2018年1月1日

是时候编造一些记录和谈话了

作者:Matt Vadnais

大约两年前, as a final project for my Writing for Performance class, 学生团体——用滑稽的声音武装起来, semi-convincing口音, 和声音效果-广播电台播放WBCR, 我们的校园广播站.

Matt Vadnais and Tessa Sebastian'17 run their playlist and talk during The Liminal Space on WBCR last fall.

这个项目是那门课的主要内容, something I started designing as soon as I discovered that I was coming to a college with a radio station. The broadcasts always happen during finals week of spring semester and are a way to cap the academic year with a project that extends beyond the classroom. In 2016, my class occupied the last finals slot of the semester, so there were good reasons for students to rush off as soon as we were finished, either to pack their rooms if they weren’t graduating or to begin hydrating for senior week if they were.

Despite the incentives to return home, Reid Libby’16 did not leave the studio. 而不是, 他坐在凳子上, flipped the appropriate switches to silence the preprogramed music that fills time when a WBCR show is not on air, 递给我一副耳机, and slid up the volume on both microphones to take us live. “So,” he said, as I sheepishly leaned in to my microphone, “how did your semester go?” I answered honestly, in fairly specific detail, and he asked another question. 最终, 他停顿了很长时间，让我把采访内容翻了过来, asking him something about what he would say to the version of himself that had arrived at 贝洛伊特 four years earlier, 很快我们就开始聊天了.

Though I began hosting “The Liminal Space” during my first semester teaching at 贝洛伊特 as an excuse to play music I liked, the radio show was truly born in the odd space that opened up during the 40-minute conversation following Reid’s impromptu question. Many of the things that made the conversation so specific, 至关重要的, and enjoyable cannot be replicated: It was the final project of Reid’s 贝洛伊特 education, 我们谁也没有预料到这次谈话, 我们俩在空中都很舒服, 带着麦克风, and with meandering conversations that become about everything and nothing all at once. 然而,, 即使事情正在发生, 我意识到谈话是诚实的, 乐观, 试探性的, 可怕的, 充满希望的, and truly liminal—was one that I wanted to have with as many 贝洛伊特 students as possible, particularly as they were finishing their life here and headed to promising but uncertain futures.

I have never taught at a college that places as much emphasis as 贝洛伊特 does upon advising and mentorship. 咨询关系的一部分, 当然, happens in offices where students and professors look at transcripts and degree requirements together. 然而, 从我上大学的第一学期开始, I have been seeking out places and opportunities that foster the part of the advising relationship that has to do with bigger questions about education, 成为另一个人的过程, 困难的是, endless work of living questions instead of answers. 对我来说, these sorts of conversations have been easier to have outside of my office, when students and professors are doing something else college-related, occasions where both of us are 贝洛伊特ers watching a play, 共进午餐, 或者参加体育赛事. I find such occasions—where we are able to talk about 贝洛伊特 and its place in a large, complex world as co-conspirators at different points in our journey—to provoke honest conversation about important aspects of identity and intellect in a way that traditional advising sometimes does not.

The incarnation of “The Liminal Space” that has grown out of that first conversation with Reid is an attempt to create and make public that sort of advising, something less like providing advice than making something together. 从一份即将毕业的毕业生名单中工作, about to enter a number of liminal spaces themselves, I invite students I have advised or had two classes with to join me, 一次一个, 编造一些记录和谈话. The process is simple: Every show starts with Iggy Pop’s “乘客,这是一首关于旅行和旅行者的乐观歌曲, 我的搭档主持人, 在我们节目的前几天, 选择第二首歌. Sometimes they choose something that sonically resembles the Iggy Pop song; sometimes they do not. Sometimes they start out trying to find things I haven’t heard before and out-professor the professor. Sometimes they focus on their favorite songs and 更多的 or less ignore my contributions. 无论如何, I choose a third song and we repeat the process until we have co-curated a playlist that typically lopes through at least three decades and four genres of music.

然后我们播放它, stopping after every paired selection to talk about their experiences on campus, 他们对债务上限的看法, 或者看起来是什么, 此时此刻, 最重要的事情.

Matt Vadnais是英语. 他教授莎士比亚的课程, 文艺复兴时期的文学, and creative writing and has interdisciplinary interests in performance, 实验的叙述, 和性别.