I wrote this a week or two ago and just forgot to post it. It needs work but whatever.
the hours fade away
peel
pare
husk
pumice to the heart
rubbed red and raw
the guards, they fall apart
dissolve into the dark
releasing brief relief
a voice to sing to speak
to mutter to uncover
to liberate and loosen
a tongue stiff but not forgotten
thoughts and words and longing
fears and hopes and wanting
chaotic and disheveled
they were crossed
with inhibitions
lost
in self suppression
fraught
with old tradition
until the night surrounded
unwound the tightness halting
the reticence untrusting
stripping weary wanderers
of their wariness inhuman
but now they see the dawn is coming
and each retreats.
The spacing is screwed up as usual but whatever.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
"No saint, no pope, no general, no sultan...
...has ever had the power that a filmmaker has, the power to talk to hundreds of millions of people for two hours in the dark. That is a tremendous power, and you have this power as filmmakers. You have the power to say anything you want, so why not say something positive?" - Frank Capra
I love going to see movies in the theater. I used to prefer watching them at home, but the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center changed my mind. There's nothing particularly wonderful about this theater. But after spending every other Saturday morning there for two semesters, I realized that even if I don't want it to be true, movies are meant to be seen in theaters.
Don't get me wrong. I still love watching movies at three in the morning in my pajamas, snuggled up on the squishy couch in my basement with a couple of blankets, or on my computer in bed at school. But, the experience isn't the same.
There's a completely different mindset that you assume when you watch a film in a theater. When you take a trip to the cinema, you drag yourself out of the house in respectable clothes to pay an absurd amount for a bit of shiny, non-recyclable paper, bad popcorn, and corn syrup and water. If you're at an old theater, odds are, the screen quality is lackluster at best and the seats are tight and uncomfortable.
But, when the lights go down and the obnoxious commercials give way to trailers for a bunch of movies you don't want to see, you're excited. You're there with a purpose--you must really, really want to see this movie, for all that you're enduring. You're ready and willing to be entertained, to fall under the spell of "movie magic." And amazingly enough, so are two hundred and fifty other people.
Your defenses are down when you see a movie in theaters. You're more susceptible to the tricks of the filmmaker--you're more likely to suspend disbelief. You let the movie get away with things that you might not dismiss if you were at home, and you let yourself get caught up in the moment--and you're okay with that. You're one of millions of people who walks into the dark and sits down, prepared to listen to what the filmmakers want to say.
Going to the movies is a community experience, and it's a much better one if you happen to be a member of a good audience. It's one of the reasons I enjoy midnight screenings on opening night: every single person in the audience is there because they want to be, because they're dedicated to seeing and enjoying this movie. There are no annoying people talking about something else in front of you. Everyone is ready to laugh, to cry, to gasp at all the right moments. They're ready to be whisked into another world for two hours.
And that's such a great feeling. It's the experience I want to have when I watch a movie. And when the audience is right, watching a film in a theater, I think, helps you have the best movie experience possible.
----------------
Now playing: Nina Simone - In The Dark
I love going to see movies in the theater. I used to prefer watching them at home, but the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center changed my mind. There's nothing particularly wonderful about this theater. But after spending every other Saturday morning there for two semesters, I realized that even if I don't want it to be true, movies are meant to be seen in theaters.
Don't get me wrong. I still love watching movies at three in the morning in my pajamas, snuggled up on the squishy couch in my basement with a couple of blankets, or on my computer in bed at school. But, the experience isn't the same.
There's a completely different mindset that you assume when you watch a film in a theater. When you take a trip to the cinema, you drag yourself out of the house in respectable clothes to pay an absurd amount for a bit of shiny, non-recyclable paper, bad popcorn, and corn syrup and water. If you're at an old theater, odds are, the screen quality is lackluster at best and the seats are tight and uncomfortable.
But, when the lights go down and the obnoxious commercials give way to trailers for a bunch of movies you don't want to see, you're excited. You're there with a purpose--you must really, really want to see this movie, for all that you're enduring. You're ready and willing to be entertained, to fall under the spell of "movie magic." And amazingly enough, so are two hundred and fifty other people.
Your defenses are down when you see a movie in theaters. You're more susceptible to the tricks of the filmmaker--you're more likely to suspend disbelief. You let the movie get away with things that you might not dismiss if you were at home, and you let yourself get caught up in the moment--and you're okay with that. You're one of millions of people who walks into the dark and sits down, prepared to listen to what the filmmakers want to say.
Going to the movies is a community experience, and it's a much better one if you happen to be a member of a good audience. It's one of the reasons I enjoy midnight screenings on opening night: every single person in the audience is there because they want to be, because they're dedicated to seeing and enjoying this movie. There are no annoying people talking about something else in front of you. Everyone is ready to laugh, to cry, to gasp at all the right moments. They're ready to be whisked into another world for two hours.
And that's such a great feeling. It's the experience I want to have when I watch a movie. And when the audience is right, watching a film in a theater, I think, helps you have the best movie experience possible.
----------------
Now playing: Nina Simone - In The Dark
Monday, March 16, 2009
"Dance instead."
I really like watching scenes that take place at balls in period dramas.
Well, really, I just like to watch the dances. The clothes are nice. The goings-on are interesting. But the dancing--that's what really gets me.
It's so different now from what it was then. Now, going out "dancing" is basically an excuse to move suggestively and rub up against strangers. It's so sexual--so intimate--in a public sphere. I understand that there's a certain appeal to just letting yourself go, especially when it's dark--it's easy to feel like there's no one else around. In Funny Face, Audrey Hepburn is in a dark sort of beatnik cafe in Paris, dressed moodily in all black with a little flip of a pony tail, and she tells Fred Astaire, "I rather feel like expressing myself now, and I could certainly use the release!" She then proceeds to dance solo in a wild expression of pent-up emotion for about five minutes straight. It's beautiful.
When it's done tastefully, dancing is such a gorgeous form of expression. Passion and grace and taste, especially when set to song, make for something sublimely beautiful. It can be so otherworldy, so ethereal. That's one of the main reasons I enjoy musicals, both on stage and in film--that combination of mediums make for something so powerful. Though, even when dancing's not tasteful, there's something to be said for the raw, primal emotion being expressed. But I think it's even lovelier when that emotion is expressed through restraint. And period dramas that have dancing scenes that totally do that. Haha.
James McAvoy and Anne Hathaway in Becoming Jane are my favorite. They fairly exude sexual tension through sideways glances and light touches through gloved fingers. Keira Knightley and Matthew McFayden are full of resentment and intrigue in Pride and Prejudice. And Jeremy Northam and Gwyneth Paltrow show this unrealized desire for each other in Emma--he knows he wants her and thinks she doesn't want him, and she doesn't know what she wants.
It's pretty masterfully done in all three films--the music helps, and the context, but a lot of it comes purely from the way the actors gracefully and dramatically move toward and away from each other, the way they steal glimpses at each other as they turn, the way they gently clasp each other's fingers. It's subtle, but so effective.
I'm with Philip Seymour Hoffman. I like subtlety.
----------------
Now playing: The Decemberists - The Rake's Song
Well, really, I just like to watch the dances. The clothes are nice. The goings-on are interesting. But the dancing--that's what really gets me.
It's so different now from what it was then. Now, going out "dancing" is basically an excuse to move suggestively and rub up against strangers. It's so sexual--so intimate--in a public sphere. I understand that there's a certain appeal to just letting yourself go, especially when it's dark--it's easy to feel like there's no one else around. In Funny Face, Audrey Hepburn is in a dark sort of beatnik cafe in Paris, dressed moodily in all black with a little flip of a pony tail, and she tells Fred Astaire, "I rather feel like expressing myself now, and I could certainly use the release!" She then proceeds to dance solo in a wild expression of pent-up emotion for about five minutes straight. It's beautiful.
When it's done tastefully, dancing is such a gorgeous form of expression. Passion and grace and taste, especially when set to song, make for something sublimely beautiful. It can be so otherworldy, so ethereal. That's one of the main reasons I enjoy musicals, both on stage and in film--that combination of mediums make for something so powerful. Though, even when dancing's not tasteful, there's something to be said for the raw, primal emotion being expressed. But I think it's even lovelier when that emotion is expressed through restraint. And period dramas that have dancing scenes that totally do that. Haha.
James McAvoy and Anne Hathaway in Becoming Jane are my favorite. They fairly exude sexual tension through sideways glances and light touches through gloved fingers. Keira Knightley and Matthew McFayden are full of resentment and intrigue in Pride and Prejudice. And Jeremy Northam and Gwyneth Paltrow show this unrealized desire for each other in Emma--he knows he wants her and thinks she doesn't want him, and she doesn't know what she wants.
It's pretty masterfully done in all three films--the music helps, and the context, but a lot of it comes purely from the way the actors gracefully and dramatically move toward and away from each other, the way they steal glimpses at each other as they turn, the way they gently clasp each other's fingers. It's subtle, but so effective.
I'm with Philip Seymour Hoffman. I like subtlety.
----------------
Now playing: The Decemberists - The Rake's Song
Saturday, March 14, 2009
New Faculty Search
On Wednesday, I met with the third candidate for the American Studies faculty position that's open. I'm really glad I got the chance to be on the student search committee. Aside from allowing me to meet the potential professors, it's made me think about what it is I appreciate about the professors I've had and how I feel about my choice of college in general.
One thing I've realized is that my professors and courses really are my favorite part about school. Yeah, the food is acceptable, and the dorms are great. But I could have found that somewhere else. Here, I have a certain structured independence, academically, that would have been difficult to find elsewhere. I remember looking for colleges and finding out that only about 200 in the country had official American Studies programs. My program here is both structured and loose, so even though there are 16 categories of requirements for the major, you can develop your own focus within them. (Oh, the beauty of an interdisciplinary major.) Contemporary Arts--it's a contract program, and I literally develop my own major, my own focus. And I can do both of these majors, still have electives, and graduate on time without driving myself insane. I wouldn't have been able to do that at any of my other potential schools.
As for professors...even though I complain a lot about several of them, I have to admit (grudgingly, in some cases) that most of them are excellent. Beyond that, there are definitely at least half a dozen professors that I've worked with individually on one project or another. These are the professors that never have a problem staying and talking a few minutes after class, or meeting me during the week regardless of whether or not it's during their office hours. They've taken an active interest in me as a student, and I feel like that's something I wouldn't necessarily get at another school.
Anyway, this third faculty candidate. One thing that I found really interesting about her was that she said she really made a point of reminding her students that history isn't just "Truth"--it's framed by someone's perspective, and therefore, it's open to interpretation. She also said that she really likes using primary sources, images, and other media to pinpoint the humanity in whatever it is that she's teaching. I got really excited about that, and I told her, I think it's really important to close the time gap and make history feel more immediate, because it's so easy to distance yourself and look only at the facts, when really, history isn't just dates and numbers and names--it's about people. History is a story. The word "story" is in the word "history", and stories are about people, they're part of being human, so dehumanizing history is taking away something vital from it.
I read a GQ article today that reminded me of that as well. Entitled simply, "The Garden," the article focused on the gravediggers at Arlington National Cemetery. These men dig thirty graves a day, five days a week, 48 weeks a year. They saw the plane go down into the Pentagon on 9/11. They've seen the Kennedys come to visit their family's graves. They've talked to people about to commit suicide and they've found a body on the Eternal Flame. And now, every day, they bury bodies that come in from around the world. Most of them voted for Obama because they're ready to see an end to the conflicts in the Middle East--because they don't want to bury any more kids. It's so interesting. It's easy for us to forget about the war. For them, all the death is a brutal reality. Telling that story from the gravediggers' point of view--it adds an extra layer of humanity to a story that could easily fall into a barrage of numbers and facts. This way, though--it means more.
----------------
Now playing: Band of Horses - Our Swords
One thing I've realized is that my professors and courses really are my favorite part about school. Yeah, the food is acceptable, and the dorms are great. But I could have found that somewhere else. Here, I have a certain structured independence, academically, that would have been difficult to find elsewhere. I remember looking for colleges and finding out that only about 200 in the country had official American Studies programs. My program here is both structured and loose, so even though there are 16 categories of requirements for the major, you can develop your own focus within them. (Oh, the beauty of an interdisciplinary major.) Contemporary Arts--it's a contract program, and I literally develop my own major, my own focus. And I can do both of these majors, still have electives, and graduate on time without driving myself insane. I wouldn't have been able to do that at any of my other potential schools.
As for professors...even though I complain a lot about several of them, I have to admit (grudgingly, in some cases) that most of them are excellent. Beyond that, there are definitely at least half a dozen professors that I've worked with individually on one project or another. These are the professors that never have a problem staying and talking a few minutes after class, or meeting me during the week regardless of whether or not it's during their office hours. They've taken an active interest in me as a student, and I feel like that's something I wouldn't necessarily get at another school.
Anyway, this third faculty candidate. One thing that I found really interesting about her was that she said she really made a point of reminding her students that history isn't just "Truth"--it's framed by someone's perspective, and therefore, it's open to interpretation. She also said that she really likes using primary sources, images, and other media to pinpoint the humanity in whatever it is that she's teaching. I got really excited about that, and I told her, I think it's really important to close the time gap and make history feel more immediate, because it's so easy to distance yourself and look only at the facts, when really, history isn't just dates and numbers and names--it's about people. History is a story. The word "story" is in the word "history", and stories are about people, they're part of being human, so dehumanizing history is taking away something vital from it.
I read a GQ article today that reminded me of that as well. Entitled simply, "The Garden," the article focused on the gravediggers at Arlington National Cemetery. These men dig thirty graves a day, five days a week, 48 weeks a year. They saw the plane go down into the Pentagon on 9/11. They've seen the Kennedys come to visit their family's graves. They've talked to people about to commit suicide and they've found a body on the Eternal Flame. And now, every day, they bury bodies that come in from around the world. Most of them voted for Obama because they're ready to see an end to the conflicts in the Middle East--because they don't want to bury any more kids. It's so interesting. It's easy for us to forget about the war. For them, all the death is a brutal reality. Telling that story from the gravediggers' point of view--it adds an extra layer of humanity to a story that could easily fall into a barrage of numbers and facts. This way, though--it means more.
----------------
Now playing: Band of Horses - Our Swords
Stream of consciousness.
Atonement is on HBO right now and I'm falling in love with James McAvoy again. I could watch the tracking shot of Dunkirk for hours and totally be okay with the fact that I just spent hours watching it.
There's a Little House on the Prairie musical at Paper Mill Playhouse right now and I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm pretty fond of the books and they were basically a staple of my reading material for my entire childhood, along with the Little Women books, the Anne of Green Gables books, and the American Girl books. And a bunch of others but those series, those were big. I never particularly cared for the TV show. Melissa Gilbert's teeth annoyed me. The Little Women musical was pretty disappointing, minus Sutton Foster, and I'm pretty sure this would be worse.
Matt Doyle is playing Melchior in Spring Awakening in Toronto and it's ridiculous how much I'd love to go see it. He's pretty much one of the main reasons I'm seriously considering working in theater / going to grad school for theater studies, and the chance to see him in one of the most powerful, moving shows I've ever seen...sigh.
I really like the word "awakening." I was thinking about this the other day. I was trying to think of a way to describe the way I felt, and "awakened" was the most fitting I could find. Not "awake," only, but "awakened." I feel calm and at peace, yet eager and exhilarated and restless and ready for whatever comes next. I feel determined and alive and I like it.
Only when I stop and think, do I feel overwhelmed. The rest of the semester is incredibly hectic and I'm almost afraid it's going to fly by too fast--so many of my friends are graduating, and I'm going to miss them so much next year. It's a good hectic though, mostly. Relay for Life is going to be draining but amazing. That weekend, I have tickets for a screening at the New Directors / New Films program that the Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA are doing. The weekend after I'm going to see Guys and Dolls with Dad. The weekend after is Easter. (Toronto? Haha.) The weekend after is the Avenue Q trip with school. Yay for going to school close to New York! Haha.
I'm watching Erin Brockovich. Rugged, disheveled, old-school Aaron Eckhart cracks me up. "The looks of a matinee idol and the soul of a character actor." Love him.
Secret source of pleasure: when my comments on IMDb are high on the list because other people find them "useful". Haha. My comment on The Wrestler is second most useful out of 300, right now. My Persepolis comment is 2 out of 103. My Cassandra's Dream and September Dawn comments are both #3. El Orfanato and Love in the Time of Cholera, #7. I also really like it when I look at an IMDb page and my comment is the automatically generated one that shows up at the bottom of the main page. Hehehe.
I had more but I put it in a separate post. Too much goin on.
----------------
Now playing: Vampire Weekend - Ottoman
There's a Little House on the Prairie musical at Paper Mill Playhouse right now and I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm pretty fond of the books and they were basically a staple of my reading material for my entire childhood, along with the Little Women books, the Anne of Green Gables books, and the American Girl books. And a bunch of others but those series, those were big. I never particularly cared for the TV show. Melissa Gilbert's teeth annoyed me. The Little Women musical was pretty disappointing, minus Sutton Foster, and I'm pretty sure this would be worse.
Matt Doyle is playing Melchior in Spring Awakening in Toronto and it's ridiculous how much I'd love to go see it. He's pretty much one of the main reasons I'm seriously considering working in theater / going to grad school for theater studies, and the chance to see him in one of the most powerful, moving shows I've ever seen...sigh.
I really like the word "awakening." I was thinking about this the other day. I was trying to think of a way to describe the way I felt, and "awakened" was the most fitting I could find. Not "awake," only, but "awakened." I feel calm and at peace, yet eager and exhilarated and restless and ready for whatever comes next. I feel determined and alive and I like it.
Only when I stop and think, do I feel overwhelmed. The rest of the semester is incredibly hectic and I'm almost afraid it's going to fly by too fast--so many of my friends are graduating, and I'm going to miss them so much next year. It's a good hectic though, mostly. Relay for Life is going to be draining but amazing. That weekend, I have tickets for a screening at the New Directors / New Films program that the Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA are doing. The weekend after I'm going to see Guys and Dolls with Dad. The weekend after is Easter. (Toronto? Haha.) The weekend after is the Avenue Q trip with school. Yay for going to school close to New York! Haha.
I'm watching Erin Brockovich. Rugged, disheveled, old-school Aaron Eckhart cracks me up. "The looks of a matinee idol and the soul of a character actor." Love him.
Secret source of pleasure: when my comments on IMDb are high on the list because other people find them "useful". Haha. My comment on The Wrestler is second most useful out of 300, right now. My Persepolis comment is 2 out of 103. My Cassandra's Dream and September Dawn comments are both #3. El Orfanato and Love in the Time of Cholera, #7. I also really like it when I look at an IMDb page and my comment is the automatically generated one that shows up at the bottom of the main page. Hehehe.
I had more but I put it in a separate post. Too much goin on.
----------------
Now playing: Vampire Weekend - Ottoman
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
I don't understand.
We're so selfish
We're slaves to our impulses
We're afraid of our emotions
And no one knows where the shore is
When divided by the ocean
And the only thing I know is
That the answer isn't for our eyes
That the answer isn't for our eyes...
We're slaves to our impulses
We're afraid of our emotions
And no one knows where the shore is
When divided by the ocean
And the only thing I know is
That the answer isn't for our eyes
That the answer isn't for our eyes...
- Feist
I was thinking:We have words, but we don't use them.
We have words and we don't want to use them.
We use them, and we don't want to share them.
We have actions. We have means of expressing ourselves.
We don't express ourselves. We don't share ourselves.
We're given everything we need and we don't use it.
To be human. To live. Is to share an experience.
To experience together.
To give your experience to another.
To take in another's experience.
To connect with another through an experience.
Selfishness goes beyond hoarding material possessions.
Selfishness is refusing to give or accept sympathy.
Selfishness is refusing to experience.
Selfishness is refusing to share pain.
Selfishness is refusing to share. To talk.
Selfishness is refusing to show love.
Selfishness is refusing to love.
Selfishness is refusing.
We isolate ourselves.
Hide in comfort.
It's not human.
I suppose it's defense.
It's not living.
Why are we so fearful?
I am.
But why?
It doesn't make sense.
I don't understand.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Poem thing.
Hahaha. I put this on my livejournal but I'm amused by it so it's going here too. It started out hopeful and then my mood changed and now it's kind of ironic and a bit dark.
Let us go then, you and I . . .
Sail to the sunset
Slip into the storm’s eye
While madness whirls around us
Chaos racing wild
without, within
At the heart of the horizon
The gold, the soulful
Smoldering of scarlet
the pools of light
Like an island in the ocean
A falling fairy in the night
Carrying promises of the dawn
To a starfish in the storm
Swallowed by the sea
certain of the sun
All will be all right
The light won’t let him sink
he winks
So we dive into the darkness
Embrace the cold that shrouds us
Face to face with infinite pain
immersed
dispersed
Whisked away across the waves
Waiting out the roughness
Of a world torn up inside
Refuse to hide the fear
near the daybreak
A lake incarnate
A mirror of glass so smooth
Drifting on our backs
we sigh aloud
side by side
alive
. . . Til human voices wake us, and we drown.
Let us go then, you and I . . .
Sail to the sunset
Slip into the storm’s eye
While madness whirls around us
Chaos racing wild
without, within
At the heart of the horizon
The gold, the soulful
Smoldering of scarlet
the pools of light
Like an island in the ocean
A falling fairy in the night
Carrying promises of the dawn
To a starfish in the storm
Swallowed by the sea
certain of the sun
All will be all right
The light won’t let him sink
he winks
So we dive into the darkness
Embrace the cold that shrouds us
Face to face with infinite pain
immersed
dispersed
Whisked away across the waves
Waiting out the roughness
Of a world torn up inside
Refuse to hide the fear
near the daybreak
A lake incarnate
A mirror of glass so smooth
Drifting on our backs
we sigh aloud
side by side
alive
. . . Til human voices wake us, and we drown.
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