On Being an Excellent Lecturer

Here is an essay that I am sure you will enjoy. It is extremely trendy and undeniably well-written. Come, dear reader, help me rip the present subject to shreds: I can’t do this alone; acts of literary heroism require two minds — one to proliferate and the other to devour. Let us take our subject and tear it up like a parchment upon which is inscribed an empire’s constitution, and toss the scraps into the street; then pulverize this stupid document by stomping upon it. Let us utterly disfigure it, so that our essay ends up looking like a hunk of meat in a Francis Bacon painting. 

I propose that we achieve sublimity by means of articulation. But, first, let us pose beside the podium looking rough and tough. Then, at a certain point in our speech, let us step down into the audience, while continuing to pontificate, and wander around: Go in and out amongst the congregation unnervingly. Let us offer the ladies in attendance a closer look at our salt-and-pepper hair, so as to inflame their desire. 

Here is a transcript of all the actions that accompany our address, in their order of appearance:

Banging, clanking, grinding, shanking, glanking, janking, hanging, smoldering, thrusting, busting, gushing, squashing, smacking, clacking, bipping, bapping, bopping, plapping, simmering, seething, tricking, ripping, flipping, dripping, breathing, snorkeling, porking, smoking, choking, poking, fleeing, slapping, stroking, smashing, banging, crashing, smashing, stashing, lashing, blasting, reaming, beaming, steaming, creaming, soothing, grooving, moving, and wheezing.

When our speech ends, we glance at the clock and notice that it took exactly the amount of time that it was scheduled to take, not a second more or less. I ask if anyone has any questions. You yourself now raise your hand from the front row, so I call on you to speak; and you point out to me that you’re concerned because my eyes are dripping red blood. I smile at you while I expire. The audience gasps. You dash onstage and lay your hands upon me, to heal me. 

You and I are now evil ghosts worshiping Pan, who appears in person, levitating above the podium. We are playing our flutes as forbiddingly as we can. If anyone from the audience draws near, we growl at them and flick them with our flutes. Britney Spears, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Brandy Norwood appear superimposed atop all of this, in a Japanese film with no subtitles.

(Note that the pamphlets, which our ushers are handing out to advertise the next performance of the above lecture, come packaged with a free copy of James Merrill’s “The Changing Light at Sandover”. This was my idea: I just love that poem, and I wish more people would read it.)