Volume 03: A Commencement of Sorts
Another turning point?!
For me, there are certain rhythms to the year when nostalgia tugs a little harder on the heartstrings, and right now is one of them.
Let’s begin with a huge congratulations to the Class of 2022, and also to the Classes of 2021 and 2020, with a shout-out to all the students who continue to navigate their formative years during a pandemic. Thank you (x million) to the teachers and school staff who finished another year of unprecedented challenges. I’m thinking about my friends and family who are teachers and my former colleagues and students a lot right now. I hope this summer feels long, carefree, and restorative.
This time last year, I attended the commencement ceremony for the Class of 2021 as a faculty member at my old high school. Between my first procession as a student and this last one as a teacher, my life had doubled in years, exactly. The school year felt like a time warp, walking backwards in parallel step with my younger self. The muscle memory of inhabiting familiar spaces paired with the phantom limb pain of teenage anxiety in surreal ways. It altered my sense of time from linear to spiral. Each day, I felt memories left dormant for years whirl like a roulette of cringe and warmth. Old wounds reopened and healed more deeply. While this version of high school felt more intimidating and terrifying than the original at times, going back to teach during the pandemic gave me so much community, purpose, and joy during the most isolating period of my life. Walking the procession for a second time felt less emotional than the first, but in many ways it was more meaningful. Last summer was a dramatic exhalation, a liminality we earned and savored.
There’s a saying that you can’t go home again. Well, I did. And it’s true. That’s what makes graduation so bittersweet, right? The fact that you can return to the same place, but not to the irreplicable configuration of the same people, the same self, the same time in your life, the same dreams, precedents, and beliefs as you once held. Alumni and Homecoming weekends offer the convergent path of return, but the hopeful expectations of youth warp into different detours over time. In these scenarios, the transition from the memory lane in your mind to the real spaces of your past is rarely smooth. It’s a speed bump in the present, a designated sign to slow down and check yourself before moving on again.
For Volume 03, we’re exploring performances and albums as a commencement…of sorts.
What does it sound like to move on? How do other ritualized endings offer more possibilities for creation and collaboration? And when the grand finale leaves something more to be desired, how do you return to claim unfinished business? Don’t call it a comeback.
I always found it a little curious that the word ‘commencement’ means beginning, and yet, a commencement ceremony celebrates the accomplishments and scholarship gained at the end of a degree. I did some digging. According to this UT History Corner blog post:
The word [commencement] reflects the meaning of the Latin ‘inceptio’ – a “beginning,” and was the name given to the initiation ceremony for scholars in medieval Europe. The original college degree certified that the bearer could instruct others in a given academic discipline. As part of the graduation ritual, which usually included a feast given by the graduate as a thank you to his professors and friends, the newly-minted scholar delivered his first lecture as a legitimate teacher. Commencement, then, means “commencing to teach.”
It sounds trite, but yes—the last page of one chapter is the start of another, today is when your book begins, the rest is still unwritten, etc. Culturally, we tend to focus on beginnings more so than endings, and the reason is simple: endings are sad, often painful—a total buzzkill.
Most of our modern rituals emphasize the start of something new rather than set intentions to honor the past. Birthdays for example, toast to the year ahead; we blow out candles holding future hopes in our minds. We jokingly ask, “So how’s it like being [insert new age]?” 5 minutes in, but we’re really asking how the journey was to make it that far. We lose out on valuable lessons and subtle truths when we jump to the next thing without the adequate time to reflect. The urge to speed past makes sense. Reflection takes work, it’s uncomfortable, and we need distance to gain insight from hindsight. Commencement stands out to me as one of the ways we collectively reflect, and yet it’s still billed as a beginning. What can we gain by including more retrospectives in our rituals?
I went down a rabbit hole this week about graduation anthems, a corny yet poignant genre that endures with each generation. I thought about what I was listening to during my senior springs; I polled the high school group chat for songs from our shared collection of mixed CDs. For me, it’s a Venn diagram of Usher’s Confessions in one circle and the Garden State Soundtrack in the other, with a 17-year old me painting moodily in the middle. (Just here waiting for that TikTok remix of “Yeah!” and “Caring is Creepy.”) What makes a song become a graduation anthem? What makes the cut on that final farewell playlist? I searched for graduation songs on Spotify and found their “quintessential list of songs to celebrate commencement.” As you can imagine, it’s a mix of celebratory, nostalgic, triumphant, and reflective tracks, spanning from Earth Wind and Fire to Olivia Rodrigo. Not just for the Class of 2022, but for everyone attending the barbecue after the ceremony.
This is the intersection I’m inviting us into this month—a sonic, visual, and emotional space of celebration, nostalgia, triumph, and reflection. Yes, you guessed it, we have to talk about Kanye’s third album Graduation, but also move beyond the theme. I want us to explore other ritualized endings through the work of Marina Abramović and her partner Ulay, as well as early retirement with JAY-Z. Get ready for another hidden track, aka a freestyle post outside of the monthly theme, also dropping sometime this month.
Move your tassels and throw your caps up in the sky if you feel the vibe.
Thanks for reading.
Wish you were still here to participate in more commencements, but you are surely doing great things.
Mid read - I love the Natasha rest is still unwritten mention