Commencement

Looking up at trees in Lynn Canyon (Vancouver, BC)

This is what the thesaurus says... Commencement: beginning, start, opening, outset, onset, launch, initiation, inception, origin, kickoff

I've been reading transcripts of interesting commencement addresses once in a while – from universities in other cities, and other countries. Most commencement speeches are quite ordinary, and don't offer much insight or challenge to anyone in attendance. This type of speech is an interesting context in which to transmit ideas, and I love to hear guest speakers who make the most of this opportunity in lively and illuminating ways.

(P. J. Perry, a jazz musician, spoke at my university graduation. I remember that because he played the saxophone. But I don't remember what he said.)

Here's part of a speech that Audre Lorde gave to the graduating class at Oberlin College on May 29th, 1989:

"I congratulate you all on this moment in your lives. Most people don't remember their commencement addresses. Next year, when someone asks you who spoke at graduation, I wonder what you will say. I remember she was a middle-aged Black woman. I remember she had a nice voice. I remember she was a poet. But what did she say? After all, there are no new ideas. Only new ways of making those ideas real and active through our lives. What you most of all do not need right now is more rhetoric.

[...]

So when they ask you, who spoke at your commencement, remember this: I am a Black feminist lesbian warrior poet doing my work, and a piece of my work is asking you, how are you doing yours? And when they ask you, what did she say, tell them I asked you the most fundamental question of your life – who are you, and how are you using the powers of that self in the service of what you believe?"

– From "Commencement Address" by Audre Lorde
in I Am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde (2009)

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