Answering Tom Hespos with 5 Things About Myself

21 December 2006 | Community, Culture, Uncategorized | Comments

I’ve been called out by my friend Tom Hespos to join a game happening in the blogosphere right now in which the blogger shares five non-obvious things about him or herself… and I should probably do this in a hurry since I have a call with Tom tomorrow morning.

Tom, I’m not easily embarrassed and I don’t know what I’d share if that’s the criteria, but here goes my best shot:

1. I’ve collected comic books since I was five years old with only a couple of short breaks. I probably have about 80,000 or so in the attic in my garage, to my wife’s ever-growing chagrin. Some people who see the “Ph.D.” after my name and know that I am a recovering Shakespearean are puzzled by this, but the more you know about me, the more this collection makes sense. I derive great satisfaction from the cumulative impact of stories and knowledge. Steven Pepper, a 20th Century aesthetic theorist and art historian from my old digs at U.C. Berkeley, talked about “aesthetic funding,” which means that when you look at a favorite painting you are looking at the painting PLUS all the other times you’ve looked at it. I believe that this is also true of narrative, which is why I like series of all sorts. On the comic book front, I like superheroes and prefer DC to Marvel. (BTW, one friend has speculated that I really just have a cape fixation, which explains both Shakespeare and the comics.)
2. Brad is an anagram for “Bard.” I already mentioned above — and even superficial Googling on both “Brad Berens” and my full name, “Bradley S. Berens,” will attest — that I’m a recovering Shakespearean. Just what the hell does that mean? When I was 15 I read “Romeo and Juliet” for the first time while simultaneously playing a spear-carrier role (Curio) in a high school production of Twelfth Night. That kicked off a long obsession with Shakespeare, the plays and how they have accumulated meaning over the years. I studied Shakespearan acting as far back as high school, had at one time an award-winning Shakespeare book collection (I sold much of it last summer), and have been to conferencs and given talks about Shakespeare all over the world. I was a stage historian, teacher and critic during my time at Berekely. These days, Shakespeare is back to being a hobby. Interestingly enough, my doctoral thesis on how Shakespeare invented the modern audience has turned out to be extremely useful in my subsequent careers and now informs a lot about how I think of online media, audience behavior and marketing. However, explaining that takes so long that in general my Ph.D. is just good for cocktail party conversation.
3. I have written a full 600 page draft of a novel– science fiction, near future, action adventure, and not bad. I know exactly how I want to change it, but don’t have time at the moment to do much about it. This makes me crazy.
4. I tend towards being cerebral and a worrier, which is a combination that can make it difficult for me to live in the moment and be in touch with my emotions. I have emotions, of course, but when stressed — and working in online media is a stressful occupation — I tend to lose track of them. The worry just means that I tend to think about how a situation can go wrong as much as how it might turn out OK, a habit that I inherited from my mom, a.k.a. the Chief Worrier of All Time. The hurly-burly of my day-to-day life helps to keep me in the moment because things change so quickly in media, but that can create other pressures because I also like to contemplate things deeply, which is hard to do when you’re putting out seven issues of a newsletter each week, et cetera. My children and my dog are the beings that keep me in the moment and in touch with my emotions more than anybody else. Kids aren’t big on thinking about the future and dogs can’t tell time. Thanks, guys.
5. My five-year-old daughter goes to the elementary school that I went to as a child. This means that every time I’m on campus I have a weird split-screen experience. It also means that I keep getting put on committees.

My turn to tag other bloggers? How about:

1. Joseph Carrabis: one of the most interesting minds I know and largely without the filters that would cause him to be embarrassed by much, so just 5 non-obvious things.
2. Grant McCracken: because, like me, he’s been around too much of the world not to have some good stories.
3. Peter Horan: because his take on things is almost always surprising and illuminating.
4. Nanette Marcus: she let’s it all hang out on her blog already, so what will she find to say?

Update: Nanette has already done this.