Shh... shh... Listen.
No, really. Listen... That's the sound of each other. That's the sound of Cawthra Park graduates. It's a unique sound. I mean it. We have a sound. Perhaps it's the room. They tell me that this arrangement of metal plates suspended above us is intended to enhance and augment acoustics. At this moment we are tightly-sealed bottles of self-congratulation, just humming at the prospect of exploding into a jubilant froth. That kind of energy has a sound.
We also have a smell. Please, lean to the person sitting in front of you. People in the front row, be cool. I thought that you would know the person in front of you less than the person beside you, but due to the regimented seating--whatever, lean anywhere. Please, inhale generously. Chances are, you may not see this person for awhile. But for now, we are all crystallized into a precious moment. However bitter or optimistic you are, and however you feel Cawthra to have affected this, we are all sharing something right now.
And speaking of sharing, how about that 'Bolero' by Ravel, eh? That was great, let's hear it for the band one more time...
(Applause break).
Did you know that that song is about a man walking to the gallows to his eventual crescendo of death? I'm not sure how much thought went into the selection of this piece... hey, hey, no, I think it's appropriate and darkly so, that it is the precursor to my coming up here to essentially say goodbye...
Now, what other things do we share, as 'Cawthranians'? You people made me think really hard about this. (Fist shake.) I eventually whittled it down to one basic idea. Unparalleled access to the Cawthra Pool. It doesn't sound very deep, ahaha, 'deep'. Pool humour. We are not, collectively, a lot of things. We are not all creative, we are not all religious, we are not all musical, dramatic, visually-artistic, or dance-oriented. We are not all honour-rollers, we are not all slackers, we are not all goal-setters and list-makers. We are diverse. But we've all had access to the Pool. Tell me I'm wrong. Yes. The Cawthra Pool. I'm actually going somewhere with this, don't worry.
This is a confusing time of life. Everybody's scattering everywhere. The four-year curriculum has successfully cut many of us loose. But for a few hours in early October, a lot of us come back together for this thing we call 'Commencement'. Now that's a pretty word. A little ironic; for many of us, our lives outside of high school have already 'commenced', as it were. This experience is rather more like 'speed bump'. But just look at the stillness and grace and refinement of everything going on around you, Cawthra. How can one dismiss this as a 'speed bump'? One cannot, and one is forced to acquire another metaphor. We are at the peak of a dive, where for a brief snap of an instant there is no movement. At the vertex of a negative parabola, I know some of you still have that Grade Ten Math gathering dust in your brains.
This still point in a dive is an obvious opportunity for reflection. You consider the diving board you just left, and the water that awaits you. The Cawthra Park High School Experience, TM, is that diving board. Constructed lovingly. Just as we all had access to the Cawthra Pool, we all have had the tremendous fortune of being launched into the air by the Cawthra Park Diving Board.
When we took those first hesitant steps onto the Cawthra Park Diving Board back in Grade 9, or whenever we got here, we were light with youth. I'm not convinced that youth means ignorance or innocence or inexperience, but I do think we probably weighed less then. Cawthra Park gave us weight. I'm not lampooning the nutritional value of our caf food, I'm speaking about burden. It gave us a burden that we bore happily, grudgingly, caffeinated, and dog-tired. We know the burden of knowledge. Academic cramming and the headaches involved. How many essays have we generated together? Certainly enough to crush one of us.
We know the burden of love. The heavy heart. Surely not a thing limited to high school, but a thing we associate most romantically with it. I can't list the individual heartbreaks weathered within these walls, but I can salute them.
These burdens add significant invisible weight to a person. They get the end of the diving board creaking and bending. But like these metal plates above us, these burdens enhance and augment. The added bend of the diving board springs us higher into the air. What a wonderful gift. I think now is the right time to acknowledge the parents and teachers that have prodded us along this diving board. Love and support have never gone so far. Thank you.
(Applause break)
Now, we've heard it said by some that high school is the highest point of a person's life. Lack of responsibility yeah yeah yeah whatever. This may literally be the highest point of our dive. But without the water the dive is meaningless. Without a future, this preparation and studying and goal-setting is all for naught. And right now we may be a little scared. The water is coming up at us. Gravity is taking us towards the water, towards the future, and there is nothing we can do. We have no control. We're already in the air. We've never been in the water before, we don't know what to expect. Sharks? Flotation devices? The only thing we can control is how we meet the water. Pencil dive? Cannonball? Bellyflop? I suppose it's up to you. One more thing is certain. Eventually, we'll all be in the big water. The deep end. Of life. Deep.
The deep end of life, now that is a monumental thing. Swim. Tread water. Survive. Find happiness in nothing more than splashing around. How do you do it?
I have the answer for you this day. Michael Colucci... Hey, sorry for not bringing this up to you before, but you still have your sticks with you, right? Do you think you could provide a drumroll? Awesome, man... Anytime. Mike Colucci, everybody!
(Build-up Drumroll. Escalation of passion. Abrupt stop.)
Move your arms and legs.
Really. It's true. You move your arms and your legs, and you can, because Cawthra has shaped them both.
Arms that have shot basketballs and pumped ridiculous amounts of iron.
Legs that have made the journey here in shoes, and sometimes boots or sandals, in buses, on bicycles, in cars and carpools, really early or out the front door at 8:25.
Arms that have painted and sketched and sculpted and listened to the impulse of the heart and the calculation of the eye.
Legs that have pas-de-bourree'd and chasse'd and channelled feelings for which there are no words, nor need there be, because dancing is its own language.
Arms that have fondled French Horns, Gene, you know what I'm talking about... and mangled pianos... Dave Trochanowski, you know--wait, is he here? Dave? Uh-- and codified emotions into key signatures and manuscripts.
Legs that have run a thousand leagues of cross-country.
Arms that have comforted friends in need. The backpat. The handhold. The armstroke. The headlock.
Legs that have booked it out of a school on fire. On fire.
Arms that have been brutally savaged by the unforgiving cheese grater walls.
Legs that have gradually accepted that the left one is the brake.
Arms that have fashioned a robot. Or created fashion.
Legs that have tripped walking up these stairs.
Arms that have learned how to swordfight, parry one, parry two.
Legs that have learned to ride the bicycle, arms that have learned to spread the peanut butter.
Legs that have simply learned to flee from danger, and arms that have simply learned to embrace life.
That is one monstrous list of qualifications. If staying afloat is a mere matter of moving your arms and legs, then we should all hack off an arm right now just to keep it fair.
And, to end fairly, credit is due to Christopher Shirreff for coining the term 'Caledictorian'. The world is grateful.
Here we are. The diving board is that way. Literally, it is right there, you go through Kyle Smith and Darrell Simich and the rest of the overachievers, through the seats and the floor and the secret chamber underneath the Aud we're not supposed to know about, and you keep going, and you pass through Room 108, and you whack the biggest drum called the timpani-- because you've always wanted to do it and it's like (looks at watch), like almost nine, who's around to stop you? -- and you go out into the hall outside the Music Office where the girls' changerooms are, and I guess you're a ghost right now, or something... so you might as well go through the walls into the girls' changerooms, it's like 8 o' clock, you're not going to scare anybody. And you keep going on this awkward diagonal and you float by Gym A, and hey, might as well check it out, you're only a ghost once, so you go into Gym A but no one's around, so you pick up a basketball and you slam dunk it because you're a ghost and ghosts can float and you've always wanted to do that. So now you walk up those stairs into the weight room, and Mr. Jones is there doing a bicep curl with these two live cats that he has somehow welded together, and he says, "Haven't you graduated?" and you say, "Shouldn't you be in the Aud for the Commencement ceremony?" and he says "Want some chicken salad?" and you say, "No, thanks, maybe later, I'm just here to check out the pool." And he says "Well, there's a wall in the way." And you say, "Hey, no problem, I'm a ghost." And you try to ghost your way through the wall and you kind of embarrass yourself because it seems you have lost your ghostly powers. And so you say, "Mr. Jones, can you help me?" And he stops and puts his welded-cats on the floor, and he says, "Alright, fine, but if you tell administration about this, we'll both be in a lot of trouble." And he takes a deep breath and he punches a massive hole in the wall. And you say, "Thanks Mr. Jones" and you walk into the..... okay...
The point is, the diving board is that way. Listen. Can you hear the twang? K-thumm-thum-thm-thm-thm -- there it is. That twang is us leaving the diving board. The water is right up ahead. It is imminent. We can't control gravity. But we can control form. (Hands first clasped as if in a dive, then drawn close as if in prayer.) (Inhalation.) You smell that? That's Cawthra Park Love. You can breathe it like air. It might come in handy underwater. Take some of it with you. Peace.