Spring is Coming, if we just hold on

As hundreds of unshaven middle aged folks swarm the campus, we can take a break from the puffs of smoke and baja’s to admire the change in weather. Although anyone living in Michigan for more than year knows that it’s too early to ditch the winter jackets, it’s certainly getting close to Spring. As I’m not quite as eager as the daring young boys who wear shorts solely because it was above 50 yesterday, I choose to tie myself over in the wait with poetry. For all you midwesterners out there, here’s a poem by Bob Hicok in the anticipation of daffodils.

 

A Primer

by Bob Hicok

 

I remember Michigan fondly as the place I go

to be in Michigan. The right hand of America

waving from maps or the left

pressing into clay a mold to take home

from kindergarten to Mother. I lived in Michigan

forty-three years. The state bird

is a chained factory gate. The state flower

is Lake Superior, which sounds egotistical

though it is merely cold and deep as truth.

A Midwesterner can use the word “truth,”

can sincerely use the word “sincere.”

In truth the Midwest is not mid or west.

When I go back to Michigan I drive through Ohio.

There is off I-75 in Ohio a mosque, so life

goes corn corn corn mosque, I wave at Islam,

which we’re not getting along with

on account of the Towers as I pass.

Then Ohio goes corn corn corn

billboard, goodbye, Islam. You never forget

how to be from Michigan when you’re from Michigan.

It’s like riding a bike of ice and fly fishing.

The Upper Peninsula is a spare state

in case Michigan goes flat. I live now

in Virginia, which has no backup plan

but is named the same as my mother,

I live in my mother again, which is creepy

but so is what the skin under my chin is doing,

suddenly there’s a pouch like marsupials

are needed. The state joy is spring.

“Osiris, we beseech thee, rise and give us baseball”

is how we might sound were we Egyptian in April,

when February hasn’t ended. February

is thirteen months long in Michigan.

We are a people who by February

want to kill the sky for being so gray

and angry at us. “What did we do?”

is the state motto. There’s a day in May

when we’re all tumblers, gymnastics

is everywhere, and daffodils are asked

by young men to be their wives. When a man elopes

with a daffodil, you know where he’s from.

In this way I have given you a primer.

Let us all be from somewhere.

Let us tell each other everything we can.

Somebody’s Watching Me

As I sat in the UMMA lobby waiting for the rest of my Art History class to arrive, I pulled out my laptop to work on a paper. After a minute or so I had a disconcerting feeling that I was being watched. Slowly I glanced up and took at closer look at the words being projected on the screen in front of me and noticed a line of brief phrases that went a little something like this “adjusts clothes / sits down on bench / pulls out laptop / crosses legs…” I realized that these were all things I was doing and looked around, making brief eye contact with a girl who held my gaze, smiled, and returned to furiously typing on her laptop. Then I looked back to the screen: “smiles briefly / looks at the projector.” Then I knew for certain that I was being watched. So here I sit, writing about an artist writing about me, though not just me. She taps away at her laptop, fast brisk descriptions of everyone in the room, describing the environment, the people, everything she sees feels hears. Is this art? She’s writing about me again, about my typing. Little does she know it’s about her. We’re engaged in a symbiosis of using each other to create our art. Funny how that works.

Waves, Avesw, Veswa, Eswav, Swave, Waves

“The birds sang their blank melody outside.”

“There is nothing staid, nothing
settled in this universe.
All is rippling, all is
dancing; all is quickness and triumph.”

“I would rather
be loved,
I would rather be famous
than follow perfection
through the sand.”

“I am this,
that
and the other.”

“Yes;
I will reduce you
to order.”

“I am rooted, but I flow.”

“I am not single and entire
as you are.
I have lived a thousand lives
already. Every day I unbury–
I dig up. I find relics
of myself in the sand that
women made thousands of years ago . . .”

“The weight of the world
is on our shoulders.
This is life.”

“I do not wish
to be a man who sits
for fifty years
on the same spot thinking
of his navel. I wish to be
harnessed to a cart, a vegetable cart
that rattles over the cobbles.”

“I have reached
the summit
of my desires.”

“I desired always
to stretch the night and
fill it fuller and fuller
with dreams.”

“There is no repetition for me.
Each day
is dangerous.”

“. . . we are extinct,
lost
in the abyss
of time,
in the
darkness.”

“We have destroyed
something by our
presence . . .
a world perhaps.”

“I, I, I.”

“But if there are no stories,
what end can there be,
or what beginning?”

“It is strange
how the dead leap out
on us at street corners,
or in dreams.”

“Life
is a dream
surely.”

“For this is
not one life;
nor do I always know
if I am man
or woman . . .
so strange is the contact
of one with another.”

“I said life had been imperfect,
an unfinished
phrase.”

“Life has destroyed me.”

“I begin now
to forget;
I begin to doubt the fixity
of tables, the reality of here
and now, to tap my knuckles smartly
upon the edges of apparently
solid objects and say, ‘Are you hard?’”

“It is strange
that we who are capable
of so much suffering,
should inflict
so much suffering.”

“It is death.
Death is the enemy.”

“The
waves
broke
on
the
shore.”

After I finished reading The Waves by Virginia Woolf, I realized that I needed to meditate more on passages, the construction of prose vs. poetry, and my visceral connection with the text. The above are some of my favorite passages that I thought could work by themselves and with more fragmentation (of lines, spacing, etc.). Also, it’s national poetry month . . .

May Virginia not roll over in her grave and topple my shore with waves of despair.

Wall to Wall Theatre Festival

As part of the Upstart Festival Basement Arts put together the Wall to Wall Theatre Festival which took place in the Walgreen Drama Center March 29 and 30. The concept for the Wall to Wall Theatre Festival was to create a museum of theater, running 9 unrelated 30 minute shows on a continuous loop for 3 hours and allowing the audience to pick an chose which shows they would attend and in what order.

Of the 9 pieces Speak to Me (the piece I was in) was one of the more avant garde works relying completely on improvisation within the a simple structure of inner and outer exploration leading to communication hindered by the lack of a common medium. My medium consisted of the text from a German art song by Strauss and an excerpt from a Bach Cantata as well as physical movement.

Initially, I signed up for the project because I knew it was a low time commitment and I liked the concept of the festival. I did not know which piece I would be a part of and was initially concerned by the improvisatory nature of Speak to Me. I had never improvised on such a large scale and never while having to interact and work with other performers, especially ones who were simultaneously improvising.

Regardless of all my concerns at the beginning of the process I could not be more please that I took part. By forcing myself to improvise using existing text and pieces of music I discovered what people mean by saying one must live in the music. As I performed I forgot the little voice in my head that is perpetually concerned with using proper technique and ignored the part of my brain that never enjoys the moment but is looking forward to the next note. As I lived in the music and in the moment I lost all track of time, making 30 minutes of improvisation fly past.

For the audience, the Wall to Wall Theatre Festival was a chance to get tastes of different types of performance art without overwhelming themselves. For me, it was a chance to explore the music within songs that I have sung hundreds of times and rediscover the music beyond the notes written on the page.

Please Turn Off All Cellphones While I Watch The Grand Budapest Hotel, it is too Delightful to Miss a Moment

After having missed my opportunity to indulge in the latest Wes Anderson film this weekend, I waited eagerly to this day, to finally walk down the street to the State Theatre to finally quench my thirst. Fortunately, I was blessed with what the average student at this point in the semester is unluckily lacking: free time. Thus explaining my choice let alone chance to view a film on a Wednesday night.

I am writing this minutes after my viewing has ended, and quite honestly, the last thing that I remember is how virtually everyone cleared the theatre and did not stay for the credits. As the viewers left, of course they talked and what not. Not to mention that they talked when the first scene was playing out and also someone in front of me annoyingly turned on their bright fucking smartphone in the middle of the movie. Please don’t. But anyways, to say that I eavesdropped is distasteful but I of course overheard various conversations regarding opinions about The Grand Hotel Budapest. Terms such as “Wes Andersony” were thrown around casually. It seems as if the analysis of a Wes Anderson film has been simply restricted to his name changed into an adjective. Which oddly quite concise yet very limiting and paradoxically expansive. While being just one adjective, it still manages to encapsulate in a person’s mind, the vast styles and quirks of a Wes Anderson film.

I laughed while watching this film, quite possibly, I laughed more during this film than any other viewing of a Wes Anderson film. Possibly because the humour was much more aligned with my taste, or it could have been as something as silly as the state of my mood. Which was…happy with a twist of restrained excitement so as to not ruin and overhype the experience that I was about to undergo. But regardless, at the end of the 100 minute film (how cute that it is exactly 100 minutes), I felt more than happy. In fact, I am still thinking about it. Perhaps thinking is not the right word, rather, I am just purely feeling it and quite honestly, I feel that I am not sharing it properly with whomever is reading this blog post.

Let me tell you this then, in an attempt to persuade you to head on over to the State Theatre this week or weekend. It has been a long time since I have been so pleasantly pleased by a movie. It is not a feeling of hyperbolic excitement and brain-dead zealous fanboy extravaganza. Instead, it is a tamed enjoyment that lasts far longer and is undoubtedly far more concrete. It is a delightful film that I will most definitely go see again sometime this week.

Trust me, I cannot think of any recently made movie that I wanted to go see again. This is not really an extensive review of an sort and I will not write about this film ever again. So please just go watch the bloody film and enjoy it for yourself.

Writers on Rails

A series of 140 character messages sparked Amtrak to consider a new opportunity for writers. As individual wordsmiths began to collectively tweet about their love of writing on trains, the #AmtrakResidency idea developed. Months later, Amtrak is now offering a two to five day on-board residency program for writers. Moving across the American countryside as they draw ink across pages, these 24 individuals will be sponsored by the company to pursue their creative passions on rails. Amtrak is offering a sleeper car with a desk and amenities to each writer. If you are reading this post on this blog, it is likely that you have an interest in the written word–or at least believe in its ability to be a medium for art–so consider applying to the program here.

Amtrak Residency

Imagine sitting in motion. Your mind is moving while your body is still, with the exception of your hand scribbling words on a page. The train is moving, the country stationary. You are still within the train but are carried with it. No physical effort is required on your part. You are travelling, but there is no destination. The only goal is mental. A blinking cursor that your want to keep moving as words are left in its wake or a series of lines and letters being drawn upon a sheet of paper as your mind dances between the concrete and abstract, trying to form art in the wake of your fingertips. Constant inspiration outside the window above your desk–always moving, not pausing for a moment. Not predetermined, no plot, not rehearsed, no acting, and not fabricated, no screen. An authentic experience that stimulates your mind and forces you into thinking–moving over mental barriers, unobstructed by writer’s block, continuing to push forward, vomit more words, and make progress while moving nowhere. The train deposits you where it picked you up and you have a heap of words in your hands when the rails screech.

There is something about motion that is stimulating. It is romantic, exciting, filled with uncertainty and new experiences. This dynamic and nomadic lifestyle is foreign for many. Most of us live in stable homes with solid roofs and steady incomes and scheduled meals. Living in motion–like on a train–is not a lifestyle for most, but an activity with a beginning and an end. While the Amtrak Residency program is a wonderful opportunity to embrace the beauty of motion and stimulate the mind into creative productivity, it is not a lifestyle. It is a vacation, a dynamic oasis, that can produce desired written works, but it does not hold the bold romanticism of a nomadic lifestyle. To leave behind the stability of a normal life and take up the romanticized lifestyle of motion has many unknown futures. This continued motion and instability may offer even greater inspirations for an unsettled mind.

Hop on a train with no destination.