{"id":483,"date":"2010-04-26T14:10:24","date_gmt":"2010-04-26T14:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hub-dev.bates.edu\/commencement2006\/?page_id=247"},"modified":"2015-03-19T16:08:44","modified_gmt":"2015-03-19T20:08:44","slug":"address-by-mark-morris","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/annual\/y2006\/honorands\/mark-morris\/address-by-mark-morris\/","title":{"rendered":"Address by Mark Morris"},"content":{"rendered":"

Presented by Geraldine M. FitzGerald ’75, trustee, for the honorary degree Doctor of Fine Arts<\/strong><\/p>\n

unedited transcript<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"I’m a choreographer; I don’t talk in public too much, so I will be brief, because some of us are hot and some of us are a little hung over [laughter].<\/p>\n

First of all, accept no advice, which reminds me that I have a little bit of advice here, to get it off my chest. I was reminded from the introduction that I meant to say something: I was on a trip to Bali, where art, society, culture\u00a0\u2014 everything is linked fabulously in this wonderful place. I came back, jetlagged, and was watching TV and there was this man I’d seen in Bali, who was on TV. In Balinese\u00a0\u2014 I didn’t understand it but it was subtitled\u00a0\u2014 he said, “Without art, people would not be normal.” And that is true.<\/p>\n

Anyway, here is my advice:<\/p>\n

Have safe sex.
\nYour mother was right.
\nIf you need to believe in God, be sure that you find a god that believes in women [applause].
\nVote.
\nStay flexible enough to be able to change your mind without embarrassing yourself too much.
\nTake a moment to think of yourself really old, naked, looking in the mirror…and don’t get the tattoo [laughter].<\/p>\n

I am going to read an essay by my hero, the poet and queer Frank O’Hara, in a statement for the New American Poetry in 1959. I wish I’d written this; I didn’t. Here we go:<\/p>\n

I am mainly preoccupied with the world as I experience it. And at times when I would rather be dead the thought that I could never write another poem has so far stopped me. I think this is an ignoble attitude. I would rather die for love, but I haven’t. I don’t think of fame or posterity (as Keats so grandly and genuinely did), nor do I care about clarifying experiences for anyone or bettering (other than accidentally) anyone’s state or social relations, nor am I for any particular technical development in the American language simply because I found it necessary. What is happening to me, allowing for lies and exaggerations which I try to avoid, goes into my poems. I don’t think my experiences are clarified or made beautiful for myself or anyone else; they are just there in what ever form I can find them. What is clear to me in my work is probably obscure to others, and vice versa. My formal “stance” is found at the crossroads where what I know and can’t get meets what is left of that I know and can bear without hatred. I dislike a great deal of contemporary poetry <\/em> \u2014all of the past you read is usually quite great <\/em> \u2014but it is a useful thorn to have in one’s side. It may be that poetry makes life’s nebulous events tangible to me and restores their detail; or, conversely, that poetry brings forth the intangible quality of incident which are all too concrete and circumstantial. Or, each on specific occasions, or both all the time.<\/em><\/p>\n

Thank you and congratulations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Presented by Geraldine M. FitzGerald ’75, trustee, for the honorary degree Doctor…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"parent":503,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_dimp_site_id":"","_dimp_override_contact":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"class_list":["post-483","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3862,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/483\/revisions\/3862"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}