All right, in that case I'll use a cooler color for a change.

I just want to thank Krystal and Jessica for having seen and understood the nature of my stylistic choices. Because teaching is a performance, because what we "are" in the classroom can never be exactly what we are, my choices are not about honesty or not honesty, not about likability or not likability, nor even about what will work and what will not work. Every human being learns differently, hears and sees differently, understands differently. No work of art is ever known by any two observers in the same way, or in the way the artist thought she intended. So you make it the way your soul tells you it has to be made.

But one thing you can be sure of, that if you want to oppose the dominant consensus you have to speak up. As Arlo Guthrie said in Alice's Restaurant, "If you want to stop the war and stuff, you've gotta sing loud." Jessica has expressed with unfortunately accurate intensity the forces that constantly push students off center and away from self-discovery. I try to make my art capable of pushing back against that pressure enough to create a zone in which free thought is possible, and I try to create not just the opportunity but the desire to ask hard questions about choices we make, non-choices we do not make, and how to figure out what matters most.