ABSTRACT

In “‘Throughness’: A Story About Songwriting as Auto/Ethnography,” David Carless writes: From my early childhood onward, whether formal education or informal teaching, wasn’t it all about imposition? Why can’t I remember a sense of partnership, of being asked to do something in such a way that I wanted to do it? This resonates deeply with me. As a kid, we were encouraged to read through the promise of food. It was something called the Book-It! program. After reading so many books, one was given a certificate redeemable for one personal pan pizza. Also, at the time, I was a fan of a series of books called Choose Your Own Adventure. When thinking of our grand life story as the stretching of our being from birth until death, a narrative arc can only be created after the fact. The time of itineraries as applied to ethnographic method aren’t the same as the itineraries of, say, a vacation.