Kevin Williams, Department of Mass Communications
Tuesday, November 17, 2015 at 12:30 pm
Byrd Center for Legislative Studies Auditorium
When I learned how to scuba dive, I found much more than I anticipated. Diving wasn’t just a childhood dream. It wasn’t just a sport. It wasn’t just another form of recreation. It certainly wasn’t a diversion form the pressures of everyday life. Instead, scuba diving presented me with a way of understanding more deeply the relationships between embodiment, environment and world. The most basic activities of a land animal—things as simple as breathing, looking and moving—were challenged, rearranged, and reconstructed for being underwater. In order to dive, I had to learn again how to see, move and breathe. My underwater experience made the familiar strange, and the strange stranger. Every dive was a source of mystery and meaning.