conversations with my teacher, vol. II

The graduate assistantship Emerson so generously provided me with requires that I work 10 hours a week in the department office. The professor I got paired with--let's call her RM--is also one of the professors I'm taking a class with. She's pretty much a BFD, an Obie award winner, a solo performer, and one of the prominent voices that sprang up from the Black Arts Movement. One of the items on her to-do list is "Contact Anna Deavere Smith re. class visit." (I would die.)

I started work with her last week and when I'm not sifting through the monstrous piles on her desk or filing her 10,000 emails (no joke), we're talking about Lorraine Hansberry or Danny Glover or the complicated issues of race, culture, and how the arts can bridge gaps and give us language.

Today, she introduced me as her new assistant to a colleague. (Her co-workers always look at me with a mix of pity and admiration when they learn my job...like, "Good luck. Boy, are you gonna need it.")

Her colleague said, "Oh! You're a second RM." And I said "...We're so different!" But the colleague said, "I mean in the soul." To which RM replied, "Definitely."

I agreed.