I recognized the new Assessment Expert when I was leaning against the bar. He smiled as soon as he saw me, striding too closely for any kind of getaway. Our handshake, our first, went awkwardly, neither of us knowing how much pressure to exert or how many pumps to render. We let our hands drop to our sides, and he asked what I was doing here, ninety minutes away from campus. “To see Frequency Illusion,” I said.
“Of course,” he said, in the most ebullient manner I’d heard him, though to be true I’d mostly heard him bemoan how for the past five years (and with two previous Experts), the History, Legal Studies, and Philosophy Department had been going about assessment entirely the wrong way. Now he said, “I saw them a half a dozen times back when I lived in Chicago. And Madison.” He loosened his black necktie, undid the top button of his white shirt. I wondered if he had come here straight from work. He said, “Have you seen them before?”
I gauged what might be my best reply. Our previous, and heated, exchange concluded with my saying, “I trust the data from our alumni surveys,” and him shaking his head while replying, “That hardly counts as assessment.”
Though his six times at a Frequency Illusion show didn’t near my sixteen, it felt unseemly to brag to someone whose name I didn’t even know. Or pull open my worn denim shirt to reveal the fraying gray t-shirt I bought at the first Frequency Illusion show I witnessed fifteen years ago. I said, “Whenever they come to Cincinnati.”
“How often is that?”
“Every now and then.” I tipped back my beer. That Animal Moment, the opening act, a noisy quintet I’d seen the year before, was perhaps two songs in. Their songs all sounded alike, sadly, so it may have been one or three. The Assessment Expert rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt, gripped the bar, and tapped one foot on the rail. Even if he was someone who trafficked in such terms as “rubric” and “value added” he was no stranger to dank taverns, and he’d seen the band that meant to me more than any other six times. “Beer?” I said.
“Sure,” he said. It was Hudy Delight night, and I had this thought: if he said something negative about the two-dollar beer then I’d abandon the Assessment Expert, if he himself didn’t determine mine was company that did not meet or exceed his expectations. After I paid for a pair of slippery cans, the Assessment Expert took his and drank a considerable swallow. He regarded the can, then said, “That’s tasty. Local?”
I nodded, took a sip from my own can while That Animal Moment tore into another forgettable number. We clinked our cans together and leaned against the wall beneath a peeling Guided By Voices poster.
As we endured the remainder of That Animal Moment’s set, the Assessment Expert told me a number of things. About how his older brothers had schooled him on The Mats and Black Flag and how difficult it had been since to find other fans of music that measured up. How Hudy Delight—which he bought two rounds of—reminded him of Old Style. How he had paid ten bucks to park in a lot but probably wouldn’t do that again when he returned. And how he knew he came off as something of a tool but at every new institution he found that personality broke down resistance against the necessary tools of assessment. “You just can’t think your gradebook will satisfy accreditors and legislators anymore,” he said.
At this point, my ears held a numb sense that words hovered but did not fully enter. I must have smiled a time or too—certainly when he bought a beer—but the Assessment Expert had not said anything that gave me reason to wander away.
Over the years, I’d been to see the band with numerous enough peers to have carpooled. But kids and jobs at better universities had diminished the numbers so I hadn’t even thought about inviting anyone else along this time and the time before. And while I wouldn’t have minded saving money on gas or having a DD for the ride home, in truth I didn’t miss anybody. I never liked blabbing about the band in an academic way, exploring their transgressive inversion with an all-female rhythm section or deconstructing Layne Neeper’s obscure lyrics. When I was younger, I was saving that energy for my articles on the causal theory of reference, and seeing some measure of success with them.
Now though, as an associate with tenure, I spent far less time on those articles and many more hours on Twitter and Insta to learn about whether the drummer, Taine Stephens, and the bass player, Donna Duncan, were continuing their side project with Liz Rose and Paige Taylor from Petite Roche or there was truth to the rumor Layne Neeper didn’t want to tour anymore. I actually had the notoriously shy singer/guitarists email address and though his were greatly exceeded by mine in number and word count, I kept his replies in a folder and reviewed them from time to time, especially the one where he said I had gotten the throughline of their thirteen CD’s and fifteen year career: don’t work too hard for meaning.
Now I opened what I promised to be my final beer—knowing I’d likely arrive home around two with a nine am lecture about Epictetus ahead of me—and thought I might share some of this information with the Assessment Expert, but just then Donna appeared on stage playing a few notes on the accordion she used when Layne switched to acoustic and Taine got out her brushes. The Assessment Expert was saying that he occasionally wondered if the band’s early song, “Outcomes,” hadn’t steered him toward his current occupation. I managed to swallow the beer in my mouth and smiled. Taine was now at her kit, wearing a
sleeveless Purple Rain t-shirt and black compression shorts (she’d never given up her bike messenger gig for when they weren’t touring). Donna was thumping some Larry Graham rhythms on her bass, a red Hamer Blitz she’d had since her metal years.
“But I don’t want to read too much into anything,” the Assessment Expert said, employing the undergraduate phrase that sent me to the TIAA website to learn how many more semesters of Intro to Logic before I could quit teaching, unless I wanted to uncover my talents as a Walmart greeter. In this instance, however, I didn’t mind. I said, “I think that’s a wise course of action.” The Assessment Expert reached out and poked me with a little more force than needed. As I rubbed the spot on my shoulder, I hoped perhaps my hearing was tricking me when he said, “It’s like why I’ve felt so good about this job. All these things that add up: I bought a nice house, sold my place in Madison, got a great level of buy-in from admin and faculty over my philosophy and practices.” He paused as some kids in brand new shirts from the merch table pushed past, gawking as though they’d spotted their principaI. I couldn’t speak for the admin but faculty were betting on eighteen months as the under for his departure; two years, the over. As if ready to poke me again, he raised his hand, so I backed away. He said, “And here I am two weeks on the job and one of my favorite bands is playing. And I run into you! Next time we should carpool. Split the cost of gas!”
“Layne’s talking about quitting touring,” I said, just about the time the crowd began to chant for the bespectacled lead singer, who I knew to be backstage with his wife Carol; they had a complicated ritual to help him get over stage fright. The Assessment Expert raised his shoulders and shook his head. I said nothing. No need to show off more with my insider knowledge. Besides, I feared just what that would mean for my life, Layne quitting touring. They might still put out CD’s but seeing them live provided something more: ritual. Buying the ticket and printing it out. Searching for the location and learning its type. I hadn’t always seen them in taverns. When “Beyond Any Measure” made it on the Modern Rock charts, they played at the concert hall at Xavier, even though they only filled it halfway. But no matter the location, the best part of the ritual: donning the shirt I wore only whenever I went to see them play. The lettering was worn into incomprehensibility but it still fit!
I was fondling the collar of my shirt, when the Assessment Expert moved closer, shouted in my ear: “Like the name of the band, right? Just because all these things add up and seem positive that doesn’t make it so. Right?” He stepped back then dove in again as if for a hug. “A Frequency Illusion.”
His error didn’t bother me. In classrooms, I preferred the energy required of someone actively making a mistake than all those students sitting silent. Nonetheless, I said, “That’s not what it means.”
Taine hit her crash and Donna thumped two eighth notes—such a powerhouse they were, even though between them they might have weighed 220. Many in the crowd hollered, and the Assessment Expert turned his head, but when Layne didn’t appear—as the informed among us knew this was a signal to Layne and Carol to wrap up the semi- hypnosis ritual they conducted —the Assessment Expert turned back to me. He said, “The frequency of similar phenomenons happening gives way to the illusion of meaning provided by the perceiver. A frequency illusion.”
“I’m docking you a point for not using the plural for phenomenon,” I said. “And you’re still wrong.”
He stepped back, a man unused to anything other than obeisance when he spoke. “What are you talking about?”
Back at the first show I attended, when they warmed up for Strike, Shadow, Strike in a danker tavern than this, both Donna and Taine worked the merch table and told me I was the only person to buy a shirt that night. They even introduced me to Layne, who’d just stepped out of a comically inhospitable men’s room. All three couldn’t believe I was a philosophy professor who’d driven 90 miles to see them. But they had for me a test: define the band’s name. Only two years out of grad school and in my first semester as an assistant professor, certain I would be getting tenure somewhere else, this was easy. I even threw in Baader-Meinhof, the alternative term for the phenomenon of learning about something and subsequently seeing it everywhere. After we all agreed Baader-Meinhof would be a pretty good name for a band, as well, Layne admitted they had just discovered the phrase in a magazine article and thought it sounded cool.
I didn’t say any of this to the Assessment Expert. I only took out my iPhone and typed in the phrase, scrolled past the band’s web site and Wikipedia, then clicked on the definition offered by Web MD and gave him the phone. Taine and Wendy hit the same notes, and the crowd neared the stage entrance, cheered lustily, and I could see Layne’s haystack hair while the Assessment Expert handed me back my phone and muttered something about how this definition was still related to what he said but by that time I was moving past and unbuttoning my shirt so everyone in the band, especially Layne, might find in the crowd a more than familiar face.