What Comes Now?

Published about 1 month ago • 4 min read

17 November 2024

What Comes Now?

Well, Reader,

Whatever is ahead for the US and the world, our reading and writing thoughtfully, in significance, will be more important than ever. Young folks largely understand how to emote publicly (though performatively); but it's important that they read models of discourse both honest and measured, not build upon the provocative hyperbole and absolutism which threatens to topple reason.

Equally, though, as individuals and communities hurting emerge through their grief, it's vital I think for educators, mentors, readers, and writers (each of us) not to "turn turtle." Bravely, earnestly, as learners all over again, we must write and read into difficult spaces; we must shift the narrative away from the next click-kindling meme and scandal to one of open, listening deliberation.

Writing is an act of courage; so is democracy.

Perhaps we can learn from each other. If you are a teacher or mentor, let the younger teach us about the spaces they inhabit, what vibe or aesthetic has the most drip. Then we work to translate our compositions from form to form.

In my teaching years, it was Twitter essays and IG photo-mags of complex arguments; those seem passé now. Today we won't undervalue the handwritten missive to an estranged relative; the long-form YouTube video essay by a roundtable of creators; the Twitch stream open-invite dialogue; the prepared citizen-statement at a public forum; the essay we right to ourselves just to keep our heads straight. Writing is writing.

And we'll choose our readings, too, for their gravity in these spaces. Dystopian drama has had its day: instead, we can support the writing of others who seek or even find their way through these next years. Who we read depends partly on the communities we inhabit. But we will diversify: we must seek living writers for our classrooms, and we will write back to them; we find them online, on spoken word stages, and in independent journalism, more rarely in traditional bindings with aging copyrights. Too, we will make room for readings that offer us mental rest, the limited-time retreat, rejuvenation for the next round.

A post-truth culture need not forsake our truths.

(Funny, I had expected to write just a few sentences when I sat down to get this to you. But then. . . .)

You Are Entitled to Ask

So yeah, what is Steve doing at Waywords (or outside of it) in this way?

When I first started Waywords Studio after 35 classroom years, I was frustrated at the failure of a public school system—not at its teachers, its students, or many of its administrators—to address the need for a true critical literacy, how to read not just books but read the larger social discourse.

The Mission of Waywords Studio from the website (2021):

“Education is Freedom”

writes Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. But not just any education.

Critical literacy becomes increasingly vital in communities polarized or isolated, globalized or caffeinated. Growing such literacy–and with it, ideals of democracy, inquiry, dialogue, tolerance, and peace–is the mission of Waywords Studio. We read the world to develop our skill with language, our efficacy in engaging it, in writing back to it. Our paths will wander, acts of essai and bricolage, connecting points for discovery.

Students grow these skills; educators open the ways; litterateurs celebrate them.

So yes, I am thinking hard about my personal next steps---to family, with my colleagues, for each of you, for myself.

And I hear that call, you know. The one that says, "Just stay quiet and ride it out," "Keep your head down," "Protect your retirement," and other insidious retreat flags.

But you know, building healthy communities and challenging arrestive rhetoric is never time-bound or situational. It wasn't unneeded last year; it was valuable today somewhere in India or Madagascar or Guatemala; tomorrow someone will need it in Boise or Ankara or Akron or Budapest; right here and now is good, too.

So I make this promise to you and to myself: I will turn up the temperature--way up--on my spoken and written words; and I will discover new forms and avenues; and nothing I write will be without significance to that mission; and what I imagine might somehow reach an audience will find one.

(At one point, I thought of apologizing for the out-of-form character of this newsletter. And then I reminded myself that what we write is obdurately and unrepentantly ours.)

Thanks for reading.

It feels like a good time to drop this here again.

Neighbor While Gardening

Reader,

Let me know how you are doing.

Let me know what literacy-minded communities you connect with that might be good for others. I'll share.

Let me know if you have any ideas for your own writing and reading, teaching or learning ahead that you'd like to discuss. I'd love to know about them.

Email Me

Or message me through Waywords

Feel free to drop a message on anything at all!