Bruce Conforth

Growing up, one of my fondest memories is following my dad around as a young kid and helping him with all sorts of odd jobs. He's a printer by trade, but he's an engineer and handyman at heart. He loves fixing things. Anyway, we would go downstairs to his workshop and before anything else, he would dust off the record player and put a record on. We would work to the raw voices of BB King and Muddy Waters. Sometimes, once we finished gluing this or hammering that, he would pull out his old guitar and strum along to the wailing on the records. Blues are deeply embedded into my past, so listening to Bruce Conforth discuss and read excerpts from one of the greats of country blues was not only interesting, but a little nostalgic. I really enjoyed hearing Conforth talk about the relationship between his writing and his music. I think it's beautiful to imagine writing compared to making music. The idea of creation intertwined with each practice fosters an admiration because you have to put yourself into it. Good art offers a view into the artists soul. It made me smile when he mentioned the disconnected, rigid writing associated with scholarly works and how that affects the writing negatively. Within my engineering class, I sometimes feel that the ambiguous voice in the text makes it harder to interact with. Writing I am most proud of is the works I feel are most honest about who I am as a person. It was refreshing to hear a highly regarded professor say, "In the end, we're all stories". It encouraged me to write what I think. Conforth was insightful and warmed me by bringing me back to my youth.