The new rock star

... meets the old 'rock' star.

I ran into my professor the other day and, for a moment, I couldn’t feel my tongue. He had just finished a two-hour lecture and we happened to nearly bump into each other outside.

Should I say hello? Maybe something, like, “Great lecture!” He was nearly upon me and my mouth moved to make words. But I couldn’t settle on what to say. My tongue was numb.

He briefly flicked his eyes up at me, as he passed. Of course, he didn’t recognize me. He spends his time in the lecture hall facing 200 eager, or mostly eager, students.

I turned, following him with my eyes. The ultimate fanboy. Why such excitement, you ask? It’s hard to explain. I had just finished listening to him — thrilling to his lecture. He was electrifying, as he brightened the corners of postmodern poetry, revealing depths and understandings that I never would have known. And he did it with such passion. Ask me a year ago if I’d like to read a Margaret Atwood poem and I’d ask you to settle down and pass me the crack pipe.

I’m sure I seemed a little creepy, as I watched the professor — an older, balding man with the brightest eyes you could imagine. I felt like I had just taken in a performance. For the whole two hours, I had been glued to this unassuming man, breathlessly extolling Atwood’s virtues, illuminating the fundamental beauty of her mind.

It was like stumbling backstage at a Strokes concert, and accidentally bumping into Julian Casablanca. Rock star! The professor made me just as flabbergasted. How does he do it every week, putting on a command performance, lighting up so many minds like Promethean fire? What else lurks beneath that furrowed brow?

I guess I’ll find out next week. For now, he simply inserted a pair of earbuds — what grand symphony could he be listening to? — and turned his collar to the cold and damp. Then he disappeared between buildings, and on to the parking lot that sprawled beyond.

And it struck me as the coolest thing any human could do after hurling lightning bolts in a lecture hall for two hours. Just. So. Chill.

Then I realized what I really want to be when I grow up. Not the backup lead singer for the Pixies that I dreamt of being when I was young. Nor the drug-addled wretch who dreamed of nothing at all.

That day, I had a new dream. I’d like to be just like him. Maybe I could never match his dizzying intellect. But the passion, for once in a very long time, is there.

It’s nice to have dreams again. And it’s nice to be a man who can dream.