English Major Joys

A friend wrote this Facebook post:

So...Gentleman Jack’s episode 7 had a clever little moment torn from the Charlotte Bronte playbook and omg I am so beyond here for it. File under: “random, unexplained psychic moment between lovers that makes sense nowhere else in the plot” for $200 pls, Alex.
I responded:

The page from the Charlotte Bronte playbook that I request for my life: distant relation dies and leaves you money. You didn't know him so there's no complicating element of grief. You not only inherit enough money to secure your own future more than comfortably, but you also have enough to share.

I could go on like this all day.  I could create a whole game!  Of course, I'm sure that someone already has.

My friend wrote back to say, "This reads like a 19th century choose your own adventure."

Ah, English major joys!

Yesterday I had a different set of joys.  I was listening to colleagues talking about 1980's music; they were eating a late lunch while I cut pie into slices for evening students who would soon be arriving.  My colleagues are younger than I am, so it was sort of strange.  The music of my college and grad school years is the music of their middle and high school years.  One of them confused Bono with Michael Stipe. 

I reminisced about when REM first broke into the national scene, and I would watch their videos on MTV trying to figure out the lyrics that we had been told were very profound, but who could understand the vocal mumblings?

One of the younger colleagues made a connection to Kurt Cobain.  I hadn't ever made a line from REM to Nirvana before, but it intrigued me.

I could have stayed there talking about the music of the 80's and 90's all day, but I don't want to be that kind of geezer.  I finished cleaning up after the pie cutting and slipped away, leaving them to move along to exchanging interesting student stories and me to think about how little I know about the music being produced today.

A few hours later:

In a strange case of synchronicity, as I was driving into work today, the NPR announcer remarked that on this day in 1984, Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. was released.  I thought about that album; if I made a list of my top 10 albums that have been most important to me, Born in the U.S.A. might be on that list, as would the Police album, Synchronicity.  Certainly U2's War would be on that list.  Hmm.  What else would be on that list?  Anything from the 90's?  Probably Nirvana's Nevermind and the first album released by Garbage.

Once  I thought a fun writing assignment might be to show the movie The Big Chill and to ask students to write about the music they'd choose if they were creating a similar script.  But soon after I had that idea, I stopped teaching the kinds of classes where I might use that idea.  And so, I leave it here, for others who need some inspiration and a reason to show the movie to a new generation.  I wonder if it holds up well.