: What were you doing at that time when you got that call?

AS: I was waitressing.

CQ: Big shift, right into the big job.

AS: So I did that for a while. Then after I don't know a year maybe, I did it for a couple of years, there never used to be a writing tract in English. It was pretty new.

CQ: Universally there wasn't? There was just literature?

AS: That's what an English degree was. They said they were experimenting. They wanted to teach a writing course. Would anyone volunteer, and no one would.

CQ: Because it's a lot of work, right?

AS: Yes, so I did. I volunteered. I did a course on autobiography, and I can't remember, I had (sic) I had 10 students in the class, and we wrote on prompts about our lives.

CQ: Like this class.

AS: That was my first, that's when I really started thinking, "Maybe I want to do this job." Because what we did in there, I didn't really take any papers home to grade. We just shared and talked about it, gave each other feedback. I'll never forget that class. Those kids, they opened up. Sometimes we'd be laughing hysterically. We had young men, talking about missing their mom kissing them goodnight. How often do you hear 18-year-old guys talking about missing their moms? But they did. And I loved it. It was just like I looked forward to going to it. I remember I gave everyone an A at the end because it was so, everybody.

CQ: How can you grade someone's life?

AS: Everyone worked at it, everybody contributed to it and it wouldn't have worked without any of the people, and I remember when I was applying to graduate school at UMass. Have you heard of Peter Elbow? He's-- you wouldn't.

CQ: I don't think so.

AS: In the comp world-- he was at UMASS. And he was interviewing me, and so was another guy, and they asked me about something and I talked about that class. The guy said, I don't know how it came up that I gave everybody A's. I might have just said it, and the one guy said, "that's ridiculous. Surely someone was of more quality than someone else." And I tried to explain that's not really the way I was thinking about it. Peter Elbow was going (nodding) so I knew that I had something that made me feel like this is good.

CQ: when you see a nod during an interview, you know you're on the right track.

AS: The other guy was totally thinking that was ridiculous.

CQ: The writing track was new, like you said, so who is he to know how to grade a writing course to begin with?

AS: Yeah! He didn't even think about it.

CQ: And of course it was all autobiographical. So how you share your own experience is-- it's hard to-- I would have a hard time grading someone else's expression differently from another person.

AS: And you begin to wonder the point of it, the point of that--

CQ: How does that help them be a better writer?

AS: Yes, how does that help them?

CQ: It doesn't. It doesn't unless you're teaching a first year writing course and you have to go over grammar and punctuation. That does make you a better writer for that setting, but I think if you're wanting to be a writer for the sake of being a writer and bettering yourself, it's hard to put a letter grade on that.

AS: Well, then I suppose Peter Elbow is a leader for me because he developed a contract grade. I don't know if you've heard of that.

CQ: Yes, I had a class last year that was a contract grade class.

AS: If you do a certain amount, that's a B, blah blah blah. I've tried that before. Now I just do it the way I do it. But I think it's a subtle thing. I think you know when you are in a system that demands assessment all the time and yet philosophically it's not the way you think about things. I don't. I'm not against assessments. I want to give people feedback, but for me I was the kind of kid if I got an A that meant I was a good person. If I got a C that meant I was a bad person. Right? It was very personal. It wasn't just, oh, you know, you can do some more work on this. It was complete condemnation.

CQ: It's good to have feedback that actually sort of guides you and shows you how to be a better whatever , that you're getting feedback on that's not just criticism that is negative. But you do give feedback. You give us feedback on all of our essays.

AS: Yeah, I believe in feedback.

CQ: Yes, but it's always gentle though. You always-- it's always constructive. For me, I take it to heart, but it's also kind and from a place of genuinely wanting to read what we have to say. So, you said that Peter Elbow, which is an amazing name--

AS: I know isn't that a great name?

CQ: -- was a leader for you. So what kinds of traits and characteristics of him or other leaders in your life make a good mentor?

AS: He was gentle. I suppose that's a big thing. And you always felt like he was on the student's side. he wanted what was best for you. He was always trying new ways to make things better for the course. He did a thing where he would tape, instead of writing comments, he would tape record them on a little cassette. Isn't that something?

CQ: A sign of the times, surely.

AS: (Sic) And then you just play it. he wrote this essay called "Closing My Eyes When I Speak." He was interested in-- you know how you're always saying that you have to write for an audience? And you do have to write for an audience, you have to consider other people reading your work. There are also moments when you write when you're just, as he says, "You're closing your eyes and getting deep into it." And so that's sort of not thinking about audience. There's these weird, it's a different way of thinking about it, moments when you are deep into your writing, and you're not writing for anyone else. And then moments when you must put the reader's pressure on it. You have to make it come alive, I think.

CQ: You can be your own audience, I think.

AS: You can learn to be. Like WHAT? See, I always enjoy re-reading my theses aloud, even if I'm the only person in the room. It's nice to hear it out loud and perceive it the way someone else would. That's why I clapped when you read Brenda Miller's thing. Because people don't read out loud.

CQ: I think we should do that more often.

AS: Oh god, all the time. As I do the same thing with my own work. I have to read it out loud.

CQ: There's something powerful about it because you choose how to intonate things, and you make choices whether it's your own work or not. I read Brenda Miller's piece, and I didn't write that, those aren't my words, but I think the way I read it aloud is different than any other person in the room would have read it. I think that shapes what you take away from it.

AS: It makes me sad too that sometimes when a young student reads aloud, you can tell they are just reading one word after another, and they don't understand the words. It's not that they don't have a vocabulary, but it's that they don't feel the words. That's another reason why I think reading out loud is so important. Because you learn how to feel the work.

CQ: I think a lot of that has to do with anxiety. People don't like reading aloud because they are afraid of messing up a word or speaking to slowly or too fast, but I think this class in particular is kind of a safe space for everyone to feel like they are welcome to share regardless of how it actually sounds or is perceived.

AS: I hope so because that's the joy of it.

CQ: It is. I think there is a joy that comes from sharing in that way. It's very intimate. Even though our class is bigger than the class you started off teaching with only 10 students, it feels like a more intimate setting. There is something about saying words aloud that creates that atmosphere. Some of these questions I feel are not actually questions that I want to ask you. Ok, here's a good question: How do we empower others as leaders? I know that's pretty open-ended. Empowering, how do we do it?

AS: Listen to them-- Okay, let me elaborate. I know a lot of people who are very bright and have a lot to say, but never speak, right? Or who don't believe they have much to say. I'm sure you do too.

CQ: Me, sometimes.

AS: Me, too, sometimes. And so giving someone room to speak and wanting to hear what they have to say is really important to actually be interested in what they might have to say. I don't know-- I don't think-- I don't know if people feel that way very often that the world is interested in what they have to say.

CQ: No, I don't think so. I think that's something that you have to be very intentional about creating. It's hard to say what would make someone welcome to share, what would make someone feel like you want to hear what they have to share. I think it's different for every person. Some people will never be comfortable sharing, and that's okay too, but I think you're right.

AS: Yes, even where they end up speaking when they don't even realize they are, do you know what I mean? It's not like I want you to stand in front of the room, now listen kind of thing. But things get going, and then they are a part of it, and they are contributing.

CQ: It's a natural progression. It's a non-forced listening, I think. Which is different from a lot of other classes that I've had where you are made to go up and give a speech. Sometimes that's necessary, but I don't know, to be treated as though your words have value and the way you are presenting and what you're presenting has value makes it worthwhile to share what you have to say.

AS: I don't know...I think I am a person-- I don't-- I'm not a natural teacher in the fact that I don't really like being in front of a room holding forth (sic) right? It's not my natural. You know how some people really are? They are just entertainers (singing) and that's not my personality. So, teaching, okay it's a leadership position, but if you're not that kind of person, it's hard. It's different. Because you have to figure out a way to be your, I mean, teach the way your personality is because you can't teach any other way. We have images of the teacher, and I think that always frightened me because that's not me. Either the funny entertainer, or the brilliant scholar where everything that flows out of their mouths, everyone is writing down. If you don't see yourself in any of those ways, but there you are, a teacher, you think that's what a teacher is. It can be terrifying.

CQ: I know. I've thought about that, but I think you are one of them. Some of the best teachers I have had never intended to be teachers. They didn't set out to be. their degrees weren't in secondary education or anything like that, and they just sort of stumbled into the position and then, as it turns out, they are very effective at leading and teaching. I think I would say that about all of my best professors and teachers, the ones I learned the most from have been people have been, I don't know, like you said, don't necessarily embody the stereotypical teacher personality. Which is a good thing for me because I'm the same way. There is a vision of a very scholarly person or someone who has a lot of charisma, and it's hard to figure out how to be yourself.

AS: It's hard to figure out how to be yourself in a role, right? There are certain places where you are very comfortable with yourself, but then you take on a roll and you have to figure it out. How do I shape this into something that I can do without being a wreck?

CQ: And making sure that other people are understanding you in the right way, making sure that you are coming across the way you want to and not the way you have in your own mind. Hence the feedback. Needing to know how people are perceiving you and how you are affecting them.

AS: I think, too, a big influence on me when I went to UMass Amherst that PhD program was really good for me. I loved it, and I was older because I had dawdled around, right? And so in some ways that was a good thing because I had a little bit more of a sense of who I was.

CQ: A little bit of life behind you to shape you.

AS: Marsha Curtis and Ann Herrington were two people there. They shaped me even more than Peter Elbow, I think, because they were brilliant women, but that's not, but they are funny as hell, right? Oops! So that element of humor and not taking themselves so seriously and enjoying their company, making you feel like you are a part of it.

CQ: Were these your professors?

AS: Mmhm. It was great.

CQ: I love humor as a tool for making people feel welcome and comfortable.

AS: Oh my gosh, welcome and comfortable.

CQ: I think it helps you be more creative too, just in general, if you're able to be in a space where you can share freely. I think that makes you a better writer in and of itself, a better thinker.

AS: And that whole, you know, hierarchy broken down. There are people who want you to genuflect in front of them.

CQ: In superiority.

AS: They want to keep that hierarchy very clear or distinct, and I don't see that as a kind of leadership actually because I think Marsha and Ann were better leaders, right? Because what they did, "We're not better than you. We're not so special. We've done this work; you can do it." Like it's not a huge mountain before you can do this. I don't think that's leadership, that's discouragement.

CQ: It is. It makes your path feel more daunting, I think, because if you're so separate from the people you look up to, not just with their title and achievements, but also who they are as a person, you look ahead and think "not only do I have to accomplish this, this, and this but I also have to change who I am to become this official."

AS: You can't see yourself there. And I think part of my dawdling all of those years, I didn't see myself there. I didn't have that kind of ambition. I don't know if it's ambition. I used to say that I just have no ambition, but I don't think that's it.

CQ: You can't be what you can't see.

AS: You can't be what you can't see.

CQ: Maybe it's just that you hadn't yet had a role model. Did you have any idea what you wanted to go into after you got your undergraduate degree?

AS: No. In fact, when I graduated from college, I remember it suddenly hit me, "Oh my gosh, school is over, and now I have to pick something to do!" Like I said, I was a slow starter. I wasn't really looking ahead. I wasn't really planning a path. That's just the way it happened. It happened slowly, and I don't, it's kind of useless to regret it, not really. The slow path I took was ok. I had a lot of experiences that I wouldn't have had.

CQ: Yeah, like learning how to bind books. What an incredible opportunity that so few people have had or even heard about.

AS: Typing, wearing headphones, listening to my boss, he used to speak and then I would have to transcribe his letters as he was talking into the microphone. Typing all day and understanding what boredom is, right? Because I remember when I was stressed out in graduate school in my Master's, thinking oh I wish I weren't a student and then I could just relax! Then when I had that job, I thought, "Oh my gosh, being bored is more stressful than being busy!" That was the lesson I learned. Being bored is very stressful.

CQ: That's something to digest. What does that say to me? You're right, I just never considered it before. Being bored is very stressful. I think there is so much pressure. I don't know where it comes from. I think we have a lot of pressure to fill our time with something instead of just taking boredom for what it is and being ok with it.

AS: Because you know the feeling of-- You're a writer. Let's say, when you're on fire with something, and you're engaged in it, and it's fun, isn't it?

CQ: It's exciting.

AS: It's exciting. You're not bored. And it's joyful. And it's hard, it's not easy.

CQ: It's all of these things. Isn't it funny? I think sometimes I'll find myself on fire writing something with a great idea, and I could be writing an essay on death, and I'm so on fire for what I'm writing about, but it's actually so sad or angry or something. But then there is also this sort of exuberance behind it because I have something to say. I know what I've come to say.

AS: You know what you've come to say. And it's also the style making words do things. It's amazing. Because you don't know what you're going to do ahead of time, and then something works. Has that ever happened; to you? Something works with your own writing, and (gasp).

CQ: Most often that's what happens. I sit down to write an essay or poem of my own, and I'll write it and I'll have this big thing that I've written, all these words, and none of this is good except this one line. And then I'll delete everything else except that one line.

AS: Yes!

CQ: And then just go off of that. And sort of repeat that process over and over until I just have that one line, tons of them, and find a way to connect them together.

AS: It's the words that are directing the thinking.

CQ: It's so hard to just-- like you said, boredom. If you sit down and you're like ok I have to write this paper now, nothing will come to mind. You have to let it come into your mind by itself. By just sitting and letting your mind wander and then trying to write. That's how it is for me. That's my process. I think that's what works best, and it's not always the quickest method, but it works for me.

AS: I'm not one who can just sit down and write what happened today.

CQ: No journaling for you?

AS: No. Journaling is fine, but for me I probably-- because I conceived of it in a particular way, I couldn't do it. Do you understand? I had a conception of what journaling meant. What I could have done was done journaling the way I wanted to do it, and it would have been great, playing with words every day, but instead I felt a duty to record what I had done. That bored me.

CQ: Oh my gosh. I know exactly what you're saying.

AS: Oh I feel embarrassed to say this.

CQ: I have never been able to describe it that way, but I have the same sort of thought process. Which is interesting, I think, because you are sort of breaking that down with this class about essays and what that means. If you're stuck on what that is supposed to look like--

AS: Exactly.

CQ: You're not going to necessarily write anything good or powerful or

AS: Topic sentence, transition sentence, 3 points, you know what I mean? If you hgave that idea in your head. Oh, who wants to do that?

CQ: No one. And nothing good will come out of that. I mean certainly I've written academic essays that I thought were good academic essays, but for the purpose of personal writing and personal narratives, I don't think you can write anything truthful with structure in mind.

AS: Right. Even academic essays, I write more academic essays than I write anything else, but I don't write them formulaically,, if that makes any sense, because that would kill it. If I had in my head" this is what an academic essay would be," I couldn't do it.

CQ: What have you written recently?

AS: Letters to my students.

CQ: Yes, thank you for that.

AS: No, no, no, it's great. It's a big part of what writing is these days. Because haven't-- the last thing I wrote was for a conference last semester. I wrote about haiku (sic) and creative nonfiction because I had worked with that in the class. Now I think it's a way that people can break out of something frozen.

CQ: I love haiku. I'm not very good at it. I prefer reading it. There's something very pretty about that because it has a form. But yet it's a form that is not often used. So, in that way it sort of breaks barriers.

AS: It's image based.

CQ: I always think of Haiku as a Sudoku puzzle because it is that. A more creative - my brain works better with that because I'm a writer and not a mathematician. Certainly syllables have to line up, and it gives you some sort of form, and some sort of critical thinking to do which gets your brain working. Then it's also creative and allows you to sort of express what you want to express.

AS: In my first year writing, the hardest thing is part of this requirement because they have to do a research essay, and I tell them this is personal. Ideas are personal. They really are. Every idea is personal. And you've got to pick something that you're really interested in. I teach it as an exploratory essay rather than an argument because that's another thing that has gotten calcified -- the argument. And so with exploratory, I tell them, you are really exploring something. You are not arguing something. You are not saying here is my view and here is why.You are asking a genuine question that you want to know. And you want to know. It matters to you. And that's fun. It is very, very hard to help them. They like it once they get there, but to get them there is very difficult because they don't think they are allowed to do that. They don't think they are allowed, so.

CQ: I venture to say that a lot of first year writing students probably don't know what an exploratory essay is, never heard that term. I probably didn't. Going to public school, learning English II, you think all essays are argumentative, but they are not, as I am learning now. Thanks to you, I have-- I think I've decided,and also discovered at the same time that I am an essayist. For the longest time, I thought I was a poet, and I can be both, but I think broadening my horizons with the essay that I think can embody poetic elements, it really frees me up to share more than I had been. When I was just sticking to what I thought was poetry-- Anyway, that's my little addition. Thanks to this class.

AS: I remember that piece you wrote in the gender class. That was, oh my God, a very, very powerful piece.

CQ: Well, I appreciate it. I meant to revise that because I know you asked if you could use it for your future classes. I still intend to do that but I'm just not sure how. Again, I wrote it to be performed, and so that's hard knowing that people will be reading it on paper.

AS: That's another big influence on me. Do they still teach oral communication? Is that a course they teach in school now?

CQ: Like in high school:

AS: Yes.

CQ: No. I wasn't required to take it.

AS: Actually it wasn't in high school. It was college. I had an oral interpretation class. And that is, this is what I remember, I was in my class and this upperclassman came to visit. We were freshmen, I think. And he just spoke Robert Frost's "Birches." Do you know that piece?

CQ: Yes, I know that.

AS: It was like he wasn't reciting a poem. It was just him speaking. I was like, I'll never forget it. I thought, "that's what I want to do."

CQ: Yes, me too.

AS: Really? (sighs)

CQ: I want, I want the words to say to sound like my own, even if they're not, and to affect people to reach in and touch them. They have to sound genuine or they're not going to do anything. Words have to take action, I think.

AS: Me too.

CQ: And they have to sound authentic. You have to find a way to sort of be an actor when you read words.

AS: Yes, you do. I think it goes back to reading aloud. As I said, it was more than reading aloud. He was the words. I teach a poetry class. I have them all memorize and perform whatever they chose. I think it matters. I did ekphrasis. Do you know what that is ?

CQ: I don't.

AS: Because I was linked with art, ekphrasis is poetry written in response to a work of art. So poets respond, sometimes they become a character in the work of art or it's the response of looking at the work of art. It's the art becoming one thing.

CQ: That's beautiful.

AS: It's really great.

CQ: I love words as a response to something else, to another piece of art. I think that's so powerful. I like writing responses to things that I see without really intending them to be responses. They sort of mold into commentaries on the things around me.

AS: We would take them to the Frist. We would all go there, and they would find one work of art and sit in front of it. And write whatever they wanted. I do that. I can't. I don't know. I don't really know how to interpret visual arts well.

CQ: I don't either.

AS: I can admire it, certainly, but, yeah. I love that about writing poetry in response to it, but also being a subject in the piece. That's a perspective I hadn't thought of. Well you know what it gets you out of the mindset you were just in, and that I often get in. I don't know how to look at art. Do you know that insecurity feeling? That you hear the dopes who say, "You never would have seen that." Ekphrasis gets you out of that. You just say "ok I'm that. I'm that leaf. I'm that girl." You're allowed to do that. It's your own imagination. Yes, the moment you look at art, you're looking at art. I don't know if there's a right way to do it, but yeah. The uncertainty-- ? I'm teaching a book by Jeanette Wintersteine called "Art Objects or Art Objects." She talked about that feeling. She is in Amsterdam, and some works of art just blew her away so much that she canceled her plane back because she had to be near it. It changed her. She went and found Roger Frye who was a friend of Virginia Woolf, who wrote about art. She said for some reason he was my mentor. And she goes "if you go see art, you have to just (sic) can you imagine looking at a piece of art for an hour? No." And we can't because we walk through and look, look, look, look. We look at these little decals that tells us when it was made, and how it was made, and what we are supposed to see. She said "get rid of all that. Look at it. It's great." So maybe that's why Jeannette Wintersteine is a leader. She's inviting you To look for yourself.

CQ: I think invitations are definitely given by leaders. Good leaders. Invitation you want to open and accept.

AS: Yes.

CQ: I think that's the difference between a class like this and a survey class that you have to write essays for . Because it's just so structured that you get torn up with that and it's less of an invitation and more of a command to create something while not really being creative. Which is sad. I hear my friends sometimes who are other English majors who have to write essays for a statistics class, and they have professors who say "stop being such an English major on your papers" and I find that happens to me in some of my English classes, but it's "don't be such a creative non-fictionist. Stop being such a poet when you're writing an academic essay." Which is hard. It goes back to trying to find a way to be yourself in the role you're given.

AS: (sic) What are going to need if we struggle? What are we going to need for our comfort? Books.

CQ: Many, many books or just specific ones?

AS:I mean specific ones. But you think about I guess what I'm getting at is that matters. One thing, I think. I don't know. Art makes it come alive. I don't know. I think art makes us feel more alive. It's good company for us. It sure is.

CQ: It is. I think yeah, I think you're right. I think it makes me more aware that I'm alive. Something about producing, creating, and putting it out in the world makes you feel like you are taking an active role in it And that's important to being a human person to feel like you are contributing. Instead of feeling like the whole world is happening to you. Just passive. I want one of my things to happen.

AS: I want one of my things to happen.

CQ: To someone and for me.

AS: Exactly.

CQ: I love that thought. Well, thank you for this. This is incredible. Thank you for sharing.

AS: Thank you for asking.

CQ: I value this so much. I really appreciate you doing this.

AS: Well great.