Acetio | Blogma

Commencement speeches are their own genre, one that I like. In a way they are no better than any other self-help truisms, but people who give such speeches seem to tend to pay more attention to the language in the advice, making the advice more clear and more true.

David Foster Wallace is one of my favorite writers now. I only really "discovered" him after his death. He was a care and clarity with words that make everything I've read of his compelling.

And this speech is worth reading also because Wallace tries to transcend the genre of commencement speech and talk about what many other speeches fail to address.

http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/david-foster-wallace-in-his-own-words

Prior to one of Charlie Rose's interviews with Chuck Close, the staff recorded a 'Charlie's Green Room' clip, where Close says, "Inspiration is for amateurs, the rest of us just show up and get to work." This is a paraphrase of pretty much all the best advice that I've never followed. I'm still waiting for the muse to pay me a visit, to my chagrin.

One treasured memory of when I lived in New York was watching Charlie Rose almost every night at 11 on channel 13 WNYC. The image would sometimes flicker when I walked between the rabbit ears and the tower on the World Trade Center. At the time that seemed annoying, but from what I've seen of digital TV, with its blocky, pixelated artifacts, occasionally dropping out altogether, I definitely prefer analog.