I did in fact teach introductory philosophy courses at
several community colleges in the Dallas Metroplex from 1989 to 1999. However, in
those classes I never once showed my belly button. Upon reflection, I recall that I did expose said belly button twice
on stage during that same period.
One production was a compendium of original shorts by Dallas-area
playwrights called Local Eccentricities.
The night before we opened, a member of the cast of “Three Graces” walked
out on us for reasons that remain shrouded in mystery. I don’t know, but I suspect
that she, whose day job involved teaching high school English at a prestigious
private school, suddenly balked at the idea of a student spying her, quite
literally, in her underwear—because these three graces' costumes consisted of nothing
more than dainty bra and panties enhanced with symbolic accoutrement. After her sudden departure, I, as the director, had to act. The only “act” that seemed
possible at that late date involved me stepping in, learning her lines, and donning
her green bra and panty set. For “the
show must go on,” and all that. Therefore, if any of my philosophy students
before or at that time happened to see that production during its month-long
run, they would indeed have seen my belly button.
The second production is a more likely contender as it was
produced at one of the colleges where I was then teaching philosophy and
theater classes. It was a production of
Euripides’ The Bacchae of which I
remain quite proud. Unfortunately, well into rehearsals, and after a great deal
of elaborate choreography had been learned, one member of the female Chorus
of Maenads dropped out. (Perhaps she too
balked at the eleventh hour at the idea of being observed on stage scantily
clad—in bits of fur, leather, and leaves. But I, the director, was not afforded
an explanation on that occasion either.) So once again, the only available option
involved me stepping in. I did so under the guise of a pseudonym, imagining
that only those who knew me best would recognize me among the Wild Women of
Thebes, bewitched by the god, Dionysus. Perhaps, though,
one of my more perspicacious philosophy students recognized me
there among the mass of Maenads, and thus connected me with a certain exposed
belly button.
You can see why this comment by Anonymous was
disconcerting—forcing me to revisit these scenes-from-a-former-life in
conjunction with a blawg devoted to sophisticated musing about law and
literature. In a few sentences, Anonymous had laid things bare, at once
applauding and embarrassing me. But, ultimately, I was impressed by the poetry of
Anonymous’s comment, how he journeyed in short order from a literal reference
to a belly button to a figurative reference to a heart. I was also encouraged,
perhaps naively, by the notion that a cerebral philosophy professor, by her
willingness to expose herself for the sake of art, had made a favorable
impression on some student long ago in a way that had withstood the test of
time.
Having been forced to process these unbidden memories, it
occurred to me that these productions, though separated by a span of years and
other variables, shared a theme. Both were, in a way, about how women simultaneously
wield and shed power when they shed their clothes. This simultaneously
liberating and self-defeating power is what Shakespeare’s Titania and Cleopatra
embody. It is a power grounded in nature—that is, in our evolutionary past—but also
fraught with stultifying cultural baggage. It is a power that permits winning
when the fight isn’t fair but then losing before the curtain falls. It is a
power that women invent and that is also always already there to be exploited. “We
are their parents and original.” [Midsummer, II.1]
Then it occurred to me that this whole blogging business,
too, is all about exposing oneself. Even the stodgiest blawgs, to which some of
my more practical, buttoned-up colleagues are devoted, inevitably reveal
something about their authors that those authors generally keep covered up. And
the prospect of an occasional navel sighting, not the promise of objective reporting,
explains why people revisit most blogs. Certainly, the truly popular blawgs are all
about exposing that which others would prefer
to keep covered up. See Above the Law.
By contrast, much of law practice is about advising others
how to keep their vulnerabilities properly covered or how to defend against
assaults upon that which one had intended to keep covered up. Occasionally, though, navels are exposed by
lawyers themselves—as a matter of necessity. And this is really stressful
stuff. For instance, if personal injury plaintiffs have any hope of prevailing,
their lawyers will tell them that they are going to have to reveal all manner
of personal information found in medical records, tax returns, even diaries
that they had long conceived up as safe from prying eyes. Similarly, when
clients turn on their lawyers, lawyers, in defending themselves, often have to
disclose what had long been conceived as confidential—client communications and
privileged attorney work-product—thereby turning the sacred core of the
attorney-client relationship inside out.
This ever-present potentiality does (or should) bred special
caution on lawyers’ part about how certain things, like their advice, are
formulated. One could say that best practice is to assume that one’s navel is
always vulnerable to exposure no matter what conventions exist to protect
against unwanted disclosure. Both lawyers and the
clients they advise have to consider the prospect that, one day, to carry a
burden or to defend against an attack, the duty to conceal may be trumped by
the duty to disclose. In any case, these contrary duties always exist in an
uneasy tension in the simultaneously public and private legal arena.
Both concealing and disclosing are acts that can be mindlessly
impulsive or require special fortitude. The kind requiring fortitude involve
calibrations designed to avoid regret. Or,
as the pickpocket Autolycus explains in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale, to have integrity, the decision to conceal or to disclose should resonate with one’s professional affiliation:
The prince himself is about a piece of
iniquity, stealing away from his father with his
clog at his heels: if I thought it were a piece of
honesty to acquaint the king withal, I would not
do't: I hold it the more knavery to conceal it;
and therein am I constant to my profession.
[IV.4]