A departure today, as Matthew eulogizes his teacher and friend Luciano Iacobelli.From the opening:This story may be a little personal and indulgent, but I’ll take a risk on it because I think it hints at an answer to a question we often get on the podcast about our own beliefs in the existential or spiritual categories. We spend a lot of time eviscerating bog-standard hypocrisy in the economy of spirituality. Listeners resonate with this, but the project is also depressing, and in the parasocial contract they form with us, finding out that we still believe in something, or that something still provides relief—this becomes important. It’s never a comfortable question to answer in the abstract. It's a gift when something comes along that shows instead of tells.Show NotesConversation with Luciano IacobelliSEED Part One – Michael BarkerIN MEMORIAM: Remembering Luciano Iacobelli – Accenti Magazine
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Thank you.
So I think that when I walked into Luciano's class, he saw a boy having his mind blown by this whole vibe, and he recognized it.
He also had grown up in a Catholic milieu, rich with prohibitions and shames.
He had grown up in the extremely straight-edge, patriarchal community of first-generation Italian working-class immigrants.
Who would never have expected him to wear Travolta flared trousers as a teen or to wear makeup like David Bowie and then to plunge himself into a 1980s version of bohemian artful recklessness.
I think he saw me standing at a familiar edge.
He too had moved from extreme to extreme in his life and he knew all about leaping.
Now, what did I see?
Well, Luciano was 34 years old, and I've searched for the appropriate noun here, but I haven't had much luck.
I mean, mensch is good, although it implies nobleness, which I think is a little pious.
He was relaxed, welcoming, gregarious, charismatic.
But I'm going to let him answer the question, not as a 34 year old, but close to the end of his life.
I'm a poet, a bit of a visual artist, educator, publisher, gambler.
A lover and a sinner.
That's the opening of an interview film put together in May of this year by his friend, the writer and publisher Antonio D'Alfonso.
That's the same month that he let me know he was really dying after years of cancer.
You might be able to hear that he's a little bit awkward with the question, like any artist who is suddenly asked to summarize what they're about and what they're trying to do.
When I walked into his class at the age of 17, I didn't know about the gambler, the lover, or the sinner parts.
But over the years, he never failed in the honesty that I believe forms the real backbone of teaching.
That amidst the reading and discussion and context, one can also show that one is struggling to learn.
So, what was it like to be in his class?
sometimes even struggling to live.
So what was it like to be in his class?
Well, I must have sat at that long conference table desk in that very messy room a hundred
times over several semesters, twice a week, poetry one afternoon, fiction writing on the
other.
As students, we read to each other, we praised each other, we argued, we got jealous, we asked questions, and Luciano held space for everything.
Everything was on that table.
There were no taboos, nothing we couldn't write about, nothing we weren't allowed to express.
But there were boundaries and guardrails in the form of the books on the shelves behind us, and in the discipline of showing up, even if it was empty-handed.
Luciano was extremely well-read and never let us think that we were somehow inventing the wheel.
On that note, here I'll put a pin in his most characteristic rhetorical technique.
Whatever we brought to him, on paper or verbally, he would consider and listen carefully and say, that is interesting.
Interesting.
That is so interesting.
And what it reminds me of is...
That was at the core of his pedagogy.
To validate, respect, become excited by, and then connect the learning offering back to a network of comparables.
