Found out today the article I submitted to the German magazine has been accepted. I’m pleased. Rejection is usually my norm. In academia, I try participating in the ways they encourage: talks, paper submissions. But more often than not, I hear “not academic enough” – a critique I anticipate before I begin. I sense many in the academic world remain tethered to a narrow view of value: ideas must arrive dressed in a certain form, shaped by protocol, footnoted into legitimacy. Moving sideways through a question, isn’t just discouraged, it’s quietly treated as unserious. Reminds me of the 1980s, sneaking into practice rooms in the Edward Johnson Building at the University of Toronto. Back before it was all locked. I’d improvise using fists, forearms, elbows, methods that grew out of asking what else can one do? I had to be careful, listen for footsteps. That kind of playing was not what those walls were built to contain.