academicsWORK&service

Dean McKinley got quite aggravated with me
years ago when, in an Echo interview (called
The Common Tongue back then) I claimed
we didn’t have “academics” or “service” here—
just A Work Program.

workacademics
workwork
workservice

Get R Done: take the credit and run.
W.W.W. = We Work Constantly, a common
banner even before I arrived—ancient of days.

And there’s always been talk of integrating the
triad all these years, yet it’s always been integrated:

work work work

For the sake of arguing with myself and to
straighten out the distinctions between these
3 faces of Eve, I sat in an armchair, rode a bolt
of light, and determined that what
CHARACTERIZED them is
something like

Theory
Practice
Performance

Theorizing—figuring out the “view” (thea), working
out a vision—sense of a whole. Contemplation and
muddle and mess and guess and speculation and the
naming of parts & functions. Zero basing up from old
scratch. Reinventing wheels-of-one-own.
Self Conscious Stuff like that.
Academics.

Practice—self-consciously putting IT (theory) into
rite and routine, learning riffs, chops, moves: semi-
automatizing, internalizing, subsidiary-izing: Work
Programing IT, so that I don’t have to re-think it
out when I am in:

Performance—losing the self to gain the Self:
lost lost lost in service, unself-consciously delivering
the goods so to speak, whatever the muse: writing,
inner city salvaging, acting, hedge-fund manipulation,
being a chemist, etc—all the vocations, all the callings.
Service.

These 3 are simultaneous modes,
not sequential or chronological.
Backgrounded & foregrounded
to suit the circumstance but all
3--with me always. .

I’m being a purist here: theoretical. I know that.
I’m being Academic.These 3 operate as a
dynamic inside of what we call

academics, work, and service:
aka: theory/practice/performance.

But, for the sake of argument: I stick with my claim.
All we got here is a Work Program:

workinacademics,
workinwork and
workinserviceproject..

Work is what it is. Work.

But anyone can improve my terms and images.
That would be being academic, drawing
distinctions, splitting hairs, chopping
logic—so as to see what we can
see (thea)

xxxooo, Sam