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Having just finished reading Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon’s psychedelic noir that spins its yarn in a way that the story eludes you as it escapes into marijuana Haze that Doc seems to dwell in for the full length of the novel. But behind the amusing scenes that are a product of his stoner persona – for instance when he falls asleep on top of a roof while attempting to do a stakeout, a slumber, during which, the very woman he was supposed to be observing is found surrounded by the dead body of her husband and his ex-marital affair and the all too poignant fuzz finding Doc on top of the roof – is a vicious torrent that threatens an era and all it stood for, including a relationship that Doc still holds onto.

Time always proceeds forward; it is a force that cannot be stopped.

“…yet there is no avoiding time, the sea of time, the sea of memory and forgetfulness, the years of promise, gone and unrecoverable, of the land almost allowed to claim its better destiny, only to the claim jumped by evildoers known all too well, and taken instead and held hostage to the future we must live in now forever.”

I think this book is a fairly accessible Pynchon novel. It is very entertaining and although still scattered with contemporary cultural references, reaching to both high and low brow humor, it is still far less daunting than Gravity’s Rainbow (which I won’t even pretend to understand, at least not until I read it a second time, but even then…God…that fucking book, I can’t even map out the storyline, only a couple of parts).

I must admit that reading Pynchon puts me in a paranoid mood, or at least, reminds me of my paranoia that had been lying dormant within the recesses of my mind. The balance of power that seems oddly tipped towards a certain demographic that exists but also doesn’t seem to exist, at least not to those within the inner circle.

But even thinking about this novel, or Gravity’s Rainbow, a word trails into my mind, ‘pretentious’. I am not sure if it such a description is apt; for the Pynchon’s novels or even those who decide to read them. Most certainly, they are not the type of books to read on a beach or start talking about with someone you just met (unless interest from the other party is expressed of course, then by all means do so!). But they are so vividly interesting and so holistically invite you into the world that Pynchon has decided to explore. Pynchon’s use of his encyclopedic knowledge has a reason; it isn’t just to be pretentious (I mean would a pretentious person include so many low brow jokes?).

Inherent Vice has many moments where I laughed out loud, a incredibly rare occurrence for me when I am reading a novel. Other than the earlier scene I described, in the novel, the way Doc and Sauncho meet is when Sauncho, trying to buy a sifter for his marijuana has a sudden moment of paranoia and asks Doc, who is at the same supermarket late at night in order to satisfy a sudden chocolate craving, if he can put his sifter with Doc’s stuff at the checkout, to which Doc responds, “What about all this chocolate man?” So the two end up buying much more groceries than they ever needed. Then there is another scene where Sauncho calls up Doc. He had just watched The Wizard of Oz. So what he asks Doc is, when the movie starts out, the movie is black and white for us, but we imagine that Dorothy sees her own world as color, so when the movie shifts to Technicolor, what kind of psychedelic high-intensity color does she see?

Even if you feel reading Pynchon is pretentious, I think you need not worry about that that much. Just read this entertaining book, I guarantee it will make you laugh.

 

 

 

 

 

With the international success of Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars’ single Uptown Funk (for valid and obvious reasons–an incredible beat, catchy verses, hooks and a chorus) I was astonished that this genre was being praised as a newfound form of pop; a form of pop that rises far above our never-ending stream of blaseé singles. Good news kids: this genre has been around for more than half a century and was incredibly popular for its time. Groups like Funkadelic/Parliament pushed the boundaries of funk and music itself. Groovy yelps, general  noise, and colloquial dialogue superimposed over beats (think Uptown Funk but better) that make you bob your head relentlessly emanate from the only way to listen to this genre–vinyl.

My point? I love that the masses are eating up Uptown Funk, but what I’m asking of you is, while you appreciate Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars for their creativity and originality, remember that groups like Funkadelic and men like George Clinton (lol) then deserve excessive praise. Their outlandishness and fearlessness drove a culture that invented a form of dance, assisted disco, and brought a race together once again over their art form.

 

To prove my point, here are a few songs that will doubtlessly induce a copious amount of neck movements, shimmying, and a smile you can’t conceal as you strut across the Diag. Also, play some of these at a party and your friends will think you’re not only “super cool” but eclectic and hopefully a li’l jazzy too.

1. Dr. Funkenstein – Parliament
2. Funkentelechy – Parliament
3. Give Up The Funk (Tear The Roof Off This Sucker) – Parliament
4. It’s Alright – Graham Central Station
5. So Goes The Story – Eddie Hazel
6. In The Stone – Earth Wind & Fire

Dixit is one of my favorite new board games that I have played recently. It is truly beautiful. If anyone reading this is interested in arts, games, and their intersection, then I highly recommend you pick up this game.

Dixit is a game designed by Jean-Louis Roubira in 2010. The games involves amazingly drawn cards and a scoring system that makes sure that everyone has a chance at any part of the game. In the game, every player has a hand of 6 cards with abstract pictures. The active player then chooses a card from their hand and says a clue about the card. The other players then choose a card from their hand that they think fits that clue. The clue that the active player says must be vague enough that not everyone will understand it, but clear enough that a few people could. Once all the cards are played, they are shuffled and revealed. Every player except the active player then uses a voting tile to try and choose which card is the active player’s card. If everyone gets the card right then they all move two spaces while the active player doesn’t move at all. The same is also true if no one gets the card right. If only some get it right, then those players and the active player move three spaces. It can be a bit difficult to understand when explained, but it is very easy to play in practice. Because of its beautiful cards and fun game play, it won the Spiel de Jahres, the top award for board game design, in 2010.

Let me just show some examples of the cards:

 

And my personal favorite card is:

 

These are just a few of the cards and there are many more that are just as beautiful. Because of these abstract drawings, the game becomes really fun as clues can mean anything and creativity abounds. If you want a wonderful game that inspires creativity, then this is definitely the game for you.

It’s always really exciting when you get into a new musician and then find out after you’ve made the jump that they’re actually pretty local. There is something special about listening to music and knowing that the person who created that piece of art shares some experiences with you. When a friend of mine pushed me to listen to BØRNS, an up-and-coming artist that is going to be hitting Michigan on tour next week, it wasn’t until after I got swept up in his music that I looked into it a little further and found that he is a native of the west side of the state.

Listening to the few songs from his debut EP, I would never have guessed that he was from here. I’m not exactly sure I can pinpoint what Michigan inspired music sounds like (and really, how can you when you have Motown sound mixing in with hip-hop and colliding with some Sufjan Stevens), but his sound is different than anything I would ever expect coming from this state. It moves beyond the steady ebbing sounds of acoustic folk but stops short of the hard-and-fast pace of industry inspired beats, creating for itself a space filled with notes that feel electrified and surreal.

BØRNS utilizes his vocal range to force a feeling of upward motion in his songs, building up to soaring notes that leave the listener feeling like they’re floating. He pairs this overcharged sound with lyrics that take you to places uncharted, weaving motifs of water and electricity through his songs. 10,000 Emerald Pools takes you deep into enchanted waters on a quest for love, the music video featuring graceful and fluid underwater dancing that accentuates the fluidity of the song. Meanwhile Electric Love, as you might have guessed, takes his enchanted sound and lays down lyrics that focus on the power of electricity and its parallels to an all-consuming attraction.

The cohesiveness of the tracks on his debut EP is reinvigorating. While it may seem like a less daunting task to make four songs that mesh well together as opposed to an entire album, their seamless ability to flow into each other makes them feel like one single work instead of four individual pieces. This is impressive from a debut album put out by a man who is just a few years older than the students on this campus. Even more impressive is that this ability to take a musical motif and make it an integral part of the sound of his music appears to be something he developed at a young age. When scanning YouTube for more songs by him, I found a video of a performance he did at TEDxGrandRapids in 2011. I know that TED has made a few appearances on our blog in the last few days, but I’m just going to leave the link to his performance here, because the way he weaves French sounds into his music and storytelling is pretty cool.

As a feminist, progressive thinking, academically minded individual, there are a lot of things in culture and media that I have strong opinions on — equality, education, and self-love to name a few. The thing is, as much as I cherish these things conceptually, it can sometimes be a real challenge to practice what I preach when I live in a world that constantly promotes exactly the opposite. I preach about the absurdity of beauty standards and expectations for women’s bodies, but I go to the gym every day to work toward a similar goal. I could argue to the death that women can do anything as well as men, but sometimes I catch myself looking for a male employee to help me with my electronics or repairs. I catch myself using the word “gay” or “retarded” as colloquialism for something inferior, though I would never think of the people who identify with these terms in an inferior way. It can be really difficult for all of us to be politically correct all of the time and I think all of us slip. I don’t think, however, that that makes us hypocrites, rather it makes us human.

We live in an extremely flawed society which we directly and indirectly perpetuate through many of the things that we do — reading tabloids, going on diets, looking away from problems of racism and sexism, etc. because otherwise we’d have to admit that we’re a part of the problem. We’re all a part of it, but that blaming (self or otherwise) isn’t going to solve anything. At the end of the day I think we need to unite in becoming better at catching ourselves and gently, lovingly, catching those around us. Everyone is so filled with fear of saying the wrong thing that we end up silencing ourselves, refusing to enter into the conversation, and thus further hindering progress.

What we need most right now are voices that are humble enough to admit they’re wrong, voices that are willing to speak when necessary and also listen, voices that empathize, voices that ask for help to learn. As a white heterosexual woman I often feel like I have no right to speak to issues of race or sexuality. Jackson Katz, creator of the Mentors in Violence Prevention program eloquently addresses this issue in his TED Talk called Violence Against Women–It’s a Men’s Issue:

“In the U.S., when we hear the word “race,” a lot of people think that means African-American, Latino, Asian-American, Native American, South Asian, Pacific Islander, on and on. A lot of people, when they hear the word “sexual orientation” think it means gay, lesbian, bisexual. And a lot of people, when they hear the word “gender,” think it means women. In each case, the dominant group doesn’t get paid attention to. Right? As if white people don’t have some sort of racial identity or belong to some racial category or construct, as if heterosexual people don’t have a sexual orientation, as if men don’t have a gender. This is one of the ways that dominant systems maintain and reproduce themselves, which is to say the dominant group is rarely challenged to even think about its dominance, because that’s one of the key characteristics of power and privilege, the ability to go unexamined, lacking introspection, in fact being rendered invisible in large measure in the discourse about issues that are primarily about us. And this is amazing how this works in domestic and sexual violence, how men have been largely erased from so much of the conversation about a subject that is centrally about men.”

Though this is more specifically tailored to gender violence, he makes an important point about the silencing of the dominant group. It is not our fault that our culture is flawed, it has become this way over the course of a long and messy history; what is our fault, however, is choosing to remain silent. Our voices are needed, voices that are willing to be learn to speak the language of respect to those populations that have been historically degraded by the dominant population. It’s time to establish a more forgiving and open dialogue so that we don’t feel as though we have to tiptoe around these issues for fear of saying the wrong thing. So, instead of tiptoeing, instead of feeling guilty for hypocritical slips, instead of pointing the finger at people who say something politically incorrect, it’s time to come together as a community and talk about the hard stuff.

*This post was largely inspired by a performance by Antonio Lyons, creator of the WE ARE HERE project. More information about this can be found on his website.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, Gladwell examines the factors which contribute to high levels of success. Gladwell repeatedly mentions the “10,000-Hour Rule” claiming that the key to success within any field is simply a matter of practicing that specific task for a total of 10,000 hours.

As a quantitative thinker, I like the idea of a certain number of hours of work holding the key to success better than the qualitative idea of working hard and when you are ready, you’ll be ready. So naturally, I began to think about singing and performing in terms of 10,000 hours.

As a singer, you are not simply being judged based on the quality of your voice. Your diction, musicality and technique are constantly being evaluated. Beyond singing, your acting and dancing ability, as well as physical appearance are subject to harsh criticism.

So as I pursue a career as a performer, all of these requirements weigh heavily on my mind. Do I need 10,000 hours of practice in each subfield required of me as a performer or 10,000 hours total? 10,000 hours of Italian, French & German diction, 10,000 hours of vocal technique practice, on top of 10,000 hours of acting and dance training begins to feel overwhelming and near impossible. So which subfields require mastery and which can be strategically faked?

Mastery of vocal technique in an operatic setting cannot be faked or negotiated. While the rest of the subfields can sometimes be successfully fudged (just listen to some of the horrendous diction of operatic superstars) vocal prowess is a non-negotiable requirement. As for acting and dancing, we have all been subjected to the “park and bark” tendencies of opera singers.

As a performer, I will always strive for perfection – knowing full well that this is impossible. Having accumulated 60,000 hours of total practice in the various dictions, technique, acting and dancing by this point in my life would have been impossible. Yet, while I am not a master in any one of those fields I’ll keep attempting to be the total package and one day, I’ll hit 60,000 hours.