Once, while dining out at a Chinese restaurant, my fortune cookie offered the following aphorism: “If you can’t decide up or down, try moving from side to side.” These are wise words.
However, they only offer an incomplete philosophical thought. But then along comes our former President —who I assume in his infinite wisdom must have read Confucius and Mao Zedong — to close the circle.
Our former President who is running for office again explains how his mind works: It’s always “weaving.” He illustrates his unique style by pumping and weaving his hands back and forth, in and out, up and down, and then he heedlessly circles them. He explains, “You know I do the weave. Do you know what the weave is? I talk about like nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together, and it’s like … and friends of mine that are like English professors, they say it’s like the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.” But can adding a circle and a bit of shuffle to a Chinese cookie’s aphorism become a philosophy of life? Better yet, since I’ve been a teacher of English 101 most of my life, can The Weave become a methodology for teaching students how to write in our English 101 classes? Let’s brainstorm.
What is a cogent style of communication? Is it the essay? The essay is a sub-genre of nonfiction. Writing on the up and up is considered to be nonfiction. Fact, instruction, reference, and descriptive narration, to name a few, are its backbone. If one can see, touch, smell, feel, or hear a thing, and if one of those actions can be repeated, reproduced, or re-described by someone else, the assumption is that the thing is true. Most English teachers I have known characterize the essay’s style by its ability to clearly and effectively support a particular point of view or conclusion. The word cogent is used to describe an essay whose argument or reasoning is rational or sensible and which is effective in persuading others.
Although speech is a sub-genre of performance arts, good up-and-up speeches are akin to good essays in that they both are cogent sub-genres. Another sub-genre is satire, which can trickle into any one of the main genres. It is a mode of expression often structured like nonfiction in that it ridicules human follies, opinions, history, and news items based on facts, and all can be the targets of this mode. A newsperson being accused of writing fiction will become seriously upset, except for the occasional namby-pamby journalist who’s either too cowered or too indolent to challenge some interviewee about the facts of the matter. However, to address all the sub-genres stemming from the four basic genres —namely, performance arts, poetry, non-fiction, and fiction— would certainly require a book-length manuscript.
For good measure, however, we must contemplate one of the other four basic genres referenced above. Fiction is almost always a story or a narrative. Its form may include every one of the elements mentioned previously, and, in addition, the elements may be given in the form of a monologue —either spoken out loud or inside one’s mind— and in the form of a dialogue or multiple dialogues, wherein several characters speak at the same time while the radio is blaring in the background. The techniques are multiple and varied.
One of my favorite fictional techniques, which is akin to the former President’s dignified weave, is magical realism, so well used by Gabriel García Márquez, wherein the writer combines fantastic or dreamlike elements with realism to create an alternate universe. It’s characterized by the matter-of-fact inclusion of fantastic or mythical elements into seemingly realistic fiction. Magical realism not only goes up or down and side to side, but it also closes a circle —the gap between reality and myth. It may have even become one of the contemporary ways of looking at Truth. That is, if one can imagine something and repeat it a myriad of times, then it must be true. But what if all the things described herein are happening at the same time inside one’s head, and voices are directing one’s hands helter-skelter? What is that?
If essay writing as a sub-genre is a literary way that tries to assess logical truth —such as if this happens then that can follow— what can the Weave contribute to essay writing in English 101? Michel de Montaigne, a French writer of the sixteenth century who invented the essay to assay the truth, offers that if we’re not born to seek Truth, what are we here for? In more specific words, if we need not analyze singular topics —whether they be politeness, child-rearing, economic principles, freedom, love, childbirth, hatred, suicide, slavery, and so on— whose domains can be science and religion by capturing the logical flow of concepts within those topics, how can we progress either as individuals or as a people? Let’s consider that.
Is there a better way than the one Montaigne offers? Yes, there is! Our superlative former President, whose uncle received a degree from MIT, offers us English 101 teachers The Weave. Perhaps some of us other professors who have not befriended our former President have been wrong all along. Therefore, to seek Truth, we must put aside Montaigne and Aristotle and our own inimitable Samuel Johnson, and we must willingly reappraise everything we have ever learned. That is, we must join all together and weave our hands rhythmically to an unquestionably perfect method for teaching freshman English which I will call BAT [Bat Away Truth]. Only then will we become the most amazing English professors and thus be able to teach our freshman students the most brilliant thing they’ve ever seen —to BAT AWAY TRUTH!
Every professor is encouraged to join me in using the following BAT methodology to develop a new cadre of future American-English teachers. These principles are best taught when there’s music in the background!
THE BAT
Do the weave
Do not think
Have one thought
Move your hands
Up and down
Do the weave
Have a thought
That makes two
Move your hands
Left and right
Weave two thoughts
Circle hands
Right and left
Left and right
Shuffle feet
That’s one paragraph done
Then repeat it all again
Circle hands
Move ‘em up,
Move ‘em down
That’s two paragraphs done
Then repeat
It’s the weave
Never think
Make ‘em three paragraphs
Weave ‘em through
Make ‘em nine paragraphs
Close your thoughts
Final shuffle
And you’re done
It’s the weave
Essay’s done
It’s one essay
Never think
You just BAT!
In closing, I wish to point out that one of my favorite songs used to be Edith Piaf’s “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” (No Regrets) because that’s how I have always felt about teaching English 101. I loved it! However, now I have one regret. I’m a septuagenarian on the cusp of becoming an octogenarian. If I had learned sooner how to use the BAT teaching system outlined above, perhaps I could have kept on teaching English 101 till the cows came home —or at least till I became a nonagenarian like Mao Zedong! After all, Aristotle has been dead for centuries, and so have his cronies Michel de Montaigne and Samuel Johnson!
By: The Professor