Empathy Lesson

We all knew this class was going to be different. Since when did the teacher have inflammable materials in our nicely soundproof padded music room?

‘I’d like you to conclude what you are working on, and come back into the common space,’ being the first signal that something was going to be different than normal.

‘There are some of you who have expressed dislike for a few of the songs we’ve been looking at.’ Talk about stating the obvious, wasn’t he noticing some kids were just doing their own thing. A few had just been sitting around doing chord drills, fluffing about, doing sweet F. A. You know how it is, if we don’t like it, kids find things to make it look like we’re doing something, but we aren’t.

‘For you, I’ve got a little something extra. I don’t do this all the time, so you should consider yourselves lucky.’

He set his own guitar on the floor, and from the guitar case, took a single thick white candle. He lit it with a match, dripped some wax into a place, and stood the candle up. Then, looking like a Greek philosopher, he held the plate aloft. We’re all expecting the sprinkler system to click in any minute and can’t believe he’d lit a naked flame. Might be commonplace in the science lab, but down here, people are more likely to light up a cigarette in our rehearsal space, but not do something with candles. Well, at least ways that doesn’t involve a year 9 girl.

‘Can I have the lights down please?’ One of the good-two-shoes, student council, always plays the National Anthem boys jumped up like it was the most natural thing to be asked. ‘A little darker, few more off, if you don’t mind.’

Creeps, it will be slow grope music from the formal in a minute.

Now our music room become much darker, the candle flame stood out clearly. I kept my eyes on the teacher and that candle. Kind of like when you look down off a cliff edge, can’t help but focus.

Mr Ferris continued, his voice soft but penetrating, ‘in the course of our adult lives we experience many kinds of pain. Pains of the body and pains of the heart. I know I have experienced pain in many different forms, and I’m sure you have too. Or at the very least life has this in store somewhere in the future. I am sure you’ve found it very difficult to convey even the slightest hint of truths to do with these pains to another person; to explain it in words is an unfamiliar world, to you. People say that only they themselves can understand the pain they are feeling. But is this true? I for one do not believe this. If, before our eyes, we see someone who is truly suffering, we do sometimes feel that suffering and pain as if our own. This is the power of empathy. Am I making myself clear?’

He broke off and looked around the room. The class were like wildlife stuck in headlights on a highway.

‘The reason that people sing songs, or write stories, or even compose music for other people is because they want to have the power to arouse empathy, to break free of the narrow shell of the self and share their pain and joy with others. This is not an easy thing to do, of course. And so today, as a kind of experiment I want you to experience a simpler, more physical kind of empathy.

Everyone in the place was hushed, all eyes fixed on Ferris-Fangs. Only parts of their faces were visible, in profile, in flickering light. Never seen these kids so intent, so still, so silent. You’d have thought he’d somehow managed to switch them into power-save mode. Amid the silence Ferris stared off into space too. As if to insert a pause or to reach a state of mental concentration. Then, without a word, he held his left hand over the lighted candle. Little by little, he brought his palm closer and closer to the flame. Someone made a sound like a sigh or a moan. You could see the tip of the flame burning his palm. You could almost hear flesh sizzle. A girl let out a hard little scream. Everyone else just watched in frozen horror. Ferris endured the pain, his face distorted in agony. What the hell was this? Why did he have to do such a stupid, senseless thing? I felt my mouth going dry. Someone should go and get the deputy. This isn’t fair, he was abusing us. After five or six seconds of this, which seemed much longer, he slowly removed his hand from the flame and set the dish with the candle in it on the floor. Then he clasped his hands together, the right and left palms pressed against each other.

‘As you have seen, ladies and gentlemen, pain can actually burn a person’s flesh.’ His voice sounded exactly as it had earlier; quiet, stead, cool. No trace of suffering remained on his face. Indeed, it had been replaced by a faint smile.

‘Your pain, which should have been almost visible inside your heads. You have, hopefully, been able to feel as if it were your own. That is the power of empathy.’

Mr Ferris parted his clasped hands. From between them he produced a thin red scarf, which he opened for all to see. Then he stretched his palms out towards us. There were no burns at all. As he blew out the candle wisps of smoke seemed to hold his face, hovering as a signal. Moments of silence followed. Whispered, then chattered voices replaced the tension that had filled the room. Then kids expressed their relief in wild applause. As if the whole thing had never happened, Ferris-face put his guitar into the case, just then the bell rang, and he stepped out of the room and disappeared. But not before the class erupted into tumultuous applause.

I asked a senior girl if Ferris had ever pulled that trick before. Did he usually make that performance when song choices were criticized?

‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘As far as I know, this was his first time. I’ve never heard of him doing that until today. And nobody told me he did magic tricks, even if everyone agrees old Ferris can floor people, especially with the occasional stage performances. Seems amazing though. I wonder how he does it. Sounds like it really looked as if he was burning himself.’

‘Kept waiting for the cold shower of our sprinkler system to click on.’

‘But have you ever known that to happen?’

She had a point but there is that story about the carpet on level two needing to be replaced when someone held a lighter over the sprinkler right near the elevator. But I was never sure if that was just one of those tales of school years past, that gets out and re-run occasionally, growing in dimensions every time. If true that flame had been much, much closer to the sensor than Ferris’s. How close, how much smoke did you need? No matter how much food was burnt in the hospitality kitchen prep areas there had never been something that triggered the sprinkler system.

Maybe he knew that the school committee had turned down the smoke sensor?