The only thing better than a powerful spoken word piece is a powerful spoken word piece performed as a duet. Kai Davis and Safiya Washington deliver this intoxicatingly sharp, hard-hitting, spot-on, middle-finger-to-white-
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Struck Fancies: A Few Little Thank You Notes
Fate is a concept that has always seemed very real to me, along with pretty much every cliché that has to do with it — most significantly, that everyone comes into your life for a reason. Now, I’m not saying that this sentiment is as ultimate or profound as it sounds. For example, you could bump into someone on the sidewalk, and the most “reason†it might have is a small bruise the next day. And of course individuals have agency to change their lives. However, I do believe that external forces can be at work in this equation as well — that certain people can truly and positively affect you — whether that be through presenting you with the meaning of life or just catching your eyes and smiling when you need it most.
Because I am so enamored with this somewhat idealistic notion of destiny, I saw it as serendipitous when I came across this line in Truman Capote’s short story, “A Christmas Memory,†when the narrator is explaining to whom he and his elderly cousin give the fruitcakes that they bake during the holiday season: “Who are they for? Friends. Not necessarily neighbor friends: indeed, the larger share are intended for persons we’ve met maybe once, perhaps not at all. People who’ve struck our fancy.â€
Before moving on, let’s just pause for a moment to reflect on the beauty of those last three words: “struck our fancy.†To me, this is less a British romantic thing (as in, someone ‘fancying’ someone else), but more a testament to how people can enter and exit our lives, striking a chord within us, so that we are forever altered by the experience of being in their presence.
I was very inspired by this story, as it helped me understand that I should probably be expressing more gratitude in my life. So I have compiled a very short list of people, some of whom I’ve never met, two of whom have passed away, one of whom is a fictional character, and most of whom I may never see again. But they all deserve my thanks, nonetheless, for shaking up, calming, and in some cases, awakening my mind and heart. They are some people who have “struck [my] fancy” . . .
To Arion: Thank you for playing music in ballet class that didn’t come from any standard book. Were they your own compositions? I may never know, but I cannot express how appreciative I am for your rescuing of us from the monotony of that same damn plié song in which all the other accompanists seemed to take comfort.
To e.e. cummings: Thank you for convincing me to believe in the power of poetry.
To little Sam and Abby, mes chéries: Thank you for being the smartest, most loving children and for not letting go of your hugs until I was safe from falling apart at the seams. I know that you will never let society corrupt you. Je vous adorerai toujours.
To the woman on the T that one time in the summer of 2010: Thank you for discussing how talented and gorgeous Robert from So You Think You Can Dance was on the orange-line commute with me after a long and lonely day.
To Dorothy Gale: Thank you for helping me redefine “home.â€
To James: Thank you for being the first boy with whom I ever danced and for trying not to cry when I nearly broke your nose in a pirouette.
To the security guard outside the elevator in Centre Block: Thank you for understanding and sympathizing about how much wearing high heels all day sucks and that there was no way in hell I was walking home in those things, even if I looked ridiculous in tennis shoes and tights.
To the drummer of pots and pans at Faneuil Hall: Thank you for being so passionate about creating a rhythm that gives pedestrians a beat of hope. You are inspiring.
About a million more of these are awaiting structure in my head and I could make another (maybe longer?) list of instances where I have witnessed “ordinary†people positively influencing others in extraordinary ways. There is something incredibly poetic about crossing paths, if only for a moment — something that is impossible to distill to words. In a brief attempt, though, it allows us to avoid becoming static. We move and grow, and through our encounters with others, we connect the world.
Rethinking the Vegetarian/Meat Binary
I love meat. It tastes great, fills me up fast, and supplies a lot of ways to get creative with cooking. However, I’ve recently been giving a lot of thought to returning to my high school vegetarian ways. There are three main reasons for this contemplation, 1) Depending on what you replace your usual meat meals with, it can be a very healthy lifestyle choice; 2) I love me a good challenge and could really use some more creative cooking ideas; and 3) I’m an environmentalist who cares about the treatment of animals by large corporations. The industry for meat hasn’t been the kindest or the cleanest, which makes it hard to stomach (literally) knowing the cruelty behind the deliciousness. Furthermore, according to a Ted Talk given by founder of TreeHugger.com, Graham Hill, “environmentally, meat amazingly causes more emissions than all of transportation combined.” Hill presents a new way of looking at the veg or not veg choice, which is both manageable and practical. The talk is very short and well worth a watch. By eating meat when trying to be a vegetarian, I felt that I was “cheating,” but maybe there’s an alternative to the either/or scenario.
Even though this Ted Talk answered most of my qualms with returning to a vegetarian lifestyle, I still have an apprehension about finding creative ways to maintain a well rounded diet without meat. I worry I’ll fall into the trap of replacing meat dishes with solely pasta and breads in order to get as full as I would from eating meat. So, in attempt to make the task less daunting, I turn to my good pal Pinterest for some inspiration…
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Honestly, all of that stuff looks way better than the I think fatty value chicken I’ve been buying from Kroger. I think with the right pace we can all stop feeling the pressure of whether to meat or not to meat and still help ourselves and the world. There are also an abundance of internet forums on maintaining a hearty, well rounded vegetarian lifestyle that include recipes and moral support. All this combined, I’m with Graham on this one.
Callbacks
For as many shows as I have been in, I have auditioned for at least double that amount. While the nerves have never faded completely, they have become manageable as the fundamentals of every audition have become predictable:
1. Get to the audition location early to fill out the audition form detailing your experience, physical appearance and schedule for the next 3 months.
2. Inevitably wait for the directors to see you, typically at least 15 minutes after your scheduled audition slot. (During this time I desperately try not to sit and compare myself to the other auditionies but it always end up happening)
3. Walk into the audition room, try to say something memorable to the directors and then sing your cut or recite your monologue while they stare at their computer screens or notepads glancing up at you 1 – 2 times during your audition.
4. Receive a brief “Thank you, we’ll be in touch” as you walk to the door.
Auditions have become less traumatic because they are so common and predictable. However, as I prepare tonight’s callbacks I am far less calm.
Callbacks are an entirely different beast than auditions. Instead of a massive “cattle call”, at callbacks you come face to face with the one or two other people who stand between you and the role. In a theater community as small as Ann Arbor’s, often these people are friends and colleagues who you have performed with or at least seen perform, leaving no doubt in your mind of their many castable merits.
Tonight, I will have to bring in a piece of music which I heard for the first time hours ago when I Youtubed the cut which the directors sent along with the callbacks list. I will sing and be directly compared with one of my good friends who I have been fortunate enough to have shared the stage with numerous times. For the next 48 hours I will frantically check my email, hoping and praying that my name appears on the cast list, stomach lurching each time I reload my email. Then, excitement or disappointment. Whatever happens, I am better for it and perhaps one day callbacks will be just as mundane for me as a cattle call audition.
Winter 2014: the semester I read so much my eyes fell out.
After entering recluse-mode for many an hour, I have finished my first book of the semester! The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf.
*takes breath*
Assigned for my Virginia Woolf class (whodathunkit?), the novel was a quick head on collision to what would be in store for me this semester: a whole lot of reading and a whole lot of feelings. The combination of reading and feelings often leaves me home alone, on my couch without pants, ignoring ambient/electronic beats wafting into the air like my incense, and staring into the massive void that is the winter in Ann Arbor because it never stops snowing.
While it was by no means Woolf’s best work, The Voyage Out is “a beginning†of sorts. Although not her earliest diary nor letters, this first novel stands as a type of fluid production from one of the most brilliant writers of the 20th century. I can see question and figure out what it means to write a novel as she pieces together allusions–from Conrad to Milton to Bronte to Austen to Plato. She tropes Victorian themes (the dying heroine) and twists them into a new modern sensibility as she meditates on deathly illness rather than the sentimental last breath of life. Unlike her other “more modernist†novels, however, there is a clear plot. WOAH. Step back.
Rachel goes to South America, falls in love, and dies. OR A bougie woman travels to a middle class wet dream of what the exotic other-as-land would be and becomes a body with out organs and disintegrates from life. OR Woolf’s creative idea of her dead sister, Stella, comes of age (whatever this means) in a post-Victorian world, and dies. The dying part is pretty consistent, but the other elements of the novel, well, including the death, too, are wildly complex. Meditating on the inability for anyone to really know anyone else, the downfalls of language, the ways humans feel, the ways human name their feelings as emotions, the ways men and women interact, the ways classes interact, what colonialism does to a collective consciousness, how patriarchy fucks over all women (and men), what death and life and love seem to be, etc., etc., . . . *this is a fragment I’m trying to save* . . . the Voyage Out covers a lot of territory that will reappear in the later fiction of Woolf.
Not only has Woolf impressed me but she has made me rethink what it means to be a reader in the 21st century.
As an English/Philosophy lover/snob/being, I enjoy a good book. To me, “good†refers to something along the lines of: published out of one’s century (unless your name is Toni Morrison) that either invests too much in the world, consciousness, and humankind or is entirely skeptic of everything including the very page it is written on. Whether Naguib Mahfouz, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, James Joyce, or Audre Lorde, Elizabeth Bishop, or Sylvia Plath, or Michel Foucault, Frank B. Wilderson III, Gilles Deleuze–I have a lot of opinions on what is “good.â€
However, as a bibliophile that is moving closer and closer from the hallowed halls of libraries (let’s be real, libraries here means hipster/queer coffee houses) into the real world where the library is anything I can fit on a shelf in my hypothetical apartment in an imaginary Washington D.C. (my future plans), I realize that “good†means more than just “good.â€
In reading Virginia Woolf’s first novel I have a newfound respect and curiosity for new authors. This–the ability to read for pleasure and explore new authors–is a epiphany that is oh-too-recent. I have always despised new books because nothing can replace what has already been written. But this despair, I’ve learned, is stupid. Just as I think I have merit and worth in the realm of scholarly writing (HAHAHAHA MY THESIS WHAT), others, too, have merit writing in the scope of fiction. I should honor their creativity.
Although new writers can be sloppy, can have an fluctuating style, can be apprehensive, they can also be full of new insights to my queer world–filled with new relations to humans, technologies, and myself, new relations to others, new relations to the environment, and so on. The world is not static, and, I guess what I’m trying to say is, neither should my bookshelf.
Thanks, V.
Portraits Drawn on Maps
I’m sick, tired, and jet lagged this week so all you get is an insanely cool link!
http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/01/new-portraits-drawn-on-maps-by-ed-fairburn/
