It’s just a couple of weeks short of the six-month anniversary of… well, of my classes going online, and my last haircut, and the last time I went into a grocery store, and a bunch of other things. And today I’m going back into a classroom for the first time since then to teach. But that’s not exactly what I want to talk about.

What I’m thinking about, really, is how much this move online—of my classes, and really so much else—sparked the Corona Lectures. As I know I’ve mentioned in at least one lecture, when shelter-in-place started, I was excited. I had a novel brewing—it’d been brewing for months, maybe about a year—and I was ready to put in the time and make a draft out of it. But it was not long before I started to sense I wasn’t working on the right project. Maybe that was the novel itself, or maybe it was that the novel—any novel—wasn’t the right response to the situation I found myself in.

Seeing the Kentridge lectures, taking an online class about how to teach an online class while I was moving my in-person class online, all those musicians trying to figure out how to offer their music virtually, the online readings that started up, plus the opening up of some formerly occupied time during which I could learn some new technologies—all that came together in the Corona Lectures. I’m working on my fifth monthly installment now. I don’t have any plans to stop soon. It’s still bringing me the energy, providing the excitement, it did at the beginning. 

Thanks for coming along. I haven’t abandoned my idea of hosting other people’s lectures, so if you have an idea for one, I really would be overjoyed to talk it over with you. Please get in touch. And if you would like to read some quotes for one of my lectures, that would be great, too. Please let me know. Otherwise, subscribe on YouTube so you don’t miss any future lectures, and let’s see where this thing goes.