Message from Royale Watkins

[@caponsacchi]

ROYALE is the star of the documentary "Dying Laughing, " who has the most memorable bit of dozens of comics, incl. Kevin Hart, Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Jamie Fox and Jerry Lewis. His story about bombing in front of Michael Jordan is as real as it gets. But let me tell you as an English teacher and a jazz musician, I've confronted the same failure and felt just as bad. It doesn't hurt when you get paid and are playing Mickey Mouse music, but when it's your jazz gig and your chops go south, you'd just as soon divorce your parents for starting you on music. And as a teacher trying to engage 18 year olds on a daily basis, I'm crushed again and again. Once I went to my first class of the semester after my mom's funeral. It was a seminar room with "inner city" black kids on one side of the room and high school honors students who had been "awarded" a day of college (I hadn't been told about) on the other side--them staring at each other; me in between them, not even in their sight-lines. I began talking and suddenly realized I wasn't there as far as the class was concerned. Nothing worse than being invisible. Please, somebody! Boo me! Heckle me!! Acknowledge me as a person. The black kids were outperforming me by ignoring me, while the white kids sitting opposite them simply stared at them, wondering "Is this college?" I cut my losses and ended the class. I told the white visiting kids to come back some other time (any time, I didn't care). I told the black kids to watch the school's e-mail program because I was going to turn their reading assignment into a competition: ONE point for answering my question about the assigned reading; TWO points for a double-play (an answer followed by their related question); THREE points for answer/question/answer to another question (a 3-pointer from downtown Chicago up to my little liberal arts college in Wisconsin). What a way for a teacher-performer to make a living--teaching by remote control. I bomb every day of my life. That's why I was baptized. I grew up with the doctrine of "original sin," inherited from Adam, which I keep alive through my daily failures.

[@stringbeanapril]

Nice !