Artists come to us in all different forms. They come as writers, singers, songwriters or even teachers. And some come to us as all of the above. One of those "artists" is Paul Kellermann, lecturer of English at Penn State.

"I think I just have a short attention span," Kellermann said. "If I was forced to do just one I'd go crazy."

But when he's writing, he wishes he was performing, and when he's performing, he wishes he was writing, he said. But he derives his greatest satisfaction from teaching.

"Perhaps because I'm an old fart," he said. "But with teaching you do get to perform and more importantly to provoke."

Much of his passion to teach and reach out to his students comes from his sister Lynne who passed away after a struggle with cancer. She inspired so many of her own students that it made Kellermann want to teach as well.

"I still don't know if I'm good at it," he said. But it is apparent from the number of students who want to be in his class again and again that he is successful in inspiring minds.

"Well, I'm a lot of fun at parties, and I jump out windows," Kellermann said. "I think it's possibly because I teach naked -- well, emotionally.

"The first step is breaking down walls and letting students know it's not a traditional classroom," he said. "Sometimes that involves singing or telling bad jokes or jumping out windows."

"You have to let them know they're free to say what they want without fear of censure," he said. Kellermann spent much of his 20s and early 30s playing in original rock and roll bands. The bands played frequently in New York and New Jersey. During this time, he also sporadically did the singer-songwriter stint.

"I gave up performing because of my intolerance of the drunks," Kellermann said. "Not that I have anything against them. I just don't want them in the audience. This "Master of Allusion," as he calls himself, is driven by pure madness with a dash of caffeine--well maybe a little bit more than a dash. But it is also his passion to create and teach that keeps him going. But with so many different interests and talents comes conflicts. "You have to be somewhat of a loner to be a writer," he said.

But there's the need to be social as well, especially with regards to teaching.

"Well I've done enough navel glancing now," Kellermann said. "It's a lint-filled world."

And Kellermann still gets to perform in the traditional sense as well. But his literary readings have a twist. He combines music, reading and some karaoke to reduce the distance between the reader and the audience members.

And every time he does a reading he plays different songs and reads different stories. "I like to have a sense of 'spontanuity'," he said. Spontanuity is a word Kellermann made up, a combination of the word spontaneity and continuity.

"I'm not really sure how to spell it," he said. "But it doesn't matter because I made it up," he added.

Kellermann first went to college to become an engineer. He was a math whiz as a child. "I'm still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up," he said. "I'd like to be a carpenter or auto-mechanic, but since I'm clumsy, I'm just going to have to settle for being the 'Master of Allusion,' " he said.

Kellermann said he goes through mass career changes every eight years.

"I may be an astronaut or running for office or running from angry mobs or just running at all," he said.

He will be giving a reading tomorrow at Webster's Bookstore Café, 128 S. Allen St, at 7 p.m.