Gregory Bateson pictured here during a class meeting of theWorkshop in Education at Naropa Institute, Boulder, CO, summer, 1975.
Photo: ©: Jeff Bloom
Then there was the way in which the vision was presented, especially his style of oral presentation. This style worked compellingly for some, but it irritated and confused others. One of us last saw him giving a farewell lecture, or more properly presiding over a happening, at a series gloomily entitled "Famous Last Words" at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, as part of a series that was to include the supercharismatic likes of Mother Theresa and the Dalai Lama. The intense and distinguished audience (a generally receptive group, in contrast to the annoyance Bateson stirred up in some English reviewers and cultural guardians, who were given to such remarks as that he wrote "from the intellectual lotus land of California, where eclectic theories and mystical philosophizing lie thick as Los Angeles smog. . . ." [Times Literary Supplement, Nov. 21, 1980, p. 1314,Review of Mind and Nature]) heard and watched a typical Batesonian performance. Hair and suit rumpled as always, sprawling into and over a chair which could not properly contain his six-foot-five-inch body, a mysterious smile on his face, he started somewhere in the middle of things and proceeded to ponder out loud in front of the audience. As always, he resisted preexisting structures (David Lipset has shown how this was a central theme in Bateson's career), in this case a prepared lecture or even notes for a lecture. As always, he put himself at risk in front of an audience in a procedure that, as those who attended various of his public performances will remember, sometimes failed as didactic lectures.
But at another level, as he would have characteristically put it, he risked nothing at all, for at this level he was illustrating something rather than talking about it. He was not being a lecturer, presenting material, but an exemplar, representing it. He was performing a "metalogue," a communication whose form is meant to illustrate its content. What he was trying to illustrate, as always, was that authentic, minimally erroneous communication and thought is responsive to the moment, to the condition of the presenter, the state of his understanding of his problem, and his sense of the audience. This involved considerable risk, and required some sense of trust, usually amply justified, in his listeners. But it was not for everyone.
This public stance was no different from the way he related to others in dyads and small groups, although in these situations he had clearer "feedback" to work with. Those who were susceptible to encounter with Bateson experienced an intense moment-to-moment collaboration involving an unusual sense of augmentation of intelligence. As Margaret Mead put it:
ThepeculiarqualityofGregoryBateson'smindinthewayinwhichhedistillsideasfrominteractionwithotherpeople,whichtheyinturncandistillagain,ishardtodescribe.Itiscloselyrelatedtotheideasthemselves,forhismostexcitingideas,schismogenesis,thedouble-bind,
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