Preparing a Lecture

A.J.P. Taylor famously used to prepare his lectures in the taxi on the way to the BBC. The image of him sitting in the back of a black cab ruminating away captured my imagination a long time ago. To have such knowledge stashed way! To be that good at it! I still admire Taylor, his essay style is equally as relaxed, a pleasure to read as well as on the money, but that piece of information held a lot of consequence for me.
Many people might think lecturing is easy, performing the same old thing year after year must be a doddle. They think that a course, once prepared, is run identically for years. Nothing could be further from the truth; over the twenty seven years I've been lecturing, I don't think I've ever given the same lecture twice.
It may be worth reflecting on the process, and the Philip Guston painting above came straight to mind. That's the bit around four in the morning. Guston hits that on the money.
Implementation, putting the images together, happens later, or earlier, in which case it's like cooking stock. When I first started out the images always drove the process, spread out across a big light box. Pre Google Image, the slide images were your own and they were precious to you; weekly trips to the photographic studio and Joe's Basement in Soho, all the pleasure and palaver of mounting the slides up; sorting and checking the order and that they were the right way around in the carousel; thats all gone now. But more images means more effort in choosing; more composing in the dead of night.
It always takes time, days rather than hours to think a lecture over, but once you've thought about it, actually putting it together takes no time at all.
And I don't prepare or use notes. They would get in the way these days; it's not a script, it's stand up. I don't like 'guides' and instructions either. I say to the students; 'you don't need an instruction manual to write about your breakfast, you need an instruction manual to fix your Harley Davidson'. In cultural terms Architecture is much closer to breakfast. A lecture is a 'live', unique,  thing; don't try and kill it.
I'm always early. there are many reasons for this. Mainly, you have to iron out all the things that might catch you out, because there are so many risks to the task at hand. Getting on an easier bus is a no brainer. Anyway, there are still things to do.
I don't have never given a lecture in the afternoon without going to the pub first- that is not the case in the morning; you have to have boundaries.
That bit of 'green room' is suddenly when you have no idea what you are going to talk about. It just desserts you. I stare in to space. I have no idea why this happens, but experience tells me it's OK. It's part of it and it's my job to hang in there and play with it all a little more, feeling stupid. I try to laugh at myself; 'what a dickhead I am!- all this fuss over a little thing like this'. But you still have to come up with a first line; how are you going to break them in? That has to come from somewhere even if you forget it once your in the room.
I've already checked my pocket for my memory stick twenty times since leaving the house. I leave the pub on the second. I've counted down every minute.
And once your up on the stage, you hardly think about it, and it's as close to rock n' roll as I will ever get.
Twenty seven years and I'm still doing it like this.
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