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What Use Is Knowing Anything
The dream, then: to erupt
into a sturdier form, like a wild lotus bursting intoits tantrum of blades.
Kaveh Akbar
What if tantrums are songs? What if annihilation makes us sturdier? What if the more we know, the more we don’t know? What if the dream is a beginner’s mind that is imaginative, curious, and creative?
On the day I defended my doctoral dissertation — almost 20 years ago to the day— I remember being told, “You will never feel like you know so little as you do on this day.” Thinking back, that makes perfect sense. Through sweat and steel, I had written a dissertation about wide-awakeness. I had turned my love of the arts, particularly drama and drama teaching, into a sturdier form — a wild lotus bursting into its tantrum of blades. The entire universe of my gaze had been focused on wide-awakeness in the high school drama classroom. Wide-awakeness in the high school drama classroom is a sliver of all there is to know, and I was an expert on it. My committee said so.
I like the idea that my dissertation became a sturdy tantrum of blades that day. That the blossom itself sang to the world the song I knew so well, that the world so desparately needed to hear.
About Katie
Born in Louisville. Live in Atlanta. Curious by nature. Researcher by education. Writer by practice. Grateful heart by desire.
Buy the Book!
The Stage Is On Fire, a memoir about hope and change, reasons for voyaging, and dreams burning down can be purchased on Amazon.