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An open letter, to my former co-worker, who once told me on a rainy day, beside an empty pool, that he would never want to attend my high school. When prompted for a reason, he replied “The Ghettoness of it.”

An open letter, to a sheltered moron.

Dear Moron,

You know nothing of “Ghettoness,” know nothing of the lines between white and black; the juxtaposition of segregated and integrated, of knife fights and rumors of drive-by’s; of cafeterias split almost entirely by race, almost perfectly down to the person.

You do not know, for example, what it is like to form friendships in a homeroom where you are among only a handful of white students, where the first smiling face– one of the most charismatic, kindhearted and unforgettable people you know– tells you, upon first introduction, that at age 15, he is the father of a beautiful baby girl, Tatiana.

You do not know, for example, what it is like to see news reports showing pictures of your friend’s face, with the caption: “Body found in river, died at age 19.”

Most especially, you do not understand the differences between you and I; the subtle contrasts between being exposed to “The Ghettoness” and being isolated from it.

You’ve never realized that coming from a largely black high school does not make you less white. That your understanding of urban public schools and exposure to youth poverty does not make you any less privileged.

You wouldn’t understand that my proximity to “The Ghettoness,” in actuality, makes me farther from it than you will ever be. You wouldn’t understand my non “Ghettoness,” when placed directly alongside real “Ghettoness” removes me entirely from the “Ghettoness.”

You do not know of the lines between the two.

If you did, you would not have said that. You would not have used the word “Ghettoness” to describe a school with a large population of black students. You would not have been afraid to learn in that school, to sit in that segregated cafeteria, to average your friends’ estimates of how many guns are in that school at any given time and land on a number larger than five. You would understand that this estimate, while probably exaggerated, could illuminate in some small way, the issues some of your classmates face. It could reveal the realities of facing discrimination, teen violence, unsafe neighborhoods and assumptions made about the color of your skin. You would realize, that instead of hiding from these problems, witnessing them will actually allow you to live your life in a more enlightened, guided manner.

You may also have to realize that you are taking pride in knowing people who are directly affected by discrimination and teen violence and unsafe neighborhoods and racist assumptions. You may have to realize that you are taking pride at their expense. You may have to be aware of that pride.

The complexities of my school cannot be articulated in a word like “Ghettoness.” They cannot be worked out until we start acknowledging them, understanding them, and realizing when they are misrepresented. You misrepresented my school, you assumed things because of the student body’s skin color, and years later, I’m acknowledging your ignorance.

Please never use the word “Ghettoness” again. You know nothing of the complexities– of the lines between, of the distances from– you and I to the word.

You know nothing of “Ghettoness.”

Your former co-worker.

By the time I arrived at the Michigan Theater for my 6pm shift, someone had already complained. The nice old lady who generally spent her free time before movies talking my ear off about the theater’s selection of caffeinated vs. decaffeinated teas had stormed out of an NC-17 rated French movie, and complained to a manager about her problems with watching, I quote, “lesbians sucking on each other.” If you’ve heard of the movie ‘Blue is the Warmest Color,’ you’ve probably heard of it in certain, defined capacities: it’s french, it’s about lesbians, and it has explicit sex scenes, one of them 7 minutes long. But the film is also much more than the sum of its controversy – director Abdellatif Kerchiche and his two lead actresses have created a masterful, exhausting onscreen love affair, a passionate depiction of an young woman’s awakening consciousness.

The three hour long film follows its young lead, Adéle (Adéle Exarchopolous), in tightly centered close-up, first as she lives her life as a normal French teenager, and then as she experiences the awakening of her desires through her passionate affair with a blue-haired, older woman (Lea Seydoux). Adéle functions as the physical center of the film, and Kerchiche’s camera never strays far from her body – she adjusts her uncombed hair, falls asleep with her mouth open, eats with abandon and cries messily.

The night before I went to see the movie, I spent a slow shift assigned to guard the screening room doors from unwary or curious children. After fifteen minutes of staring at an empty hallway, I took it upon myself to protect the innocents from inside the theater while I watched some of the film. I expected to be lost, at the two hour mark, for lack of context  – but I was immediately transfixed. I walked in on a scene that takes place well into the affair, wherein Emma and Adéle throw a backyard dinner party to showcase Emma’s paintings. Adéle cooks and serves food to the artistic elite as Emma showcases enormous canvases, her paintings of Adéle’s nude, posed body. Any conversation is focused around art analysis, incomplete and interspersed between food, drink and dance, so I was amazed both at how quickly the acting and direction conveyed the intricacies of the women’s relationship. Adéle is down to earth and practical, serving food, drink, and single-sentence descriptions of her career aspirations – ‘I teach.’ She emits an embarrassed glow when Emma recognizes her with a toast, but then sinks into disappointment and anxiety as Emma spends her night talking to another woman. Adéle listens to the PhD students and artists converse over her head as she nods along, the domestic partner; Emma debates with her highly educated friends about different artists (mostly visual artists famous for depicting the female figure) while they devour Adéle’s spaghetti and admire paintings of Adéle’s nude body. Later, in bed, Emma urges Adéle to develop her writing skills, wanting her to want something less simple, but Adéle resists – she is fulfilled just by being with Emma.

Although it’s easy to get a headache over tea lady’s insistence on being shocked by screentime devoted to lesbian sex, criticism of Kerchiche’s sex scenes has come from a variety of more credible sources, including Julie Maroh, the author of the graphic novel that ‘Blue’ was based on (who called the sex scenes “pornographic” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/movies/julie-maroh-author-of-blue-novel-criticizes-film.html). The sex scenes are uncomfortable, but not necessarily because of length. After all, Kerchiche lingers on Adéle’s walk to the bus, her tearful consumption of a snickers bar, the leaf in her hair – so why would he introduce brevity in sex, the realization of the affair’s intimacy? No, the problem is the change in tone. None of the messiness of sex is admitted – the female bodies are staged, posed, and pondered by the camera, but we see no glimpse of Adéle’s previous physicality, none of the character established by her unabashed eating habits and her moist, crying face. Kerchiche’s camera also breaks its tight focus on Adéle, continuity with which would mandate intimate sequences cut up by movement, and moves back to encompass both women. This abandonment of Adéle’s perspective has a weird effect; it seems that there is a third party is sitting in the room watching, and we become conscious of the camera and of ourselves as viewers. Ironically –  but maybe understandably –  the sex scenes interrupt the intimacy of the relationship.

Yet walking away from the film, I realized that I haven’t seen so much screen time devoted to women in the recent past, maybe ever (The Bechdel test exists for a reason: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLF6sAAMb4s), and I’d never seen a filmed love story that didn’t struggle with, or fail to struggle with, a gendered power dynamic. The female form is an overarching theme – artistic depictions of the female, physical needs of the female, emotional awakenings of the female – and the movie is almost exclusively about the nuances of a love between two women. However, Kerchiche’s camera, script and direction do occasionally interject a male presence. At one point, a dinner guest and art gallery owner named Joachim speaks about male portrayals of female sexuality, arguing that throughout time male artists have been ‘transfixed’ by the perceived transcendence of the female orgasm, and that male artists have historically struggled to depict the mystery of female sexuality. Here, Kerchiche appears to be speaking through Joachim to preemptively admit his failures in understanding. It’s a little heavy handed, but it kind of works in that I do find myself giving giving the movie a break when it comes to the sex scenes, the anxieties about children and families, and that problematic mention of female sexuality as mystical – not because these aren’t real gaps in understanding, but because the rest of the movie is so overwhelmingly good that it transcends them.

As the love story develops with painful, feverish beauty, it’s hard not to be consumed by Adéle’s experience. The story of Emma and Adéle has universal, epic proportions: They live, they awaken, they make art, they suffer, they love. Yet at the same time, their relationship seems so close to us, so lifelike, so real. And although Kerchiche may filming with a ‘male gaze,’ the actresses are so talented and expressive that they practically gaze back – Kerchiche may have been behind the camera, but Seydoux and Exarchopolous undoubtedly played a part in creating their own characters. ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’ is beautiful, painful, compelling. Together, Kerchiche, Seydoux and Exarchopolous have created a masterpiece.

Like many people, I have a hard time focusing on work when I sit down at my computer with the intent to study. Facebook, Netflix, StumbleUpon and other timesuckers on the internet seem to call my name as I log into Ctools, click on resources and mentally prepare myself to begin my assignment. As I work, an email notification serves as a sufficient reason to pause, easily seguing into a five minute break which turns into a 15 minute break which becomes a TV show break and the next thing I know, it’s midnight and I have barely started the first problem of my homework.

Procrastinating starting homework until the night before it is due is common and not a calamity. Yes, on those nights I get less than my preferred 8 hours of sleep, but the work always gets done. Why? Because I am the type of person that refuses to miss a deadline and so regardless of the circumstance the homework is always completed on time.

For academic classes with set due dates and assignments this system works. However, this procrastination does not work when it comes to practicing. This is due to two primary reasons. The first, there is no one specifically checking up on you to make sure that you are practicing everyday for a reasonable amount of time. The second, vocalists cannot simply “double up” their practicing to make up for a missed day. Vocally, I can only practice for a certain amount of time each day without feeling vocal fatigue. If I ignore this fatigue and sing through the discomfort, I will not be practicing tomorrow.

Without someone watching me constantly I have had to learn how to self police my practicing and I find that it has helped me with other aspects of my life. By forcing myself to practice at least an hour a day (no matter what), I have found that my procrastinating habits are lessening. Lessening, though not gone as I log into CTools to begin my homework due tomorrow morning.

Dip the brush in the white, olive, brown, black of your foundation,
And paint your face and prepare for war
Paint it well to frighten your opponents,
Your mascara is your shield,
Your blush is why you fight,
Your eyeliner is what you fight with,
Your red lipstick, your war paint
The colors on your face are the colors you wear to battle
Wear them proudly.

And whatever you do, do not spear those who do not paint their faces remember that those who do not paint their faces are also fighting the battle with you.