Patti Smith at Wesleyan 2016

My daughter graduated with degrees in mathematics and computer science from Wesleyan University in 2016. She's now a senior software engineer at Meta, well married, with a healthy and happy first baby, our first grandchild.

Can you tell I'm proud?

I'll never forget her graduation ceremony. Sitting in the audience, I was nervously flipping through the program, not paying much attention to anything in particular. Time passed slowly, as more and more parents and loved ones filled the chairs facing the stage in front of the beautiful Wesleyan library. Eventually, things got under way.

And then ... that voice!

I recognized it instantly as that of a musical hero of mine, the venerable Patti Smith. Not more than a few words into her talk, I knew it was her. What more fitting a way to mark my daughter's college graduation than with the spoken words of this particular poet extraordinaire:

-

I was dreaming in my dreaming 

Of an aspect bright and fair

And my sleeping, it was broken


But my dream it lingered near.

In the form of shining valleys

Where the pure air rarified

And my senses newly opened


And I awakened to the cry.

That the people have the power,


The people have the power.

And where there were deserts,

I saw fountains and like cream the waters rise

And we strolled there together


With none to laugh or criticize.

And the leopard and the lamb

Lay together truly bound

I was hoping in my hoping


To recall what I had found.

I was dreaming in my dreaming

God knows a purer view

But as I surrender to my sleeping


I commit my dream to you.

That the people have the power

To redeem the work of fools

Upon the meek the graces shower


It’s decreed the people rule.

And I believe that everything we dream

Can come to pass

Through our union we can turn the world around


We can turn the earth’s revolution.

For the people have the power,


The people of the power.

Graduates, you are the future, and the future is now.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

-

Read the article in The Wesleyan Connection and watch the video here.

-----

Contact Chris

borlandeducational.com

Copyright © 2006-present: Christopher R. Borland. All rights reserved.