Living language …

… Performing Is Learning: A Teacher’s Memoir. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… I was building a theater in my mind, playing all the roles, seeing them in my own private cinema. Everything was connected — my traumatized family, the world of farmers and fishermen and migrant workers in the valley, my high school English class, my history classes, and the words I was given to speak on stage. Language was a thing said aloud, and oh how I wanted the eloquence of others. I listened to adults talking of civil rights and the war in Vietnam, I argued with Jesus-freaks in the coffee shops of Bellingham — being in my youth a cynical fellow with little faith in anything. The fabric of life and the fabric of words were tightly woven together, inexorably and with beautiful importance.