MAMET ON THE GREEN/title> f MAMET ON THE GREENBY PETER KURTH (published 05.26.04)What a difference 30 years makes! That’s all I could think of on Sunday morning, as I huddled under a tree outside the University of Vermont’s Waterman Building and listened to playwright-director-scenarist-essayist-novelist-poet-and-part-time-Vermonter David Mamet tell 2,284 graduating students that, to the best of his knowledge, “You can’t go back.”He’s right. If you do, you’ll get rained on. I graduated from UVM in 1976 and such is my reward.They called it a “steady drizzle” and “a very fine mist,” but you can trust me -- it was rain, pure and simple. I know this, because the notes I tried to take while Mamet gave his speech quickly turned into illegible blobs and streaks of ink. Professor Emeritus Robert V. Daniels, who delivered the “Closing Reflection” and whom I’ve known since I was seven – eek! -- got the biggest laugh of the morning when the pages of his text stuck together and he ventured that the modern university owed society some explanations.“They decided two days ago that they’d have it out here unless there was a hurricane or something,” said Alan Parshley, director of the University Brass Ensemble, who bravely led his troupe in processional music beneath a tent not far from where I stood. “They” also said that 10,000 people had gathered for the event – the University of Vermont’s 200th Commencement Ceremony and the first to be held on the UVM green since 1962 – but I find that hard to believe. Either my eyesight is failing or the Class of 2004 has some very skinny relatives. Also, my glasses kept fogging up.“The weather’s not great, but the spirit is!” said Professor Emerita Marion Brown Thorpe, late of the UVM Home Economics Department, whose 2001 “Student Enrichment Fund” was established “to enhance the educational experiences of students enrolled in UVM’s Family and Consumer Sciences Education program.” Dr. Thorpe’s simple words were the most inspiring of the day.“You may be only one person in the world,” she declared, “but you may be the world to one person.” This is the kind of thing that always makes me melt. Still, I expected something more from Mamet -- something fiery and passionate and, you know, socially responsible. In my day, if a big American war was going on catastrophically in some helpless part of the world – which, by the way, it was -- we’d all have been shredding our diplomas, overturning cars, burning our bras and French-kissing our girlfriends, while parents, faculty and newsmen gasped. Note we had no “boyfriends” then, no same-sex stuff, although we, just like the graduates on Sunday, were encouraged to follow our lights; to go out there and “make a difference;” to remember that “we’re all individuals forming a whole” and to put our own needs first in the service of a greater good – a confusing and practically schizophrenic concept that Mamet, to his credit, dispensed with in his opening remarks. Reflecting on his own very patchy formal education “at a college about 38 miles from here that seems to have disappeared” – Goddard – the Sage of Chicago seemed to be arguing against moral relativism, the noxious modern notion, born in contemporary schools of education and nursed there ever since, that everyone and everything are equally good, bad or indifferent, starting and ending with brains and ideas.“I’m gonna talk a little bit about tattooing,” Mamet began, referring to the age-old phenomenon of adolescent rebellion and moving on from there to the human need for ritual and ceremony, the inevitability of suffering, the delusion of self-fulfillment, Moses, Pharaoh, the parting of the Red Sea, “this idiot shambles,” “this sorry brink,” “the punch in the nose of life” and his own undoubted “hero,” hippie philosopher Eric Hoffer, among whose smarter remarks was the observation, “When people are bored, it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored.” Nobody on Sunday could argue with that, but don’t get me wrong. it was a fun speech. It was also fun to see David Mamet wearing a mortarboard and tassel instead of a baseball cap. Mamet described himself as “an egotistical bastard” – I think he said “bastard,” but my notes, as I’ve told you, were a bit wet – and attributed his astonishing success in the world of arts and letters (Obies, Pulitzers, Oscar nominations, etc.) to “luck, genetics, greed, ambition and, perhaps, a small admixture of application.” This a terrible lie, really, when measured against Mamet's sheer output, but it’s the kind of lie Mamet knows he has to tell so as not to seem elitist or, God forbid, more talented than most people. It may also be what he really thinks about himself, but I suspect that’s only when he’s tired. “Never let a man like that into an academic environment,” whispered a UVM department chair whose name I won’t reveal in the interest of his safety and career. “They feel insecure and overcompensate.”OK, I don’t really blame Mamet for this rambling stuff, any more than I blame UVM President Daniel Mark Fogel for insisting that the commencement be held on the green come hell or (literally) high water -- after all, a lot of trees on the green had already died to make this possible. At his best, Mamet discussed the importance of courage, “calling” and “devotion to devotion,” saying, “We all die in the end, but there’s no reason to die in the middle.” The kids, in any case, reserved their loudest whistles and cheers for each other, and, when it was all over, immediately started telling reporters how hard it would be for them to find jobs.Special mention should be made of the expert prelude music provided by David Neiweem, Professor of Music and University Carillonneur. But the absolute prize goes to somebody’s grandmother, who, when UVM student Nathaly Fillion, Class of 2005, rose to sing the national anthem, the un-singable “Star Spangled Bannner,” cried out in spite of herself: “Oh, that poor girl!” But, I have to say, Ms. Fillion did it very well, drenched though she and all of us were.www.peterkurth.comTell us what you think...© Seven Days Newspaper, 2002 | www.sevendaysvt.comfor web queries: graphics@sevendaysvt.com

backtalk

What a difference 30 years makes! That’s all I could think of on Sunday morning, as I huddled under a tree outside the University of Vermont’s Waterman Building and listened to playwright-director-scenarist-essayist-novelist-poet-and-part-time-Vermonter David Mamet tell 2,284 graduating students that, to the best of his knowledge, “You can’t go back.”

He’s right. If you do, you’ll get rained on. I graduated from UVM in 1976 and such is my reward.

They called it a “steady drizzle” and “a very fine mist,” but you can trust me -- it was rain, pure and simple. I know this, because the notes I tried to take while Mamet gave his speech quickly turned into illegible blobs and streaks of ink. Professor Emeritus Robert V. Daniels, who delivered the “Closing Reflection” and whom I’ve known since I was seven – eek! -- got the biggest laugh of the morning when the pages of his text stuck together and he ventured that the modern university owed society some explanations.

“They decided two days ago that they’d have it out here unless there was a hurricane or something,” said Alan Parshley, director of the University Brass Ensemble, who bravely led his troupe in processional music beneath a tent not far from where I stood. “They” also said that 10,000 people had gathered for the event – the University of Vermont’s 200th Commencement Ceremony and the first to be held on the UVM green since 1962 – but I find that hard to believe. Either my eyesight is failing or the Class of 2004 has some very skinny relatives. Also, my glasses kept fogging up.

“The weather’s not great, but the spirit is!” said Professor Emerita Marion Brown Thorpe, late of the UVM Home Economics Department, whose 2001 “Student Enrichment Fund” was established “to enhance the educational experiences of students enrolled in UVM’s Family and Consumer Sciences Education program.” Dr. Thorpe’s simple words were the most inspiring of the day.

“You may be only one person in the world,” she declared, “but you may be the world to one person.”

This is the kind of thing that always makes me melt, but please, let’s not take it farther. If we do, we’ll be labeled “co-dependent,” and then what? Told to nurture our self-esteem, I expect, without regard to other people. No wonder the kids are snorting Ritalin.

Still, I expected something more from Mamet -- something fiery and passionate and, you know, socially responsible. In my day, if a big American war was going on catastrophically in some helpless part of the world – which, by the way, it was -- we’d all have been shredding our diplomas, overturning cars, burning our bras and French-kissing our girlfriends, while parents, faculty and newsmen gasped.

Note we had no “boyfriends” then, no same-sex stuff, although we, just like the graduates on Sunday, were encouraged to follow our lights; to go out there and “make a difference;” to remember that “we’re all individuals forming a whole” and to put our own needs first in the service of a greater good – a confusing and practically schizophrenic concept that Mamet, to his credit, dispensed with in his opening remarks.

Reflecting on his own very patchy formal education “at a college about 38 miles from here that seems to have disappeared” – Goddard – the Sage of Chicago seemed to be arguing against moral relativism, the noxious modern notion, born in contemporary schools of education and nursed there ever since, that everyone and everything are equally good, bad or indifferent, starting and ending with brains and ideas.

“I’m gonna talk a little bit about tattooing,” Mamet began, referring to the age-old phenomenon of adolescent rebellion and moving on from there to the human need for ritual and ceremony, the inevitability of suffering, the delusion of self-fulfillment, Moses, Pharaoh, the parting of the Red Sea, “this idiot shambles,” “this sorry brink,” “the punch in the nose of life” and his own undoubted “hero,” hippie philosopher Eric Hoffer, among whose smarter remarks was the observation, “When people are bored, it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored.”

Nobody on Sunday could argue with that, but don’t get me wrong. it was a fun speech. It was also fun to see David Mamet wearing a mortarboard and tassel instead of a baseball cap. Mamet described himself as “an egotistical bastard” – I think he said “bastard,” but my notes, as I’ve told you, were a bit wet – and attributed his astonishing success in the world of arts and letters (Obies, Pulitzers, Oscar nominations, etc.) to “luck, genetics, greed, ambition and, perhaps, a small admixture of application.”

This a terrible lie, really, when measured against Mamet's sheer output, but it’s the kind of lie Mamet knows he has to tell so as not to seem elitist or, God forbid, more talented than most people. It may also be what he really thinks about himself, but I suspect that’s only when he’s tired.

“Never let a man like that into an academic environment,” whispered a UVM department chair whose name I won’t reveal in the interest of his safety and career. “They feel insecure and overcompensate.”

OK, I don’t really blame Mamet for this rambling stuff, any more than I blame UVM President Daniel Mark Fogel for insisting that the commencement be held on the green come hell or (literally) high water -- after all, a lot of trees on the green had already died to make this possible. At his best, Mamet discussed the importance of courage, “calling” and “devotion to devotion,” saying, “We all die in the end, but there’s no reason to die in the middle.” The kids, in any case, reserved their loudest whistles and cheers for each other, and, when it was all over, immediately started telling reporters how hard it would be for them to find jobs.

Special mention should be made of the expert prelude music provided by David Neiweem, Professor of Music and University Carillonneur. But the absolute prize goes to somebody’s grandmother, who, when UVM student Nathaly Fillion, Class of 2005, rose to sing the national anthem, the un-singable “Star Spangled Bannner,” cried out in spite of herself: “Oh, that poor girl!” But, I have to say, Ms. Fillion did it very well, drenched though she and all of us were.

www.peterkurth.com