"You have made your soul grow..."
As students in both the US and Zambia start school earlier this month, I read an endearing letter from one of America’s most prolific writers. Over 15 years ago, students in Ms. Lockwood’s English class at Xavier High School in NYC were given an assignment. It was seemingly simple – write a letter to your favorite author and convince him or her to visit the school. It also seems like a fun experiment for an English teacher – the best case scenario is that someone is persuasive enough to get a beloved author to come to the school. However, only one author responded – Kurt Vonnegut.
November 5, 2006
Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:
I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.
What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.
Seriously I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.
Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?
Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash receptacles. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.
God bless you all!
Kurt Vonnegut
I find this story so endearing, not just because, I too read Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five in high school. Not just because out of an entire class, he was the only author to respond to these young people. Yes perhaps just a little because I’m inspired by the morning session of the UN’s Transforming Education Summit youth-led Mobilization Day programs. But what endears me most is just the message that he felt so critical to give young people when he was in his eighties – the message to keep finding and creating art, no matter the format, purpose, quality, or outcome. The message that the work of art itself is not the reward – it’s the experience.
This opportunity – to sing, dance, act, draw, etc. – is an act available to us all. Almost every Impact Network teacher I’ve observed has been successful in weaving art into their lesson in both direct and indirect ways. A teacher leading first grade students in traditional songs and dance to take a break from sitting, a group of students role playing how to support each other through challenging adolescent scenarios, a class learning all of the different things that they can draw that start with the sound ‘ch’. So much of school actually relies on that practice, in the hopes of making all of our souls grow.
As so many of us can easily get distracted by our phones, our laptops, or the mundane repetition of daily life, I find it just a permanent reminder of all that we can each create on our own, and what that act unlocks in each of us. For my own part, I took an art class recently with the desire to capture and learn from my own son, who can paint a new landscape every day and never get bored.
I’d show it to you, but I’ve already been gloriously rewarded for my painting.
-Reshma