University Place  Lynda Barry The Arts and Sciences in the Year 2112  September 29, 2012 UP794   cc >> I am the counterfactual part of this conversation. The fact that I'm standing here at all, well I think that's a little bit about what my talk is about. I grew up in Seattle, Washington. I came from a family that didn't go to college. I'm the first one that did. I was actively discouraged from going to college. And the only reason I was able to go to college at all was because at that time, when I graduated, I graduated high school in 1974. At that time, people thought hippies were here to stay. It's like, hippies are here, let's build 'em a college. This was in Washington state. 

They got the legislature to agree, let's build a hippie college for the hippies, right? They didn't really understand that like, the last thing that hippies wanted to do was go to college. So they built this fantastic hippie college. They got these people, great professors from all over to come teach at this experimental college. Then they had a hard time getting students, so they were letting anyone in, which is how I was able to get into school. The Evergreen State College, back then, which is sort of my idea of where the future of the university is going, to get in, the way that I always joke that I got into that school was, index card, Elmer's Glue, a peace sign, lentils, full scholarship. It was at that school that I met a teacher there who asked me a question. The reason that I'm standing here today is because of that question. But first, I want to go back a little bit and talk about also what I think a university is made of, which is teachers and its relationships, and also a way of thinking. My idea of the most important campus there is, is the one that you carry with you, and actually is one that's passed to you, in a funny way, and is passed to you in different ways. I had very good teachers, but I also had this little Filipino grandma, and I love telling people I'm part Filipino, because I love seeing the confused look on your face, like, she doesn't look Filipino. 

I always tell people it's because I'm a quarter Norwegian, and Norwegian blood can suck the color out of anything. You know that's true, right? If you have a stubborn stain, and you know somebody who's 100% Norwegian, just bring that shirt to them and say just pass your hand three times over the stain. Yeah, so a phrase from my Filipino grandmother, this is what Tagalog sounds like. [speaking Tagalog] "Hard is the head of Lynda, oh, my." That's the direct translation. My grandma was the kind of grandma who would raise you like this. "You know, Lynda, God, everybody when they are born, God makes a castle for you made of gold bricks. Everybody has a castle in heaven made of gold bricks, but every time you are bad, he takes one brick away. And you know, your castle is getting very small." So, my first lesson in math. The way that she would teach us, well, this is typical. This is how Filipinos teach their kids, especially if they're from Iloilo. 

"You know, Lynda, in the Philippines, there is a vampire. Have you heard of her? She is the Aswang. She flies at night. She is a beautiful woman during the day, but at night, she takes her legs off..." Already, you're like, really? "And she flies. She's flying through the air, all over the world. And you know, she sees our house. She's coming to our house. You know, sometimes when you see the television jumping, you see the camera like this, that's the Aswang up on the antenna." My mother is terrified of Aswang. She keeps leaning forward, going, "There's no such thing, okay, there's no such thing as the Aswang. It's just a story." My grandmother would go, "It's just a story, but it's true. 

The Aswang comes in the house. It climbs on the ceiling. It's smelling around in the house. It's smelling your room, coming to your room. It climbs on the ceiling, climbs over your bed. It's looking down. It has a long tongue with a needle on the end. It lowers it down, to put it in your body, to suck all your blood... because you don't pick up your clothes! [laughter] So that was my kind of counterfactual-- my kind of counterfactual education. When I was at Evergreen State College, my teacher, Marilyn Frasca-- The way Evergreen was set up, it was one class. 

It was a lot more like elementary school. It was one class, and the philosophy behind that school was that if you study anything intently, if you study intently enough, that in a funny way, you're going to end up having to know about all the disciplines. I had this teacher who, well, first I want to ask, talk about being here. The first person that I met when I came to WID was Jennifer Eagleton, who works with David. She told me about a question her son asked her. He's a little kid. He said, "Mom, why do we just have two eyes?" So she says I explained this whole thing about, you know, binoculars and stereoscopic vision, and depth of field. She's explaining the whole thing. She's done and he goes, "No, no, no. Why don't we have we have 100?" That's the kind of thinking that I'm interested in. 

When I was at just recently, I'll be showing some slides, I was at a second-grade school, asking them about what the campus, what school looked like in a hundred years. I was listening to a woman in the library giving a reading class. She was giving this reading class where she would make these statements. Somehow, the kids were supposed to cover up letters that she had used in one of the words. But one of the questions was, she'd make a statement, and the statement was, "I have never swallowed a vitamin whole." The kids all look at each other, and one goes, "What's a vitamin hole?" [laughter] So these are the questions that I'm really interested in, or in that flipping. The first seminar that I went to here at WID was given by one of the WID fellows, Robert Novak. One of the things he asked was, "What's the question that keeps you up at night? What's the thing that you can't solve?" He was speaking about it, I guess, from the point of view from a scientist, but I realized that I had had one that I've had since I was 19, that sort of guided everything that I do. It's this question about what is an image. So, what I like to do is just,  I see there's a couple of my students here, so just forgive me. I'll just explain my idea really fast, and then we'll get to looking at some interesting things. 

What is an image? Okay, so one of the things that I can say about an image after kind of studying what this idea might be. I think what my teacher meant is that anything that is contained by the arts, any kind of thing that's contained by the arts, is something that she would call an image. The work that I've done since then, I would say that anything that is also contained by, a toy, that a kid is really, really attached to, also contains an image. In fact, our urge to work with images predates our ability to speak. All of you have known kids that have a blankie. You know what I'm talking about, some little blankie that they're super attached to. I would argue that that is a character in a costume. What's interesting about that blankie, or let's say a kid, now the kid's a little older, so it's not a blankie. Say it's a little stuffed bunny. Actually, I've become so interested in kids with their objects, that that's all I do, is watch what they have. 

My favorite one that I saw recently was a kid who had had the entire Incredible Hulk doll, but all he had left was the leg. He was like in an airport, it's like, the leg's all I need, man. [laughter] So if you've said to a kid with a bunny, "Is your bunny alive?" It's like the kid knows you're being kind of a jerk, and "No, bunny is not alive." If you say, "Is bunny dead?" it's like, "Don't ever, ever talk about bunny that way." Bunny's not alive, Bunny's not dead. Bunny's something in between. So what is bunny? What is the function of this object that's containing an image? I had some friends, who-- The other thing that's really interesting about this is by the time the relationship, by the time parents notice this relationship with the object, it's already happened. When it happens and how it happens, I don't know. But I do know that the relationship is pretty ferocious. I had some friends who kid got attached to what was arguably the ugliest toy ever. It was giant banana with little blue eyes and dangly arms. The kid called it Mr. Banana. 

It was like the parents hated Mr. Banana from the beginning. So the kid loved Mr. Banana. A little girl. She had Mr. Banana from the age of two, three, four. Now she's five and the parents really want her to get off of Mr. Banana. How are they going to wean her off of Mr. Banana. Mr. Banana at this point is looking kind of like a junkie, right, he's been around. You've seen that. My friend-- He is my friend, but I married him, Kevin. My husband talks about the patina of love. 

That's what he calls this. So, they had this idea that they were going to wean her off of Mr. Banana by-- They were on a trip to England. They thought they'd do it on this trip, which of course means they don't understand the function of Mr. Banana at all. So they go, and what they decided to do was let her know that Mr. Banana didn't really like to go outside when he was in England. So they were in London. They were in their hotel, and they said we need to leave Mr. Banana inside. We're going to go out and have breakfast and go for a stroll and come back, and he'll be happy to see you. She wasn't really liking this idea, but she finally agreed to do it. They go out, they take their stroll. They're feeling very proud. 

They come back in. The room's been cleaned and Mr. Banana is gone. I don't know if you heard that. I love saying "Mr. Banana is gone," because you can sometimes hear people go... [gasps]. Y'all don't even know Mr. Banana, and you're like, "Not Mr. Banana! Please, no!" Because you do know Mr. Banana, right? So she's screaming. My friends realize what a nightmare this is. They call downstairs and luckily the concierge was somebody who also understood the idea of Mr. Banana. My friend says the best phone call that he ever got was, ring, ring, ring, "Mr. Banana has been found." [laughter] Right? [knocks] Open the door, here this person is delivering this thing. The girl runs to it. Everybody is crying. 

Mr. Banana has been found. It's kind of interesting, because Mr. Banana truly is a piece of polyester with polyester filling. But he's also something that's going to make the difference of whether that kid can sleep or not that night. So what's that? I mean, I think that that's interesting. I would argue that he contains an image. We do a similar thing as adults where we have a book. Maybe it's a book that somebody gave you and said you had to read it, you had to read it, you had to read it. You know about you, but that puts a force field around it. Sometimes it takes me a long time to read it. So there's this book that's been kicking around your house for years, and finally it's late one night and you start to read it. 

You're about 20 pages in and you get that feeling that it's a good book. You know what I'm talking about? That weird, it's almost like getting a crush, a little bit. It's a good book, 40 pages, man this seems like a good book, 60 pages, don't mess this relationship up, man! Because it is a good book. So what do you do? You're reading, reading, reading. You know that thing about "can't put it down," another thing it has in common with Mr. Banana. Then finally, you're getting to the end of the book. You have about 40 pages left. What do you do? Don't you slow down? What's that? You slow down because this world is only now a quarter-of-an-inch thick. That's all you have left of this world. Then when you finish the book, say it's the middle of the night and you finish the book, what do you do? Don't you hold the book and like, look at it? I love you! I always say that I feel like making out with it after it's done. 

I would argue that this object went from something that didn't contain an image to something that does contain an image. So one thing about it, is it feels somehow alive. It's easier for me to just show you what an image feels like. I want you to remember your first phone number, because I'm just going to count to three, and we're just going to say our first phone numbers out loud. Okay? One, two, three. [all talking] I'm going to try it again. One, two, three. [all talking] Okay, now your phone number from three phone numbers ago. [laughter] Can you feel it? And this is one of the questions, one of the reasons I'm at WID. I'd like to know what's going on in the brain that's so different in that first phone number and that third phone number. 

One of the things, another thing about an image is that it feels somehow alive, because after you all said your phone number, you all did this. What's that? Social Security number... First phone number... So, it feels somehow alive. The other thing about it, another thing about an image, is it's specific. It's specific and it's spontaneous. Let's see, specific. When I was a kid, I had heard about imaginary friends, and I always wanted one. Maybe some of you guys had them. Then I realized I could just lie, because who could tell, which meant I had an imaginary imaginary friend, which doesn't it serve the same purpose? So, it was like, I had a friend who I knew had a real imaginary friend, and here's why. 

The friend a dumb name, Sprinkles, and my friend told me she could only talk to Sprinkles through a moving fan. [imitates the vibrating speech] "Hello, Sprinkles, how are you doing?" [normal speech] You can't make that -- up, right? I mean, you wouldn't be lying about that, that I could only talk to them through a fan. The other thing about it is, it's spontaneous and it's satisfying, even if it doesn't make sense to the top of the mind. So a version of that would be a song that I loved when I was in junior high school called "Groovin'" by the Young Rascals, who are now the AARP Rascals, but they're still Rascals. It was a song that went, § Groovin' § § on a Sunday afternoon... § And there was a line I loved. § That would be ecstasy § § You and me and Leslie § § Groovin'... § And I didn't know who Leslie was, right, but that sounded good to me, "You and me and Leslie Groovin'." I loved how Leslie could be a boy or a girl, depending on how I was swinging that year, you know? You and me and Leslie grooving. When I got older and I had a car that didn't have the speakers blown out, here comes my song. § That would be ecstasy § § You and me, endlessly § § grooving... § It wasn't you and me and Leslie grooving. It was you and me endlessly grooving. Which is the better lyric? Leslie, right? Leslie is an image. 

Endlessly is not. What's the first thing your English teacher would take out and say, well, Leslie isn't really properly introduced in the song, it doesn't contribute to the arc. What about "endlessly"? Endlessly rhymes and makes sense. I would argue it cuts the balls right off the song and throws them out the window. So again, counterfactual. There's something about Leslie, even if we don't know who Leslie is, that gives us a feeling of an image. I've become really, really interested in kids for a lot of reasons, but I've been trying to track down what an image is, and trying to track down what story structure is. I end up with kids a lot. One of the things that I've been trying to figure out, another reason why I'm here, is for the first time in human history, parents now have something that's more compelling to look at than their child's face, which is their little digital device. One of the things I love to do, I love to time eye contact between parents and children, when the parent has a digital device, or when both the parent and the child have a digital device. 

It's amazing how long a mother or father can go without looking at their child's eyes. I'm really interested in what's going on with that, how that's going to play out in the future. But one of the things it's allowed, is it's allowed me to talk to kids, particularly on airplanes. You know how they always put the kid in the middle seat? So mom's over here. There's a kid who sits next to me. His name is Jack. He's about eight, and thank God he didn't have a digital device. He had a sticker book. I had my little drawing pad. What I do, I found that I can't just go up to kids and go, "I'd like to talk about your transitional object." You know, I just can't. 

It doesn't work. So what I do is I just start to draw. I draw really big. So I'm drawing, and he looks over and goes, "You draw." And I go, "Yeah, I'm a cartoonist." And he goes, "Draw something." So I draw a chicken. He goes, "You are!" I go, "I know!" And I said, "Do you want to play this game?" It's this game that we all played, nobody made it up. It belongs to everybody, where you make a scribble and you pass it to their friend, they look at it, and they turn it into something. Then they make a scribble and pass it back and forth. If you do this enough times with a kid, you'll get a story. So we passed about two or three times, and suddenly this kids goes, "Ooh, ooh, I have a story, and you can make it into a comic strip." Because when I was a little kid, that's what I imagined creative inspiration was, "Ooh! I have a novel. It's a trilogy..." I wish it was like that. 

It's not. But he did. So this is the story he told me. I did make it into a comic strip. But this is the story verbatim. The kid's name is Jack. He goes, "It's called Chicken Attack, by Jack." So here's the story. One morning, a chicken was eaten by a man. The man went to work. His stomach started to feel funny. 

He went to the Port-a-let, and then he went. The chicken came out. The man was surprised. The chicken was also surprised. The chicken ran from the Port-a-let to the construction site. They put the chicken in charge and from then on, the chicken was boss. [laughter] Isn't that an oddly satisfying story? It makes no sense whatsoever, right? No sense. And yet, when you hear it, don't you feel like, "Yeah!" Like what the hell is that? What is that? I mean, that to me, and you physically feel different than before you heard Chicken Attack by Jack than before you heard Chicken Attack by Jack. So, that's another thing. It's satisfying even if it doesn't make sense. 

The other thing about, and one of the things that I heard-- I feel like I'm like the nightmare scenario for people who are really serious about the sciences, because I just hear things. And especially when people talk about the brain now, everybody has a hard on for the brain, and we're like, anything that has to do with neuro-whatever, chicken soup for the neurological soul. Anything that has to do with that and people get excited. But I did excited when trying to track down this idea about what is an image, not only what is an image, but what would be the biological reason that we would've hauled this inclination toward the arts with us through all of our evolutionary stages. That's something I need other people to help me answer. One of the things that I heard when they were starting functional MRIs, were starting to become popular, there was somebody, it was on NPR, and again, this is the nightmare, right? I heard it on NPR, I can't remember who it was, but he was talking about a brain,  and it's like so neat. I mean, I know like, the nightmare doing that. But this guy made a comparison. There was some interest in the brain, what kind of activity, what kind of blood flow. I wish, you know, in the beginning they'd tell you the brain lights up. 

I wish it did. I'd go down into the basement and just disco out all day. But it doesn't. So they're measuring the blood flow. What part of the brain gets this certain kind of signature, this blood flow activity, when an adult is in creative concentration. And also, the same curiosity about when a kid is in deep play. What I remember, is they said that the brains looked very similar. To me, that was a clue. Again, it's just like a hippie artist putting together something, but it seemed right to me. So I thought to myself, well, first of all, deep play. 

When we get older, we mistake play and fun. When you're a kid, if you watch kids that are in deep play, they don't look like they're having fun. They are absorbed. In fact, they don't even know they're falling into it. That's another thing, watching parents in this whole thing with timing, digital devices and eye contact. I was watching a mother and her child having breakfast. The mom's on her cell phone. [imitates babbling] The kid's about six, and he's having bacon and eggs. So, she's [imitates babbling]. The kid picks up this bacon and he's about to eat it, and all of a sudden, he's picking it up, and he goes, "I'm gonna eat you!" [laughter] Right? And the bacon's, "No! No!" He's like, "Yes! I'm gonna eat you!" "Please don't eat me!" I'm watching this, like how's this going to come out, you know? We're all engaged, except for mom. 

Then Mom goes, "What are you doing?" And all of a sudden, he has no idea whatsoever what he's doing. He's just dangling bacon. I'm the son that you think I am, you know, that you're raising me to be. Well, one of the things that I thought to myself about this clue about, see the brains do look similar when we're engaged in these states. Then I started to think about, well, all right, so maybe it has something to do with images. Then I came to this question pretty quick. If I had a table here, and a drawing pad and some markers, and there was a four-year-old girl there, and I say come on, Maddie, let's draw something. If she was terrified to draw, we'd be worried about her psychologically, wouldn't we? Wouldn't you say there'd be a worry about that? Now Maddie's 40. Try to hand her something to draw with and she's scared. We're all like, me too. 

So that's kind of interesting to me. I wonder what happened there. The other thing is say that I was going to have this kid and we do an experiment. The kid's never allowed to play at all until they're like 21. What do we know about that kid by the time they're 21 if they're never allowed to play? Anybody? They'd be deranged. There is-- Actually, my little Filipino grandma and my giant Norwegian grandma could both answer this question. There's some kind of understanding everybody has between mental health and play. It's kind of interesting. So if you say to this kid, you can't play, but I'm going to show you a picture of this kid playing Legos, is that going to help? How about, let's watch a DVD. Don't move, and watch this kid playing Legos. 

Is that going to help? Live! We're going to go live! You can't move, but you can watch this kid playing Legos. That's the state where most of us are at by the time we're adults in our relationship to the arts. We get this feeling that unless we're really, really good at it, in fact unless you can make a living from it, at a certain point, we really don't have the right to do it. I always say it's like thinking you can't ride a bike unless you can ride like Lance Armstrong, although it turns out not even Lance Armstrong could ride like Lance Armstrong. [laughter] So I started to, one of the questions that I have-- And the other thing is how fast we give up on it. I don't know about you, but I remember being about nine and hearing like, probably on CBS News, that if you want to be a concert pianist, you had to begin by the age of four. I'm like, I'm nine. I said, damn. Or, if you want to be, like a ballet dancer, you had to begin by the age of three. It's like, damn. 

You know, by 12, you're sort of washed up, right? So, I also think that something similar happens in the sciences. I think that there's this thing of giving up so early. I'm curious about it, because I wonder what it is we're giving up. I don't mean that in like a hippie aura way. I mean literally, what is it. Like, almost everybody has a story of exactly when they gave up drawing. I met a woman who told me, it was a story when she gave up science and drawing at the same time. It was when she was supposed to draw a cell. She had a teacher who didn't like her, and didn't like what she did, and she was just done with drawing and science. But here's the thing. 

Even if you've given up on it, one of the things is you're pretty much still fluent. And the way that I can show you that is to hand you a baby that you like. You have to like babies, and you have to like this baby. But if I hand you a baby that you like, watch anywhere, when you watch like, the most grumpy-looking dudes just walking around and somebody hands them their grandson, they'll sing to them. They dance with them. They'll draw. In fact, just snatch the baby away, and the guy will look like he's out of his mind, you know. They'll draw. They'll do all these things. When I say to people, why do you think this is, people say, well, babies aren't judgmental. 

I don't think that's the problem. By the way, they are. They will scream in your face, like if there's something, you're holding my duck wrong. They're very judgmental. I think the reason that we do this with babies is because it's our first language. It's a language that works. So, I'm going to show you some slides about some of the stuff I've been working on, and then show you some of the ideas that some of the kids that I've been talking to about the future of college, have come to. Okay, first I have to start by reciting a poem. Isn't that scary, when someone says I'm going to recite a poem? Or, the only thing scarier is I'm going to do an interpretative dance while I'm reciting the poem. [laughter] Poetry was something that I lied about. 

I think poetry is really, really important the more I'm studying about the hemispheric differences in the brain. I decided early on, once I realized that I would have-- If you think of all the poems you've accidentally memorized already, like advertisements, a lot of times. Five. Five dollar. Five dollar footlong. Right? You know what I'm talking about? Right? That's a song that just got caught in my head forever. I thought well, maybe if I memorized some poems, I could have another choice besides that or the five dollar footlong. Actually, I had had that song, five dollar footlong, in my head for so long. I finally got it out. I'm in the car with a friend of mine. 

Her little kid is the backseat. He's three. He starts going, "Five..." I'm like, oh --. "Five dollar..." Oh, God. "Five dollar footloose... Footloose..." And then she taught me how to get out of any song that's stuck in your head. Just grab the last word and put it in something else. That alone was worth you coming today. Okay, so here's the poem. So I try to memorize a poem every week. 

This is my poem this week. I never dreamed the sea so deep, The earth so dark; so long my sleep, I have become another child. I wake to see the world go wild Sounds like Blake. It's Allen Ginsberg. He loved Blake, too. So, we're just look at some of these pictures, and I'll read you a little bit. While you were sleeping, the near-sighted monkey, that's my avatar, the near-sighted monkey arrives with her imaginary friend. The staring cephalopod invites you to attend. Please attend. Attend to the back of your mind. 

None of the Above. This is one of my comic strips. I had a comic strip that ran for 30 years, so this is one of them. God or science. You only get one pick, and there's no take-backs. If you say "God," you can go to Markayla's birthday party. Bye. You should've said God. Yeah. Instead of what you said. 

I know. I said fungus. Markayla said that's not a pick. Who created us, God or science? I said the spores. She said that I probably wouldn't be invited. Bye. Don't get jealous of my fun time I'm gonna have, 'cause it's your own fault. Yeah, 'kay, bye. And don't think I'm gonna share my prizes. Fungus is the largest life form on earth. 

It can span miles in all underground directions. It is tiny. It is floating in the air around us. It is inside of us. The us that falls asleep while reading. Plant or animal? It's both. It's none. God or science. A book or a birthday party? Asleep or awake? It's both. It's none. 

Wake up. They had a clown who was very boring named Judy the Clown. Wake up you fungus worshipper, let's watch TV. [laughter] What is an Image? I say it's the formless thing which gives things form. When images come to us, where do they come from? Why do they exist? I believe that they are the soul's immune system and transit system. There's a song called "My Mind's Got A Mind Of Its Own." There's my husband Kevin. What's wrong, hun? Nothin', I'm just moody. How come? I don't know. It's a good way to put it. You want to walk in the grove? Yeah, but no, which means I don't know. 

The thing I call my mind seems to be like a landlord that doesn't really know its tenants. Come on, just walk. I don't even know what's bugging me. Who's playing that music? That song I say is stuck in my head. Which apartment are they in? Are you worried about your book? There's my book, the war, the laundry, things I said 15 years ago, the environment, my double chin, unanswered mail, what an ass I am, what a dirty house we have, and I've had this song, "Goodbye Yellowbrick Road" playing in my head for days. Where do sudden troublesome thoughts come from? What about you? Oh, for me, it's tornadoes, family, all the wood I still need to cut, and then there's this kind of K-Tel's collection of my 25 greatest screw-ups of all time. I replay that one a lot. Man, I know! I'm still cringing about stuff I said when I was nine. Why is there anxiety about a past we cannot change? The top of my mind has no answer for this. Walking does make me feel better. 

Movement is key, and I wonder why. There is another part of my mind which seems not to know what year it is at all. I mean, I find myself arguing with people in my head, with people I haven't seen in 15 years, or apologizing, or just trying to explain. It's like there's a place in me where it's all alive. What year is it in your imagination? Does your imagination even know what year it is? When I was little, I played a certain staring game that seemed to have invented itself. I would hold myself as still as I could and I'd make my eyes like a toy's eyes that don't move, and I would wait. I would wait for the other things in the room to forget about me and begin to move. My mood seemed to have a lot to do with it. I'd have to make myself very calm and very friendly, the way I would when I wanted a shy animal to come to me. And I knew I had to be patient, and willing to wait for a very long time. 

We lived in a trailer then, and any pictures we had up were taped to the walls. Sometimes they fell. But this is not what I mean when I say they could move. I believed there was another world that would show itself to me in the smallest ways. The gray kitten in the picture by my bed would accidentally blink his eyes. The girl in the picture would breathe. I believed there was another world. But I only noticed it when it became harder to get to. There had been a time when a toy elephant was as alive as a real rabbit in the grass. I didn't know there were different kinds of aliveness, and the two worlds contained by each other. 

Something can only become an illusion after disillusionment. Before that, it is something real. What caused the disillusionment? No one told me the print on the wall was just ink and paper and had no life of its own. At some point, the cat stopped blinking and I stopped thinking it could. But my memory of the blinking cat is still vivid nearly fifty years later. Why? Why would an image of something, which never happened, travel with me for all these years? What's a memory? When an unexpected memory comes calling, who answers? I'd say a memory is an image which travels through time. What is the past? Where is it located? Everywhere? Nowhere? Somewhere? Anywhere? Elsewhere? Here? What is, and where is your imagination? When we imagine things we don't want to imagine, why can't we stop ourselves? You know, one of the things I love to ask my students, or ask anyone actually, it doesn't even have to be a student, it doesn't have to be a human. Sometimes I just ask plants. No, I don't, really. I did go to a hippie school, but no I don't ask plants. 

But here is my question. You all know who Scrooge is, right? You know who Scrooge is? Where is Scrooge? And don't go, "London." [laughs] I had a student, "London." Where is Scrooge? I think Scrooge is with Batman and Medusa. Where are they? And if we had to get rid of Scrooge, had to, how would we do it? It's kind of a nice question. Don't you feel your mind kind of open a little bit when you think about that? In fact, that state of mind that I'm talking about, I mean that's the state of mind that I'm talking about, about kind of how I see the future going for education. The thing that can kind of make your mind and hold it open, and my teacher, Marilyn Frasca, would always talk about this certain state of mind, practicing a physical activity with a certain state of mind. The easiest way I can describe that state of mind is, if you remember being a kid and pouring yourself some cereal. Then you pour the milk. Then you're starting to eat the cereal, and all of a sudden the side of the cereal box starts to look so fascinating. Do you know what I'm talking about? You'll turn it on the side and even read the ingredients again. Do you know what I mean? What the hell's happening there? You're eating going, dextrose, that's such a pretty, I'm going to name my first baby Dextrose. 

You're in like this weird little cereal trance, right? It's a certain state of mind. It actually, for me, when creative work, when whatever, it doesn't even feel creative when it's going, when it's going, that's what it feels like. It's that heavenly feeling. My little brother used to do this thing where he, and again, it's something that kids do all over. He'd take a piece of paper and he'd fold it. He'd draw an entire stickman on one side. He'd draw the whole stickman on the other side. You guys have done this. Then he'd sit there and he'd pour his bowl of cereal and he'd stare at it, and he'd go into his little trance, right? Then he'd start the war. He'd take a red crayon and go, "Incoming! Ahh!" and do all of the, you know. 

I was four years older than him, so I'd just, the only reason I stood around to watch was to sneer at him, at how stupid he was. There's nobody really incoming. He said, "Incoming! Medic, I'm hit!" He'd do all the voices. My favorite, "Tell my wife I love her." [laughs] And then when he was done, this paper, he had probably worked at it for maybe tops, ten minutes. What did he do with the paper then? Nothing. Nothing. It was all over. The experience had already happened. For kids, I always think that one of the things that happens is for kids, the paper is a place for an experience. Then at some point, it becomes a thing that's good or bad. 

That's usually when people stop. I would argue that this building, at this point right now, because everything's kind of new, is a place for an experience. At some point, it becomes a thing that's sort of good or bad. In that time when it's still a place for an experience, that's where I feel like the most interesting stuff can happen. What happens when you read a story? What's a story made of? What is and where is a story before it becomes words? Where is a story after it becomes words? Do you wish you could write? Here's the other thing. Remember laying in bed and you'd go, if I only get one super power, like anybody's going to give you one. But you remember laying in bed and trying to choose between do I want to fly, turn invisible, or time travel. Remember that? You'd lay there like somebody was really going to give you a pick, right? And you weren't going to be greedy. You were just going to pick one. So, I loved, what's amazing about this is if you say this to a kid, do you want the power to fly, turn invisible, or time travel, they're like, Yes! You say it to an adult, it's like, uh, only if I can make a living on it. 

It's like, wrong answer. Genie, back in the bottle, right? I mean, it's pretty interesting. One of the things I say to people is why do you-- One of the things that's kind of fun about being a writer or an artist is when people hear about that, they say, oh, man, I wish I could draw. You know, I wish I could write. I always say, well, what if I gave you that power, but the rule was that you couldn't make a living from it. Would you still take it? It's an interesting question, right? I mean, you would seem like you would just take it. But there are people who, just for that alone, would be like, nah. Again, Genie back in the bottle. All right, so do you wish you could write? Do you wish you could sing? Do you wish you could draw? This is a drawing by Carl Sagan when he was 11. I think he probably had some cereal before that. 

Here's his question at age 11. Little star, how I wonder what you are. Have you ever said this wrong? If you have and are interested in joining the crew of a spaceship like M-1, contact the ISS office nearest you. Young men and couples from ages 22-32 years in top physical condition are wanted.  One of the things I didn't expect when I came to WID and being around scientists, was that the place-- I'm dispairing over the fact that handwriting is gone. I'm dispairing over the fact that cursive isn't taught anymore in elementary school, and that, you know, in the end, somebody will come up with this document, "It's in cursive, can you read it?" You know, it'll be the year whatever. "Yes, I can, it says, Dear Santa..." You know? But one of the things I didn't expect was to see things so alive, handwriting so alive in this building. All the surfaces upstairs, it seems like you can writ on, and people are writing on them. So I like going from here. There's Carl Sagan's thing. 

These are just some of the things you'll see upstairs when people are having these conversations. Then I went to-- I'm going to have to read these. I have to read the notes, sorry. We'll just have to deal with it. I went to an elementary school called Franklin Elementary School to ask them what they thought the future would be like for schools. Here's what I learned about framing a question. I had them do this thing that we're all going to pretend we're in a time machine, and they were nice enough to do that for me. Then I said we're going forward in time, now let's open our eyes. What do we see? I framed the question wrong! Because I meant school in general. They thought I meant that school, but I didn't figure it out for a while, because they'd go, everything's really old. 

I'd write it down, okay, everything's really old. [laughter] There's no teachers, because all the old people are dead. [laughter] All right, old people are dead. It's haunted. I'm like, haunted? Come on! You know, like, wake up you crazy seven-year-olds. It took me a while to realize it was my question. I had framed it wrong. So then I sort of explained, no, let's think of what school could be like. I'm going to show you some of the pictures and then just read what they had to say. I hope it's okay. 

It's okay, right? You can see the pictures? The classrooms will be inside rockets that can go in the air and under the water. These are seven-year-olds. It will be haunted, so we will have to study at night. It will be in the sea and in the air. And there will be air holes at the top, and the class will be above the water. Then under the water, there's the shop, the teleporter, the cafeteria, and the chute that the garbage goes up and lands on a barge. Under that is the dorms and an aquarium for you to learn how to swim in. It will be in some caves in the side of a mountain, and the principal will be in the basement watching everything on a computer and there will be gymnastics. [laughter] Everything in the class turns to candy when you come in. The teachers are candy, the students are candy, the desks are candy, and then everything is back to normal. 

You will have to be really smart to get into this school, because none of the doors are doors and none of the windows are going to be windows, and there'll be many suns and moons all out at the same time. This is gianter than it looks. The tubes are a mile. You float in them to get to the different rooms. Every class has a different shape, and there are 10,000 classrooms. The school will be very small, and you have to shrink down tiny to go inside it. And there are books, and when you open them a person's head comes out and tells you what's in the book. And there are floating desks for when you and your partner need to work on a project. You just float to that part of the room. There will be trees in the room with bananas all over them, and a swimming pool of blood and eyeballs for the scientists to experiment on. 

[laughter] There will be giant steel tents for the school, and a lot of windows, and they will have the playground on top, and there will be an elevator to the playground. This is actually a WID drawing that I took today. There's that one. [laughter] You know, it's interesting because what people, when I talk about the similarities, you know, and then people will always, there's an enormous amount of embarrassment around drawing. It's really interesting to me. These are like brilliant scientists, and they see me taking a picture, and they're like, "Please, don't!" You know? But I think what we're seeing here is we're seeing the track of a hand as an idea is coming. Actually, the orientation of this is really this. So, what we're seeing in these, what I love about what I'm finding at WID is you're watching a hand in motion while an idea is coming. To me, it's like the mark that's left by lightning. Here's another one. 

Tall, tall buildings with many, many classrooms. You have to parachute to get out. There's a WID drawing. [laughter] There's another one. The building will be so high up in the sky, ten, twenty, thirty miles high, and you will have to float in a balloon to get to your class, and there will be thousands and thousands of classrooms, and it will go up to the 40th grade and the 80th grade. [laughter] This kid, he just handed me this picture, and I said, well, what's it going to be like, he goes, "Half pink and half orange." [laughter] That was his vision for the future, right? I thought that was very funny. Then I was looking at his drawing, and I was looking at the writing at the top. There's a very mysterious thing in this drawing. First, I thought, does this kid speak German. "Bild," I think that's the word for picture in German. 

No, he doesn't, but he's phonetically. Then I realize this is what he's written, "Built 1930, Disappeared 1950." Kind of mysterious, right? That has a weird poetic weird mystery to it. It's another thing that I'd find on the boards here at WID. Vibrating mirror. Beam splitter. You know, the vibrating mirror. That's like a really good title for almost anything. You know, a sandwich shop, a novel. This one, memory. Memory is an atom. 

This was another school. Well, it's a volcano school, and it erupts to get the students out. And every color is a classroom. And every student has this machine that can turn into a desk or a bed or a cafeteria or a pumpkin patch. Whatever you need it turns into. And there is an automatic sun that has cables that connect to the school for power. There were some interesting concerns about security. What's interesting is these things are sweet, but you know, we can show them as kind of future predicting. You can see there are concerns about well, about being harmed or strangers coming in. It's haunted and there's traps everywhere. 

If you are not a student and you try to go in, things fall on you. Boulders fall on you. And this one. It has tubes with stairs in them. They're very icy, but they can also heat up to 18,432 degrees Fahrenheit, which means your flesh would come off. This is the death school in the future. It's in a mountain and the mountain has holes in it, and the class is in the holes and all of the students are there. There are no teachers, because the sun is the teacher of everybody. This is a drawing that was done by Felix Baumgartner. He's the guy that just broke the sound barrier with his body, the one who did the outerspace jump. 

You guys know who I'm talking about? This is a drawing he did when he was a little kid. Again, it's sort of this interesting idea that stuff's in play from very, very early on. That's something I'd actually like to see more interest in and more focus on in school. This is a poem by the great Rabindranath Tagore. He was a Nobel Prize Laureate. He wrote poems, not quite a hundred years ago, but about a hundred years ago, and how he came to drawing. He came to drawing because-- This is a page from his manuscript, and you know, there were words that he wanted to cross out. He started just started drawing on them. I'm just going to read a poem by Tagore. What happens is, it goes from, there's three pictures by Tagore, and then there's some pictures by Galileo, our dear Galileo. 

I'm so glad he didn't have an iPhone and instead had a little paint brush and his real eye. Then some pictures from WID. I'm just going to read this poem by Tagore. It's from his series called "Gitinjali." Art thou abroad on this stormy night on thy journey of love, my friend? The sky groans like one in despair. I have no sleep tonight... As you can see, now he's just circling the parts he wants to keep. The sky groans like one in despair. I have no sleep tonight. Ever and again I open my door and look out on the darkness, my friend! I can see nothing before me. I wonder where lies thy path! By what dim shore of the ink-black river, by what far edge of the frowning forest, through what mazy depth of gloom art thou leading thy course to come to me, my friend? That's a WID window. 

 That's my little talk. I have one last thing I want to say, and then I'll do a party trick for you, and then you can go. Images. I think that this idea of the arts and sciences being separate is a very bad idea. I also think it's a very bad idea to combine them. It's sort of like, you know those soft-serve cones that have chocolate and-- you know, and how good they are because they have the two together, kind of twisted. I wouldn't want, I think artists and scientists need to be in proximity, in close proximity. I don't want them to turn into each other. It's like saying you want a guitar player and the drummer to be the same thing. But I do think that something can happen because of it. 

I do think that the sort of state of mind that is required when you're solving certain kinds of creator problems has to be very, very similar to what's going on when you're, again, it's a certain open state of mind. There's a neuroscientist, you've probably heard of him, Ramachandran, kind of a famous guy, he's often on talk-- not talk shows, but he's one of those guys you see on Ted Talks. He did this thing that to me is the closest I've been able to come to understanding what the function of images might be. His particular, he was very interested in the phenomenon of phantom limb pain. Y'all know what phantom limb pain is, right? Hand is gone, it feels like it's there and hurts. I'm pretty sure there's phantom limb pleasure, but no one has called their doctor about it. You know my missing hand? It feels fantastic. I mean, like, I don't think anybody has really called their doctor, so we won't really know much about phantom limb pleasure. But he had one guy who had a pretty intractable case of phantom limb pain. He was missing his hand, but his experience was that not only was his hand there, but it was clenching in a fist that kept clenching and clenching and clenching. 

This guy had been living with this problem for years. He didn't know what to do about it. It was eroding his feeling that life was worth living. Ramachandran had this idea, you can see it on YouTube. He built a mirror box so that-- I always thought of it, it's not exactly like this, but you can think of it as a big shoe box, if you even know what shoe boxes are anymore. But this big shoe box, and he put a mirror in it, and had a hole on one side. He asked the guy to put his hand in the hole and make a fist so that when he looked down, he saw the reflection of his hand. Follow me? Right? Then Ramachandran told the guy to open his hand. He opened his hand. It wasn't like there was a miraculous "whoo, no problem," but something started to move, something started to change for this guy by just seeing that. 

I believe that that's what images do. I believe that through the course of human life there are all kinds of things that are like this. Say you lost a parent when you were very young, or there was a war, or there was a big illness and your house burned down, or there was just some bully you had to pass every single day when you were going on your way to elementary school. I believe that the only way to open this up is through images. All of you have a book that you feel like saved your life, don't you? Or a movie that really changed things, or particularly when you were in junior high school, a song that really, really changed things for you. So I think that this stuff has a function, and one of the things I'd like to be able to do while I'm here is study what that is. I also think that there's something, even though I'm not quite able to put it into words, that has something to do with what the future of the university will be about. Now I have to do my party trick for you and then you can go. Or else you can ask me questions. Some of you have seen me do this, so you know to turn away, or to cover exposed flesh. 

It takes a year off my life every time I do it, but that's okay, because it takes two years off of yours to observe me doing this, and it's I can sing without moving my lips. I'm going to do it for you. This comes from the image part of me. I'm singing it to the image part of you, and I mean it with all my heart, even if it makes me look stupid.  § You are my sunshine § § My only sunshine § § You make me happy § § When skies are gray § § You'll never know dear § § How much I love you § § Please don't take § § My sunshine away § Thank you! [laughter and applause]