Dear Brandeis community,

 

Welcome back! We left in rain and fog, and returned in rain and fog, and while the Glass household was beset by a head cold right at the end of break (of course!), I returned to school this week with a not-insignificant pep in my step. That isn’t to say we didn’t drag a bit on Tuesday morning as the routines reset, but it was a joy to come back to these warm halls and smiling faces.

 

I had an encounter with a third grader on Tuesday morning that summed it up well: I was out in the lobby filling my coffee mug (to maintain that peppy step), and saw her in the sweet sorrows of parting from her mother, hanging on the bannister, not quite ready to be back. So I stopped over and we talked about the break—the time with family, the amazing Warriors game experiences she had—and at the end of a few minutes of smiling reminiscing, she was herself again, fully returned, and bouncing up the stairs to class. I was reminded by the interaction how much our kids are mirrors of us, despite their unique humanity: how much our work of settling back into our routines is relayed to them, and then replayed at 1/4 scale. I was reminded too what wonderful opportunities each of us has to impact each other positively, simply by stopping and being present together.

 

Tuesday evening there was a shiva for a Brandeis grandparent, which included a truly beautiful service that filled me with the bittersweet warmth of iron-strong family bonds severed (physically) by loss, and a deep appreciation again for the creative and welcoming spirit of Jewish life in San Francisco. The mirrors in the home were covered, as is Jewish tradition, to relieve the mourners from the distraction of appearance. As I sat in the living room stuffed to the rafters with friends and loved ones (and, I was not surprised but grateful to note, many many Brandeis community members), I was reflecting on how powerful it can be to simply stop and be present for one another, and to one another; to step away from the mediated practice of being seen (especially difficult in this networked age), and instead to simply be. At its core, presence is about being and time: it shares a root with essence, the Latin root –esse, the verb ‘to be.’ Such presence is especially hard to muster, and of utmost importance, in this mirrored world, and in these times of transition.

 

Driving to school yesterday, iTunes gave me the random-play gift of Public Enemy’s “Don’t Believe the Hype.” It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, their 1988 magnum opus on which the song was released, was a focus of one of my dissertation chapters, and among the pillars of my sonic world growing up. The song itself is a screed against how Public Enemy was being treated by “the media”—which seems monolithic in its pre-Internet ability to at least be counted, though of course the advent of cable had already splintered the collective attention—being called racist and violent in the early days of hip-hop as a nationally renowned art form. One line jumped out at me in the car—“False media / We don't need it do we?”—as especially relevant in this cultural moment of Russian hacks and fake news.

 

But the idea of “false media” as such also took me to another engagement with media from yesterday morning, checking Twitter and noticing that Ta-Nahesi Coates, an author who I’ve followed since his shatteringly gorgeous and difficult Between the World and Me was a pick in my book club, was signing off the network for the year, to work on another book. It struck me that the real work of writing had to be done away from the world of pithy quick hits and appearances that Twitter offers—that there is a presence required to do meaningful work in the world, one that the mirrors of our phones and networks sometimes distract us from. I feel grateful to live and work in a community that values (and teaches) this kind of presence—as a way to honor each other and those we have lost, as a way of engaging with each other and our children in the daily passages, and as a means of critical thinking about this complex and beautiful world of ours.

 

Wishing you all truly present weekends, my friends.

 

Warmly,

 

Dan