“Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?”
– Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
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Sitting in the classroom, we all looked at each other a little befuddled and thought to ourselves “what did the professor just offer us? There’s got to be a catch.”
So here was the deal put to us, a group of freshman in a critical writing class at Columbia University. We could either choose to turn in our final paper for the semester. Or – on the anniversary of Walt Whitman’s death – We could meet our professor at the gates of Columbia on 116th Street and Broadway, walk with him all the way downtown to the Brooklyn bridge, and then recite any 10 lines of Walt Whitman poetry to him by heart. If each of us recited the lines without a single mistake, we would automatically get an “A” for the entire class, and not have to submit the final term paper.
This seemed like a very strange offer and almost too good to be true. But why look a gift horse in the mouth? An easy A. A 12 mile walk. I just needed to find the shortest 10 lines of poetry by Whitman so that I wouldn’t mess this up. Whitman’s seminal work was “Leaves of Grass”, a compendium of 400 poems that evolved over the course of his life. And the foundation of the book was a 1,300 line poem called “Song of Myself.” So I bought a copy of the book, and skimmed Song of Myself to identify the shortest 10 lines I could find. I found them toward the end.
About half the class showed up for the challenge which I thought was interesting in and of itself. To me, this seemed like a fun and adventurous ‘no brainer.’ Apparently, half the class saw this as a confusing chore. Walk 12 miles? Memorize poetry? “I’ll just turn in the final paper and that’ll be that” was the consensus from those that didn’t show up.
I’m so glad I decided to go. And the 10 lines of poetry have stayed with me to this day. I chose them for ease of memory. . .but the meaning has echoed throughout my life.
We met at the gates on 116th street, and began our meandering walk downtown. The path was intentionally circuitous. And this is apparently how Whitman found inspiration for his writings – through engaging in the seemingly ordinary experience of taking long walks and paying attention to the world around him. He did this in Brooklyn and later Washington DC where he relocated after the Civil War to tend to wounded soldiers.
We walked through Morningside Park which separates Morningside Heights where Columbia is located from Harlem. This was March 1992 and the crack cocaine epidemic in New York City was in full swing. I remember stopping at a cluster of glass vials, asking what they were and hearing “crack vials.” I wouldn’t have seen those in the classroom. We continued on and passed through many neighborhoods. I remember stopping in Washington Square Park where that famous arch was built to commemorate the election of George Washington as our first president. We watched street performers and learned that the park was also a burial ground to 20,000 people who fell to various pandemics, yellow fever in particular. We continued on through Little Italy, Chinatown and the edges of the Lower East Side where you could literally see cultures and language connect mid-block as Italian words gave way to Chinese characters.
We arrived at the foot of the Brooklyn bridge and walked halfway across. The New York Cityscape with the twin towers loomed in the background. The sun was setting above us lighting up the sky. Cars whizzed by below. We surrounded the professor, and one by one handed him our various printed lines of poetry as we each took a turn reciting them to him. I remember looking at him with bated breath after I recited my lines and hearing “perfect. next up!”. Phew. I felt relieved as the guy who had just gone before me flubbed a line and had to turn in his final paper. It was like a scene from a movie. Think Dead Poets Society on the Brooklyn bridge.
As I think back to that experience, I was struck by how much I learned outside the classroom. The lesson for me that day was “get out and explore.” That day taught me the value of stepping outside the classroom. A year later, I followed that instinct even further. I can connect this experience to my decision about a year later to take a year off college to work in South Africa during the lead up to the country’s first democratic elections that instated Nelson Mandela as president (I got to participate and cast my vote for Mandela). That experience taught me more about politics, the principles of a free society, and my family’s decision to immigrate from South Africa than any textbook could have. It also led me years later to leave a good paying job in the private sector to take a one year public service fellowship to work for a new ‘tough on crime’ mayor (Giuliani) who seemingly turned the tide on that crack epidemic I first glimpsed through stumbling across glass vials in a park.
About 8 years after this long walk to Brooklyn, I took a role working as an analyst at a venture capital fund in New York City. It was my job to review any business plans submitted “cold” through the website. As fate would have it, one of the business plans that landed on my desk was submitted by this same professor (Peter Temes) who had clearly found his own way outside the classroom. This seemed like the universe giving me a hard nudge to reconnect with a mentor. . . and one who probably didn’t realize the profound impact this day had on me. And that’s because I didn’t realize the impact at the time either, as life’s experiences often take years to settle into wisdom after you’ve had time to distill lessons learned with the benefit of hindsight (or connect the dots looking backward as Steve Jobs famously said).
Peter and I reconnected over that business plan and have remained friends ever since. Shortly after the George Floyd murder in May 2020, as the country was engulfed in the pandemic and civil unrest, Peter came to address my team on the life of Dr Martin Luther King Jr which was his academic specialty. Peter put three photographs of King’s life on Zoom and a surprisingly rich and unexpected discussion followed, which helped us put in historical context some of the heart-breaking events we were all witnessing.
To this day whenever I speak to Peter, I usually work in a question that leads to a literary reference which gives me an opportunity to learn. 33 years have passed since that meandering walk that led to me shout those 10 lines of Whitman to make myself heard above the din of traffic below. Thinking back to that day with the benefit of time, I am struck by two learnings: (1) the power of experience as your teacher with the world as your classroom and (2) the importance of building relationships across your life that will continue to nurture you in unexpected ways if you put in the time to maintain them.
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My 10 lines from Song of Myself
Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
I am large, I contain multitudes.
I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?
Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?
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