Good afternoon. I’m Mr Handscombe and I’d like to use this assembly to introduce myself to you. Actually, I’m going to use this assembly to talk to you about assemblies which is a rather self-referential way of doing things. I’m fond of self-reference, of recursion, of what Douglas Hofstadter has called being “meta”. I’m also fond of Douglas Hofstadter, although mostly for what he’s done to popularise self-reference through his book Godel, Esher, Bach which I recommend if you find that your day to day reading is insufficiently mind-boggling and not otherwise. In short, it’s an explanation of how Kurt Godel used the ideas of self-reference to create (and destroy) some amazing mathematics and it uses the music of JS Bach and the art of MC Esher to illustrate his ideas (and also the writing of Lewis Carol, although this isn’t credited in the title).
That was by way of being a digression, and, though I’m fond of a digression, I need to get back to my theme which is assemblies and their creation. Starting at the beginning it’s important that an assembly has a clear message and that the audience knows what it is and so I should tell you that today’s message is an exhortation to try everything even though you might fail, to do your best even if you don’t win, to accept that you might make mistakes, that you might hit the ground and that you should get back up and do it all again. It’s a good message for the beginning of sixth form, a good message for courage term – you’re stepping into a bigger world than you’re used to and it would be easy to be daunted, easy to stay in your comfort zone for fear of getting things wrong. It would be easy but it would be a mistake – you should throw yourself in, try everything.
Having got a message it’s important to find a cultural link – one of the things that I love doing in assemblies is sharing enthusiasms for poetry, for books, for music, for film, for art, sending you out into the afternoon with something to enjoy later, and hoping that you’ll come back to me with a recommendation “If you liked *that*, then perhaps you should try *this*”. I also like to drop quotes into assemblies without signalling them – as a sort of Easter Egg so that if you share my taste in literature, poetry and song then you can give yourself points for spotting them before anyone else. I see assemblies as a conversation, you see – and I accept that for these 15 minutes or so they’re a fairly one-sided conversation, but the rest of the week is there for you to have your say. The other way in which they’re an unusual conversation is that I see them as ongoing from one year to the next even though the student body changes: I assume that you have been paying attention to what’s gone before, even though, if I think about it carefully, I realise you can’t really have done so because you weren’t here.
I say this because in a previous assembly I’ve talked to you about Haiti and its most famous musical artist, Wyclef Jean. This enabled me to make a fleeting reference to Shakira and it is this that I want to pick up on today. Shakira is the most successful Latin American artist in the world, her album Laundry Service catapulted her into international fame and is definitely worth a listen when we get out of here. She is Columbian-Lebanese and since one of the points of a good assembly is to leave you knowing a bit more about the world than you did coming in, I can’t miss this opportunity to digress – I am fond of digression – and give you one minute on each of Columbia and Lebanon.
Columbia is in South America, just where it joins Central America and the country Panama. It is the only South American country to have both Atlantic and Pacific coastlines and has the highest level of biodiversity per square mile of anywhere in the world. It was first encountered by human beings about fifteen thousand years ago, became settled by farmers five thousand years ago and was invaded by the Spanish about five hundred years ago. It gained independence in 1819, had a difficult time with drug wars in the late 20th century, but has improved significantly since 2005 and now has the best health care and third largest economy of South America.
Lebanon, meanwhile, is on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean in an area of West Asia called the Levant. It contains one of the longest continuously settled cities in the world at Byblos and was conquered by a succession of the area’s empires including Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek, Sasanid, Roman, Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid and Seljuk. It was part of the crusader state of Tripoli in 1102, was conquered by the Mamluk Sultanate and became part of the Ottoman Empire in 1516 where it stayed until the first world war, after which it was part of a French Protectorate until 1943, at which point the French were unable to protect anything and it became independent. Its history since then has been one of war and conquest – it remains a very troubled nation.
Back, though, to Shakira and to a song that comes not from Laundry Service but from a film soundtrack, a film she starred in, playing, and possibly typecast as, a famous pop star. It’s rather ironic that she should be typecast in this way because the fundamental message of the film is that our past, family, gender, and, indeed, species should not define us – or at least not limit us, which is an idea that comes through Shakira’s song Try Everything, the chorus of which goes “I won’t give up, no, I won’t give in ‘Til I reach the end, and then I’ll start again. No, I won’t leave, I wanna try everything. I wanna try even though I could fail.”
You can see why I thought this would be a good fit for today’s message, and so on the assembly checklist I’ve given you a message: try everything, don’t let the fear of failure stop you giving something a go; I’ve linked it to a previous assembly, I’ve shared some of my enthusiasms, I’ve told you something about the world and I’ve tied it together with a piece of cultural capital. The self-reference you’re getting for free. Next on the list is talking about how this message fits in with you and the choices that will be facing you over the next week or so. There are three key points I want to make – if you’re taking notes then these are the things you’ll want to make a note of, along with the recommendations which so far have been Godel, Esher, Bach, both individually as geniuses and together as a book, Wyclef Jean, Laundry Service and Zootropolis. If you’re not making notes then you’re relying on your brain to hold all of this information and, if I’m honest that seems bold – you get one or two assemblies a week across two years of school and it seems to me that you’ll remember more if you write some of it down. Next assembly bring a notebook and pen.
Anyway, those three points
Be wrong loudly, do your best, and keep making new mistakes – three points to take away with you, and if you want to know more about speaking in public, about writing things to say in public (whether or not they’re assemblies) then there’s a club in room 220 in Golden Hour on Tuesdays, starting today that you should try.
Try everything.
Footnotes
1. Haiti, Wyclef Jean and, briefly, Shakira all appear in Checking Out Haiti.
2. Godel, Esher, Bach is recommended in It's Unfair.
3. Making notes in assembly is advised in Christmas Stories (which also gives a shout out to Hofstadter).
4. The issues facing Lebanon and its neighbours are picked up in A Tense Topic.
5. Columbia is a new venture, but other Latin American countries have been briefly introduced in Running Out of Time and Start Here.