[Header image via Genuis, lyrics by Matt Berninger]
As I have noted often, over my forty-plus years teaching students to write, a few patterns remain constant, one of which is students lacking genre awareness.
On the first day of class, I often ask students what novels they read in high school English, and invariably, students include The Crucible or simply say “Shakespeare.”
They read these plays in book form, and have conflated anything in book form with “novel.”
Also, they mostly are experienced in being students who write, not writers.
So I spend a great deal of time and effort in my writing courses helping students become engaged with authentic writing practices, specifically fostering stronger writing purposes (and understanding writing forms/genres) and processes.
As a fan of The National and lead singer/lyricist Matt Berninger, I was particularly struck by this new interview [1] as Berninger begins promoting his second solo album, Get Sunk:
I think this interview is a really wonderful and brief entry point to discussing writer purpose and process (note that Berninger does use some profanity and references pot smoking).
Berninger is an endearing and quirky as his lyrics. And while he may seem flippant at first (“I’ll start fucking around with stuff”), he makes some very sophisticated and accessible observations about purposeful writing and the importance of the writing process (he has begun scribbling lyrics on baseballs instead of his standard journal, for example).
When the interviewer mentions his favorite lyric from Boxer (The National), Berninger offers a brief window into the importance of being a reader as well as the recursive nature of texts: “I stole that from Jonathan Ames.”
Berninger’s lyrics often pull from books, authors, and other song lyrics. Here is an ideal place to discuss with students the conventions of allusion and references as that creates tension with plagiarism (a great opportunity to tie in so-called canonized writers such as Marianne Moore and T.S. Eliot).
But the core comments I think students need to hear and then practice in the writing are about understanding different writing purposes/forms:
I do think songwriting is a very specific kind of thing…. It’s not—there’s poetry and there’s songwriting…. And I think they’re as different as like swimming and ice skating…. It’s like it’s still just words or just water but they’re totally different things.
This distinction and metaphor are powerful because they acknowledge the complexity of choosing and writing in different ways, for different purposes, and for different audiences.
Berninger also talks about his use of scribbling on baseballs for writing ideas. While quirky, this really captures the writing process in an authentic way (not the scripted way often taught in school).
As a teacher of writing and a writer (as well as avid reader), I want students to be fully engaged as writers—not as students performing a stilted essay for the teacher/professor.
We want for our students a sense of purpose, a demonstration of intent, an awareness of form and audience, and ultimately, a writing product of their choosing and for their purposes.
And in the era of intensified AI, I want to stress that AI has no place in these goals because students need and deserve opportunities to experience all of these aspects of brainstorming, drafting, and presenting a final product.
It may seem crude, careless, and flippant, but if we listen carefully, Berninger’s “fucking around” demonstrates the power and complexity of being a writer—and thus, being a teacher of writing.
[1] I highly recommend this blog post on Bon Iver/Justin Vernon as a companion to the Berninger interview.
sometimes she would forget and begin to draw intently in the head of her beer with her little finger nail painted dark dark green
he would watch her rapt (three healing blisters on her palm from climbing) before softly saying and smiling you going to drink that
sometimes she would forget anyone else could be beside her slipping into her solitary garden until a gentle hand or word startled her back to the moment
so when she was alone right there beside him he felt like a fingernail drawing disappearing in the head of a beer no one was drinking
sometimes they would talk about god like playing chess blindfolded or she would take his hand in hers or text him while he was away i have a story for you when you get home
—P.L. Thomas
educator, public scholar, poet&writer – academic freedom isn't free
dr. p.l. (paul) thomas 