Wednesday, May 18, 2016

"I Believe..." (In The Style of Crash Davis and Neil Gaiman)

I believe in premarital sex. And in waiting until you're married.

I believe in the X Files and in vast government conspiracies to cover up alien invasions. I believe in Gillian Anderson, Mr. T, and Bryce Harper. I believe baseball should be fun and we should hold fast to old school traditions.

I believe in books being made into epic movies. And I also believe that you shouldn't make books into movies... because the book is always (always) better. 


I believe in saying inherently contradictory things in the same sentence. Or in two sentences that are right next to each other. I believe it's a literary device and I also believe it's truth. And I can believe that truth is stranger than fiction, but that fiction contains life's truths....

And I believe I forgot what I was going to say next...

Stories Are Essential and Choosing The Stories We Tell is Power

"Stories are essential. Don’t believe me? In a year where politicians traffic in anti-immigrant rhetoric, there is also a Broadway musical reminding us that a broke, orphan immigrant from the West indies built our financial system, a story that reminds us that since the beginning of the great unfinished symphony that is our American experiment, time and time again immigrants get the job done. My dear terrified graduates, you are about to enter the most uncertain and thrilling period of your lives. The stories you are about to live are the ones you will be telling your children, and grandchildren, and therapists.” 


-  Lin-Manuel Miranda (Commencement Speech at University of Pennsylvania, 2016)