Here is the video of Nicholas White stuck in an elevator for 41 hours. Don't worry, it's not 41 hours long. Just 3 minutes, 11 seconds.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
LADY GAGA
I saw this woman perform on "American Idol" a year ago and I lost my mind because she had lost her mind and all those people who make "American Idol" run had lost their collective mind.
Then I read this article, and some of it made sense. Written by Sasha Frere-Jones
Dedicated fans of popular music have a certain conversation at least once a year. Call it The Question of Endurance. You and your friends are talking about music, and the conversation turns to a popular band. You express support. A friend voices her opinion, maybe as favorable as yours, but appends a qualifier: “I like them, but will they be around in ten years?” You may feel compelled to defend whomever it is you’re talking about, covering the present moment and the future with your positive take. After trying this approach, though, you realize that pop music has no Constitution and doesn’t operate like a de-facto Supreme Court: precedent is not always established, and isn’t even necessary. Pop rarely accretes in a tidy, serial manner—it zigs, zags, eats itself, and falls over its shoelaces. Some pop successes go head to head with Blake and Bach; others win their blue ribbons by doing everything upside down and out of tune.
Exceptional pop creates a precedent precisely by abrogating the presumptive rules. How did that grouchy Bob Dylan become a critical favorite by spitting back at interviewers with silence and riddles? (Didn’t being cute and funny help the Beatles? Why would the opposite behavior work just as well, and at exactly the same time?) How did the Jamaican shantytown hero Bob Marley become an American Ivy League dorm-room staple? How did the tiny, androgynous Prince become a hero to alpha-male guitar-solo fiends? Pop acts become classic when they reveal the contingent nature of “classic.”
So it goes with one-hit (or two-hit) wonders, who can also become classics—or not. The nature of pop recycling makes it hard to measure, or define, endurance. In 1980, Gary Numan’s synthesizer pop song “Cars” was a reliable presence on broadcast radio here and in the United Kingdom. By 1985, though, you’d have been hard pressed to find a trace of Numan in the mainstream of pop. Today, he’s ubiquitous—“Cars” has been referenced in television shows and pop songs steadily throughout the past decade, and Numan’s synthesizer sounds are audible in the work of tiny Brooklyn bands and enormous stars alike. Just because the anonymous Euro-techno group Eiffel 65 was on the charts for only one stretch in 2000 does not mean that its mission was not accomplished. Eiffel 65’s one known song—its nonsense hit “Blue”—is the basis for a new Top Forty hit by Flo Rida called “Sugar,” and has inspired many user-generated videos on YouTube that are all better than the official video, a C.G.I. monstrosity. The artist who stays on the charts for years without interruption sometimes does it by virtue of professional acuity and inoffensive predictability. Some of pop’s most delightful figures endure exactly because we can’t figure out what they are up to.
Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta would have you believe that she’s not just beating the system—in her version, she’s stormed the castle walls, spirited away the Dauphin, and changed the national language to semaphore. Better known as Lady Gaga, Germanotta was born twenty-three years ago in Yonkers and has had two verifiable worldwide No. 1 hits, which are definitely dance music: “Just Dance” and “Poker Face.” (The kids say electro-pop, I say disco, and I suppose we’re both right.) Less verifiable is her theorizing about her work. She cites Andy Warhol, claims to be a “fame Robin Hood” who has lost her mind, opines in public about whether a certain shade of red is “Communist,” and has dropped Rilke’s name more than once. Don’t take this skepticism for distaste—Lady Gaga and I share preferences, especially as far as well-written pop music goes, and I am thrilled to see Communism and Rilke getting ink. I am also happy that her album, “The Fame,” will be with us all year, even if you can’t find Marx or Rilke anywhere in the music. What is most amusing is watching a trained pro like Lady Gaga try to sell herself as the Flying Lizards. Who were they? A colorfully deadpan British art-school unit of brainy, primitive one-hit wonders (“Money”) who did business in the early eighties and are resurrected in spirit every seven years or so. They were really odd.
Gaga is not odd, give or take some warbles and that one time during a session for AOL when she pounded on her keyboard with her high heel, but she is as smart as she repeatedly claims to be. Germanotta went to Convent of the Sacred Heart High School and grew up on the Upper West Side. (Her parents call her Joanne.) After a stint at N.Y.U.’s Tisch School, she dropped out and, while still a teen, went to Los Angeles, where she got a contract with Def Jam. That gig ended in three months, so Germanotta came home—not yet calling herself Lady Gaga—and began performing songs and burlesque routines in New York clubs with a friend, the d.j. Lady Starlight. Eventually, she returned to Los Angeles, and signed with Interscope Records. She wrote songs for the Pussycat Dolls and one for Britney Spears (a strange, compelling love song disguised as a dance number, called “Quicksand,” which is available only on the European version of Spears’s “Circus”) and worked with Akon, the certified pop star with an ornately embellished criminal past, who signed Gaga to his label.
This is not as weird as it might sound. Gaga can really sing and really write. That said, she embellished when she says, of “The Fame,” that she “did the whole goddamn thing.” In reality, her collaborators on her début album are a wisely picked cast of new and old pros who know how to make pop records sound like pop records. Rob Fusari, who dubbed Germanotta Lady Gaga, after the Queen song “Radio Ga Ga,” co-wrote some of Destiny’s Child’s best work. RedOne is a Moroccan producer whose song “Bamboo” was named the Official Melody of soccer’s 2006 FIFA World Cup. More to the point, RedOne’s longtime residence in Sweden means that he has access to the enormous ice pool of Nordic hooks that Americans never seem to match. It makes sense that RedOne and Germanotta received a Grammy nomination for “Just Dance,” the song that presumably inspired Spears to enlist Ms. Gaga’s help for “Circus.”
How not dumb is Lady Gaga? Released exactly one year ago, “Just Dance” was one of the first big records to ride the sea change in pop, away from hip-hop and back toward disco, the music that has been in charge of the charts in Europe for a long time. (One current acknowledgment of this shift is a single by a rapper named Kid Cudi, who is currently jostling with Lady Gaga on the iTunes charts with his song “Day ’n’ Nite,” which re-imagines hip-hop as mumbling over disco rather than yelling over funk.)
With RedOne’s help, Gaga summons generations of dance music. “Just Dance” is built around the brawny, slightly overbearing synthesizers of Gary Numan and his British peers like the Human League. (Those keyboards are also the foundation for Euro-techno like Eiffel 65 and for dozens of Continental hits that Americans rarely hear.) Gaga’s hard vocal delivery lets her tone bounce off the walls, in the manner of Sharon Brown and Shannon and other eighties dance-floor workhorses. “Just Dance” is about being drunk in a club, which is a great idea, because songs for drunk people in clubs are rarely sharp enough to be so obvious: a lot gets lost in the quest for the clever. The Lady’s had too much red wine, turned her shirt inside out, and has a Playboy mouth, whatever that is. Her night could end up on the gossip blogs if she’s not careful—she “can’t see straight,” and can’t remember what club she’s in, but sings to herself that it’s “gonna be O.K.,” which will reassure anybody with a liquor license doing business while the song is on. Later in the song, Lady Gaga semi-raps and recalls the weirdo she’s borrowed a few moves from, Peaches, a Canadian musician who, like Germanotta, presented herself as a sexually ambiguous performance artist, though Peaches did it a decade ago. It was actually a plausible claim when Peaches made it—she has no worldwide No. 1s. (Yet.)
This is how “The Fame” works. Lady Gaga’s current, very big hit, “Poker Face,” will likely please the frat boys whom her pull quotes are designed to scare. As the punning title suggests, it’s a song about rough sex. (Another song is entitled “I Like It Rough.”) “Eh, Eh” echoes Madonna’s lighter work, like “La Isla Bonita,” and there’s even a ballad, to be released as a single when the people who don’t like dance music need to be pulled in, called “Brown Eyes.”
If you want melody and a cheerful embrace of the moment as it happens, Lady Gaga is a wise bet. Her recent client Britney is currently sleepwalking through her own tour. Not so Ms. Germanotta. On “American Idol,” Lady Gaga tore up “Poker Face” and short-circuited the conventions of the show by splitting the song into a drunken solo-piano ballad and an up-tempo truncated version of itself. Germanotta knows that the one-hit wonders are weirder and cooler than the well-paid musicians who stretch their careers over seven years on the stage and twenty more behind it. Can she have it both ways? ♦
Okay. Here are some of the references that Frere-Jones makes.
BOB DYLAN singing "Like a Rolling Stone."
Bob Marley singing "Stir It Up."
Gary Numan singing "Cars"
Eiffel 65 singing "Blue"
Flo Rida singing "Sugar"
Lady Gaga "Poker Face" and "Just Dance." Can't embed. Go to YouTube and check them out.
Andy Warhol talks....
Karl Marx, Papa of Communism, author of Communist Manifesto.
Rainer Marie Rilke, poem, "The Panther.:
Then I read this article, and some of it made sense. Written by Sasha Frere-Jones
Dedicated fans of popular music have a certain conversation at least once a year. Call it The Question of Endurance. You and your friends are talking about music, and the conversation turns to a popular band. You express support. A friend voices her opinion, maybe as favorable as yours, but appends a qualifier: “I like them, but will they be around in ten years?” You may feel compelled to defend whomever it is you’re talking about, covering the present moment and the future with your positive take. After trying this approach, though, you realize that pop music has no Constitution and doesn’t operate like a de-facto Supreme Court: precedent is not always established, and isn’t even necessary. Pop rarely accretes in a tidy, serial manner—it zigs, zags, eats itself, and falls over its shoelaces. Some pop successes go head to head with Blake and Bach; others win their blue ribbons by doing everything upside down and out of tune.
Exceptional pop creates a precedent precisely by abrogating the presumptive rules. How did that grouchy Bob Dylan become a critical favorite by spitting back at interviewers with silence and riddles? (Didn’t being cute and funny help the Beatles? Why would the opposite behavior work just as well, and at exactly the same time?) How did the Jamaican shantytown hero Bob Marley become an American Ivy League dorm-room staple? How did the tiny, androgynous Prince become a hero to alpha-male guitar-solo fiends? Pop acts become classic when they reveal the contingent nature of “classic.”
So it goes with one-hit (or two-hit) wonders, who can also become classics—or not. The nature of pop recycling makes it hard to measure, or define, endurance. In 1980, Gary Numan’s synthesizer pop song “Cars” was a reliable presence on broadcast radio here and in the United Kingdom. By 1985, though, you’d have been hard pressed to find a trace of Numan in the mainstream of pop. Today, he’s ubiquitous—“Cars” has been referenced in television shows and pop songs steadily throughout the past decade, and Numan’s synthesizer sounds are audible in the work of tiny Brooklyn bands and enormous stars alike. Just because the anonymous Euro-techno group Eiffel 65 was on the charts for only one stretch in 2000 does not mean that its mission was not accomplished. Eiffel 65’s one known song—its nonsense hit “Blue”—is the basis for a new Top Forty hit by Flo Rida called “Sugar,” and has inspired many user-generated videos on YouTube that are all better than the official video, a C.G.I. monstrosity. The artist who stays on the charts for years without interruption sometimes does it by virtue of professional acuity and inoffensive predictability. Some of pop’s most delightful figures endure exactly because we can’t figure out what they are up to.
Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta would have you believe that she’s not just beating the system—in her version, she’s stormed the castle walls, spirited away the Dauphin, and changed the national language to semaphore. Better known as Lady Gaga, Germanotta was born twenty-three years ago in Yonkers and has had two verifiable worldwide No. 1 hits, which are definitely dance music: “Just Dance” and “Poker Face.” (The kids say electro-pop, I say disco, and I suppose we’re both right.) Less verifiable is her theorizing about her work. She cites Andy Warhol, claims to be a “fame Robin Hood” who has lost her mind, opines in public about whether a certain shade of red is “Communist,” and has dropped Rilke’s name more than once. Don’t take this skepticism for distaste—Lady Gaga and I share preferences, especially as far as well-written pop music goes, and I am thrilled to see Communism and Rilke getting ink. I am also happy that her album, “The Fame,” will be with us all year, even if you can’t find Marx or Rilke anywhere in the music. What is most amusing is watching a trained pro like Lady Gaga try to sell herself as the Flying Lizards. Who were they? A colorfully deadpan British art-school unit of brainy, primitive one-hit wonders (“Money”) who did business in the early eighties and are resurrected in spirit every seven years or so. They were really odd.
Gaga is not odd, give or take some warbles and that one time during a session for AOL when she pounded on her keyboard with her high heel, but she is as smart as she repeatedly claims to be. Germanotta went to Convent of the Sacred Heart High School and grew up on the Upper West Side. (Her parents call her Joanne.) After a stint at N.Y.U.’s Tisch School, she dropped out and, while still a teen, went to Los Angeles, where she got a contract with Def Jam. That gig ended in three months, so Germanotta came home—not yet calling herself Lady Gaga—and began performing songs and burlesque routines in New York clubs with a friend, the d.j. Lady Starlight. Eventually, she returned to Los Angeles, and signed with Interscope Records. She wrote songs for the Pussycat Dolls and one for Britney Spears (a strange, compelling love song disguised as a dance number, called “Quicksand,” which is available only on the European version of Spears’s “Circus”) and worked with Akon, the certified pop star with an ornately embellished criminal past, who signed Gaga to his label.
This is not as weird as it might sound. Gaga can really sing and really write. That said, she embellished when she says, of “The Fame,” that she “did the whole goddamn thing.” In reality, her collaborators on her début album are a wisely picked cast of new and old pros who know how to make pop records sound like pop records. Rob Fusari, who dubbed Germanotta Lady Gaga, after the Queen song “Radio Ga Ga,” co-wrote some of Destiny’s Child’s best work. RedOne is a Moroccan producer whose song “Bamboo” was named the Official Melody of soccer’s 2006 FIFA World Cup. More to the point, RedOne’s longtime residence in Sweden means that he has access to the enormous ice pool of Nordic hooks that Americans never seem to match. It makes sense that RedOne and Germanotta received a Grammy nomination for “Just Dance,” the song that presumably inspired Spears to enlist Ms. Gaga’s help for “Circus.”
How not dumb is Lady Gaga? Released exactly one year ago, “Just Dance” was one of the first big records to ride the sea change in pop, away from hip-hop and back toward disco, the music that has been in charge of the charts in Europe for a long time. (One current acknowledgment of this shift is a single by a rapper named Kid Cudi, who is currently jostling with Lady Gaga on the iTunes charts with his song “Day ’n’ Nite,” which re-imagines hip-hop as mumbling over disco rather than yelling over funk.)
With RedOne’s help, Gaga summons generations of dance music. “Just Dance” is built around the brawny, slightly overbearing synthesizers of Gary Numan and his British peers like the Human League. (Those keyboards are also the foundation for Euro-techno like Eiffel 65 and for dozens of Continental hits that Americans rarely hear.) Gaga’s hard vocal delivery lets her tone bounce off the walls, in the manner of Sharon Brown and Shannon and other eighties dance-floor workhorses. “Just Dance” is about being drunk in a club, which is a great idea, because songs for drunk people in clubs are rarely sharp enough to be so obvious: a lot gets lost in the quest for the clever. The Lady’s had too much red wine, turned her shirt inside out, and has a Playboy mouth, whatever that is. Her night could end up on the gossip blogs if she’s not careful—she “can’t see straight,” and can’t remember what club she’s in, but sings to herself that it’s “gonna be O.K.,” which will reassure anybody with a liquor license doing business while the song is on. Later in the song, Lady Gaga semi-raps and recalls the weirdo she’s borrowed a few moves from, Peaches, a Canadian musician who, like Germanotta, presented herself as a sexually ambiguous performance artist, though Peaches did it a decade ago. It was actually a plausible claim when Peaches made it—she has no worldwide No. 1s. (Yet.)
This is how “The Fame” works. Lady Gaga’s current, very big hit, “Poker Face,” will likely please the frat boys whom her pull quotes are designed to scare. As the punning title suggests, it’s a song about rough sex. (Another song is entitled “I Like It Rough.”) “Eh, Eh” echoes Madonna’s lighter work, like “La Isla Bonita,” and there’s even a ballad, to be released as a single when the people who don’t like dance music need to be pulled in, called “Brown Eyes.”
If you want melody and a cheerful embrace of the moment as it happens, Lady Gaga is a wise bet. Her recent client Britney is currently sleepwalking through her own tour. Not so Ms. Germanotta. On “American Idol,” Lady Gaga tore up “Poker Face” and short-circuited the conventions of the show by splitting the song into a drunken solo-piano ballad and an up-tempo truncated version of itself. Germanotta knows that the one-hit wonders are weirder and cooler than the well-paid musicians who stretch their careers over seven years on the stage and twenty more behind it. Can she have it both ways? ♦
Okay. Here are some of the references that Frere-Jones makes.
BOB DYLAN singing "Like a Rolling Stone."
Bob Marley singing "Stir It Up."
Gary Numan singing "Cars"
Eiffel 65 singing "Blue"
Flo Rida singing "Sugar"
Lady Gaga "Poker Face" and "Just Dance." Can't embed. Go to YouTube and check them out.
Andy Warhol talks....
Karl Marx, Papa of Communism, author of Communist Manifesto.
Rainer Marie Rilke, poem, "The Panther.:
Saturday, October 10, 2009
DESCRIPTIVE WRITING
Writing descriptively is the writing with a sense of the sensual. When you write about the ocean, you want the reader to "feel" the ocean--the spray, taste the salt, see the water. The more vividly you do this, the more evocative the writing. Remember, you are using a two dimensional tool--words--to capture a three dimensional "thing." It is one thing to say:
The marble is on the floor.
It is another thing to say:
The smooth, aqua marble rocks back and forth on the cedar floorboards.
I don't even know if they make floorboards out of cedar wood but you get the idea.
In the second sentence you get the feel of the marble, its color, motion, and the smell of the wood floor.
This is how I want you to think about writing the world: as a place made of up of many different objects which all have their own unique texture.
Here is an example of a descriptive passage.
My most valuable possession is an old, slightly warped blond guitar--the first instrument I taught myself how to play. It's nothing fancy, just a Madeira folk guitar, all scuffed and scratched and finger-printed. At the top is a bramble of copper-wound strings, each one hooked through the eye of a silver tuning key. The strings are stretched down a long, slim neck, its frets tarnished, the wood worn by years of fingers pressing chords and picking notes. The body of the Madeira is shaped like an enormous yellow pear, one that was slightly damaged in shipping. The blond wood has been chipped and gouged to gray, particularly where the pick guard fell off years ago. No, it's not a beautiful instrument, but it still lets me make music, and for that I will always treasure it.
Check this out. I am thinking that this 11 year old will put me out of business.
It's pretty cool, though.
The marble is on the floor.
It is another thing to say:
The smooth, aqua marble rocks back and forth on the cedar floorboards.
I don't even know if they make floorboards out of cedar wood but you get the idea.
In the second sentence you get the feel of the marble, its color, motion, and the smell of the wood floor.
This is how I want you to think about writing the world: as a place made of up of many different objects which all have their own unique texture.
Here is an example of a descriptive passage.
My most valuable possession is an old, slightly warped blond guitar--the first instrument I taught myself how to play. It's nothing fancy, just a Madeira folk guitar, all scuffed and scratched and finger-printed. At the top is a bramble of copper-wound strings, each one hooked through the eye of a silver tuning key. The strings are stretched down a long, slim neck, its frets tarnished, the wood worn by years of fingers pressing chords and picking notes. The body of the Madeira is shaped like an enormous yellow pear, one that was slightly damaged in shipping. The blond wood has been chipped and gouged to gray, particularly where the pick guard fell off years ago. No, it's not a beautiful instrument, but it still lets me make music, and for that I will always treasure it.
Check this out. I am thinking that this 11 year old will put me out of business.
It's pretty cool, though.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
NARRATIVE ESSAY ASSESSMENT
11th grade English – Rhetoric
Lippman
NARRATIVE ESSAY
The Narrative Essay is due on October 8 or 9th.
I would like you to write a 3-5 page narrative essay. Remember, a narrative is a story. You have to tell a story. About yourself. It has to be true. Or, it has to read authentically. By this I mean, you can’t write a story about dragons and warlocks who rule the land.
The narrative must be a triptych. A triptych is a piece of art that has three parts. Here are the three parts.
1. The Set Up.
In the set up I want you to establish place, time, persona, voice. Where does the story take place? Who are the players? What is the situation? Be as descriptive and evocative as possible.
2. The Transformative Moment (private).
This is the moment in the narrative in which the speaker, you, has some realization—big or small—that re-defines in some way your sense of self, your vision of the world. You must ruminate on how your perspective on “things” has changed. You must discuss, describe and explore this change. Be as descriptive and evocative as possible.
3. The Universal Moment (public).
This is the moment in which you discuss your new knowledge, your new found realization and how it may play out in the public sector. How does/has what you have “seen” in yourself effect those around you, yourself. And, how might you take what you have learned about yourself to do some “good” in the world. Be as descriptive and evocative as possible.
The Narrative Essay is due on October 8/9.
Honors Component: Write a poem about your transformative moment. Go nuts.
Lippman
NARRATIVE ESSAY
The Narrative Essay is due on October 8 or 9th.
I would like you to write a 3-5 page narrative essay. Remember, a narrative is a story. You have to tell a story. About yourself. It has to be true. Or, it has to read authentically. By this I mean, you can’t write a story about dragons and warlocks who rule the land.
The narrative must be a triptych. A triptych is a piece of art that has three parts. Here are the three parts.
1. The Set Up.
In the set up I want you to establish place, time, persona, voice. Where does the story take place? Who are the players? What is the situation? Be as descriptive and evocative as possible.
2. The Transformative Moment (private).
This is the moment in the narrative in which the speaker, you, has some realization—big or small—that re-defines in some way your sense of self, your vision of the world. You must ruminate on how your perspective on “things” has changed. You must discuss, describe and explore this change. Be as descriptive and evocative as possible.
3. The Universal Moment (public).
This is the moment in which you discuss your new knowledge, your new found realization and how it may play out in the public sector. How does/has what you have “seen” in yourself effect those around you, yourself. And, how might you take what you have learned about yourself to do some “good” in the world. Be as descriptive and evocative as possible.
The Narrative Essay is due on October 8/9.
Honors Component: Write a poem about your transformative moment. Go nuts.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Scott Rusell Sanders
Here is the link to an interview with Scott Russell Sanders, author of the essay we are reading and discussing, "Under The Influence."
http://www.scottrussellsanders.com/about/riverteeth.htm
http://www.scottrussellsanders.com/about/riverteeth.htm
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Borges and I
Hello.
Here is a fascinating piece of writing that explores the notion of self. We must think about identity as an entity comprised of many different landscapes, plateaus, and embankments. It's textured, cultured, precise, vague, gray, and purple.
The "poem" by Jose Luis Borges explores this notion. Check it out.
Jorge Luis Borges
"Borges and I"
The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides, I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things.
Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.
I do not know which of us has written this page.
Check out the video.
Here is a reading of the piece in Spanish. There is music. There is Spanish. It's so beautiful in the Spanish. Please listen. Dream in Spanish, in Spain, as Spaniards.
Here are some of your pieces written in the spirit of "Borges and I."
Epstein & I
Epstein is the one who likes to sing. I, however, am the one who likes to act. She sings like nobody is listening and I act like the whole world can see me.
I don’t understand how we’re friends, while Epstein loves to be herself on the stage, showing the world who she really is, and I love to be someone else, someone I can hide behind . She can walk onto the stage with such confidence, free to be herself, while I enter left stage, my knees shaking hiding behind the costume that has been made to fit me.
Sometimes I sit in the front row of her concerts, once again questioning our friendship. Epstein displays such great confidence, the type that makes me feel like a failure, the underdog. As I look out into the audience from the stage, the lights blind my eyes, and I can’t see if Epstein is sitting there; sometimes I don’t think she is. I can see why, I never get the lead roles, I’m always the maid or the sister who doesn’t add to the plot. Epstein is the main character, herself, all the spot lights are on her. I am lucky if a single pair of eyes is on me.
Although we’re friends, I constantly am reminded how much better Epstein is.
Hollingsworth and I
The other girl, the one who goes by the name of Hollingsworth, lives the artistic and strategic life. I simply pass through the halls, going from class to class secretly waiting for the long walk up to the art studio. Hollingsworth gracefully lets her wrist sway around the canvas while the peaceful colors blend together in a warm sweet harmony. I see the light dancing over a field of grass and my hand starts to tremble with the want and need of a charcoal pencil in my hand. While I feel a sense of fear in showing others my art, Hollingsworth feels nothing but pride and a sense of accomplishment. We use the same hand to paint and draw, the same eyes to see and the same heart to love; yet I am unsure of who encompasses the true skill of an artist.
Barnard and I
I play so much better than Barnard. I play with soul and passion; he play’s only what he reads on the sheet of music. When I’m playing, I feel the music running through my fingertips, but I know that Barnard cannot feel the same. Barnard only feels the strings on his fingertips. Yet he has an advantage you see. He holds great skill in his ability and plays with agility far tantamount to mine. I envy his muscle memory, his ability to seemingly be completely focused on something else, and still make beautiful noises. But he is focused on the guitar, too much so in fact. I play with feeling and with an image of the sound in my heart. Barnard plays only with an image of the sheet of music in his brain. Yet I lack Barnard’s ability to translate something into music. I can only dream of playing out my feelings and passion on the beautiful fret board of the guitar. Only by working together can we make a successful duet.
Deleon and I
Deleon, the one who is said to walk with a chip on his shoulder, always seems to walk with me. He is of my complexion and shares my reflection. In many instances he and I can live in harmony but I can not make sense of how such opposites can coexist. I’ve known him since before I knew myself. Deleon could’ve very easily spoken my first words and taken my first steps, yet I don’t recall how he came to be. As the years drift by like butterflies in a spring afternoon - our ties appear to be flying in different directions. The farther we stretch apart the more my character builds. There are still times when Deleon may be quick to make an assumption of someone due to their gender, class, race, religion, or sexual orientation. His thoughts always mingle with my own but I make sure to correct him in his thinking. I challenge him to think beyond physical traits and I push Deleon so much that he is inclined to complain of his brain being close to eruption. That just shows how critical I make him think. Each day flashes before our eyes and every morning is a new beginning. Deleon may very well be with me for the rest of my life but the truth is, Deleon is the yang to my yin, and without him I would disappear.
Beckwith and I
Beckwith steps out of the tent. I squint as the sun is rising over mountains in the distance. I stand for a while and look around me. Beckwith takes in the amazing view that he had not noticed the night before because they had gotten in after dark. I pull my eyes away from the mountains and start to help take down the tent. Beckwith then begins to pack up and get everything ready to go. I help check around the campsite to make sure we have left no trace and we are ready to leave. Beckwith takes one last look around and then concentrates on descending the ledge on which they had slept.
English and I
English is a blank canvas with flying emotions and intense creativity. She has this sort of confidence inside that is like non other and when determined, can accomplish any one thing she singularly puts her mind on. When distraught, English uses only a few tools to build up that confidence and inner strength once again. Her paintbrush, scissors, paper and glue, not only keep her from distress and unseen feelings, but can erase any trouble or concerns she is faced with. Its as if she is paining out the worries and pain, cutting away the fears, heeling the paper-cuts and gluing all the love and good spirits into her soul. I wish I could be English. In some absurd way I’m just like her, however when digging to the details, I have layers and layers covering my inventiveness and my ability to change things that English does not. When the wheels of stress and anxiety run over my sensitive being, the inner sensations take me away. As hard as I attempt to create a bulletproof shell to keep firm on the outside, I fail. I fail at a lot of things. But don’t we all. English likes to think not. English has an astonishing sense of self with an optimistic outlook on life. She loves to live it and no matter what may collide with her plans or lack there of, she has a method of drinking a half full glass of water every day of her life. I have true difficulty drinking that glass of water. Sometimes I manage to swallow in one gulp. I’d like to think I can always do so.
My strategy to push all those unwanted senses away is to use my originality and artistic abilities, just like English does. I like to think we are one in the same. I’m also found of the idea that she envies me, as much as I do her. I like photography, confusing writing; the feelings of butterflies in my stomach, making others feel good and traveling to exotic places. I am terrified of insects and hurting people, I am afraid of death and scary films. I love smiles. I hate upset and the feeling of anger and disappointment. We share those hates and loves and fears. English lives life to fullest. And in that we are the same. I cannot tell if I bounce of her, or if she bounces off of me. I cannot tell if she acts in such a positive way because of my sporadic negativity, or if I look to her because of it.
Here is a fascinating piece of writing that explores the notion of self. We must think about identity as an entity comprised of many different landscapes, plateaus, and embankments. It's textured, cultured, precise, vague, gray, and purple.
The "poem" by Jose Luis Borges explores this notion. Check it out.
Jorge Luis Borges
"Borges and I"
The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides, I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things.
Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.
I do not know which of us has written this page.
Check out the video.
Here is a reading of the piece in Spanish. There is music. There is Spanish. It's so beautiful in the Spanish. Please listen. Dream in Spanish, in Spain, as Spaniards.
Here are some of your pieces written in the spirit of "Borges and I."
Epstein & I
Epstein is the one who likes to sing. I, however, am the one who likes to act. She sings like nobody is listening and I act like the whole world can see me.
I don’t understand how we’re friends, while Epstein loves to be herself on the stage, showing the world who she really is, and I love to be someone else, someone I can hide behind . She can walk onto the stage with such confidence, free to be herself, while I enter left stage, my knees shaking hiding behind the costume that has been made to fit me.
Sometimes I sit in the front row of her concerts, once again questioning our friendship. Epstein displays such great confidence, the type that makes me feel like a failure, the underdog. As I look out into the audience from the stage, the lights blind my eyes, and I can’t see if Epstein is sitting there; sometimes I don’t think she is. I can see why, I never get the lead roles, I’m always the maid or the sister who doesn’t add to the plot. Epstein is the main character, herself, all the spot lights are on her. I am lucky if a single pair of eyes is on me.
Although we’re friends, I constantly am reminded how much better Epstein is.
Hollingsworth and I
The other girl, the one who goes by the name of Hollingsworth, lives the artistic and strategic life. I simply pass through the halls, going from class to class secretly waiting for the long walk up to the art studio. Hollingsworth gracefully lets her wrist sway around the canvas while the peaceful colors blend together in a warm sweet harmony. I see the light dancing over a field of grass and my hand starts to tremble with the want and need of a charcoal pencil in my hand. While I feel a sense of fear in showing others my art, Hollingsworth feels nothing but pride and a sense of accomplishment. We use the same hand to paint and draw, the same eyes to see and the same heart to love; yet I am unsure of who encompasses the true skill of an artist.
Barnard and I
I play so much better than Barnard. I play with soul and passion; he play’s only what he reads on the sheet of music. When I’m playing, I feel the music running through my fingertips, but I know that Barnard cannot feel the same. Barnard only feels the strings on his fingertips. Yet he has an advantage you see. He holds great skill in his ability and plays with agility far tantamount to mine. I envy his muscle memory, his ability to seemingly be completely focused on something else, and still make beautiful noises. But he is focused on the guitar, too much so in fact. I play with feeling and with an image of the sound in my heart. Barnard plays only with an image of the sheet of music in his brain. Yet I lack Barnard’s ability to translate something into music. I can only dream of playing out my feelings and passion on the beautiful fret board of the guitar. Only by working together can we make a successful duet.
Deleon and I
Deleon, the one who is said to walk with a chip on his shoulder, always seems to walk with me. He is of my complexion and shares my reflection. In many instances he and I can live in harmony but I can not make sense of how such opposites can coexist. I’ve known him since before I knew myself. Deleon could’ve very easily spoken my first words and taken my first steps, yet I don’t recall how he came to be. As the years drift by like butterflies in a spring afternoon - our ties appear to be flying in different directions. The farther we stretch apart the more my character builds. There are still times when Deleon may be quick to make an assumption of someone due to their gender, class, race, religion, or sexual orientation. His thoughts always mingle with my own but I make sure to correct him in his thinking. I challenge him to think beyond physical traits and I push Deleon so much that he is inclined to complain of his brain being close to eruption. That just shows how critical I make him think. Each day flashes before our eyes and every morning is a new beginning. Deleon may very well be with me for the rest of my life but the truth is, Deleon is the yang to my yin, and without him I would disappear.
Beckwith and I
Beckwith steps out of the tent. I squint as the sun is rising over mountains in the distance. I stand for a while and look around me. Beckwith takes in the amazing view that he had not noticed the night before because they had gotten in after dark. I pull my eyes away from the mountains and start to help take down the tent. Beckwith then begins to pack up and get everything ready to go. I help check around the campsite to make sure we have left no trace and we are ready to leave. Beckwith takes one last look around and then concentrates on descending the ledge on which they had slept.
English and I
English is a blank canvas with flying emotions and intense creativity. She has this sort of confidence inside that is like non other and when determined, can accomplish any one thing she singularly puts her mind on. When distraught, English uses only a few tools to build up that confidence and inner strength once again. Her paintbrush, scissors, paper and glue, not only keep her from distress and unseen feelings, but can erase any trouble or concerns she is faced with. Its as if she is paining out the worries and pain, cutting away the fears, heeling the paper-cuts and gluing all the love and good spirits into her soul. I wish I could be English. In some absurd way I’m just like her, however when digging to the details, I have layers and layers covering my inventiveness and my ability to change things that English does not. When the wheels of stress and anxiety run over my sensitive being, the inner sensations take me away. As hard as I attempt to create a bulletproof shell to keep firm on the outside, I fail. I fail at a lot of things. But don’t we all. English likes to think not. English has an astonishing sense of self with an optimistic outlook on life. She loves to live it and no matter what may collide with her plans or lack there of, she has a method of drinking a half full glass of water every day of her life. I have true difficulty drinking that glass of water. Sometimes I manage to swallow in one gulp. I’d like to think I can always do so.
My strategy to push all those unwanted senses away is to use my originality and artistic abilities, just like English does. I like to think we are one in the same. I’m also found of the idea that she envies me, as much as I do her. I like photography, confusing writing; the feelings of butterflies in my stomach, making others feel good and traveling to exotic places. I am terrified of insects and hurting people, I am afraid of death and scary films. I love smiles. I hate upset and the feeling of anger and disappointment. We share those hates and loves and fears. English lives life to fullest. And in that we are the same. I cannot tell if I bounce of her, or if she bounces off of me. I cannot tell if she acts in such a positive way because of my sporadic negativity, or if I look to her because of it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)