Category: Uncategorized

Since some of my friends have yet to see such classics as The Breakfast Club or Say Anything, every Friday of this month has been dedicated to watching classic 80s teen movies. Accordingly, this past Friday we watched Pretty in Pink. Although the movie was overly dramatic (and thoroughly unsatisfying – she SHOULD have ended up with Duckie), I really enjoyed getting a glimpse at what life was like 25 years ago. I especially liked the scenes at TRAX, the local record store where Andie works. Seeing the endless rows of record sleeves made me nostalgically reminisce about the “record” stores of my youth – Sam Goody and FYE, which have since become virtually obsolete.

I guess my question to you is not if you like John Hughes movies (though you should – they are fantastic!), but if you ever miss buying an actual CD instead of an online MP3. Sure, you can get the album art online as well, but is it the same? Has the experience of music become less personal with the advent of iTunes, Rhapsody, and other digitized music stores? Or has technology been beneficial in that it has democratized music and made it easier for more people to enjoy and share? I would like to think that while there are many benefits to purchasing digital music files, there is nothing like running into your local Sam Goody and picking up the newest Spice Girls album. Sure you have to lug around 25 CDS on road trips, but there has always been a story behind the purchase of a physical CD that I have never had in the purchasing of a digital album. The influence of a physical album can be likened to an old (pre-digital) photo – there’s something about its physicality that makes it real, and thus, more personal.

“The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men’s farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title… The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood.” — Emerson

The dichotomy between the arts and sciences has always been one that has baffled me. What has been portrayed as antagonistic forces in our society, I’ve always pictured in my mind’s eye as something of the same fabric, living tranquilly side-by-side as byproducts of human behavior, as manifestations of our own experiential limitations. They are both a testament to ignorance and the collective effort to push against that human stigma; we hold within us an equilibrium between humility and belief in human volition. (Richard Feynman has said, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”) Perhaps I am just asserting this to retain my own sanity, to justify the polarities in my own life and for those who have also chosen, some may say, juvenilely, two rather disparate majors. “Like oil and water!” they splutter. And I respond, in a sagely tone of course, “Ah… but they have much more in common than differences. For example, they are jointly considered under the category of ‘liquid’ at room temperature…”

My intent is not so much to provide justification for all those who have chosen both a pursuit in the humanities as well as the sciences. It’s not for convincing ourselves that switching gears from writing a paper arguing the social construction of (insert almost anything here) to applying probability theorems in genetic pedigrees is not difficult. (It depends on how much sleep you’ve had the previous night.) It’s not meant to be a practical explanation, but more compelling and important than that – a brief commentary on our collective acquisition of knowledge throughout the millennia. Essentially, we have ameliorated this unsettling feeling of not knowing by differing means. Feynman, would add, succinctly, at this point, the thesis of my life:

“Although we humans cut nature up in different ways, and we have different courses in different departments, such compartmentalization is really artificial…”

In inspecting the veins on a leaf, an inspired individual could attempt to reach beyond the surface and contribute to a fruitful discussion by, determining an elegant equation that describes the fractal pattern, or by composing a lyrical poem lamenting transience. The end result in both is that a conversation has occurred and that, more than anything else, is it. When Emerson speaks of no individual owning the landscape, no “discipline” owns nature. A common ancestor joins the two, three, hundreds of disciplines, each of which have split off from the main line at different points in human history because each manner of thinking was enormous and could not contain itself. None of this, my field is worthier than yours, left-brain, right-brain hogwash. It’s these complications, the paradoxes, coupled with the constant desire to know and debate and deliberate — those are what matter.

Why is it that people are obsessed with taking pictures of their pets?  My roommates and I have a kitten.  We think like any new mother thinks that her child is THE cutest baby in the entire world.  But don’t worry my roommates and I aren’t delusional, we really do have the world’s most adorable kitten.  Therefore we find every opportunity we can to capture our feline, Princess Tigerlily Mancos-Davis (her birth name) doing something picture worthy.  What constitutes ‘picture worthy’ you ask?  Well, really her just sitting there or lying dormant will do.  We don’t need much encouragement to snap a camera in her face.  It’s nice when we can muster a smile out of her, but she’s a cat and often bossy, so smiles are rare.

On many occassions we have stopped our human activities such as intense conversations, eating and cooking when Tigerlily is looking photogenic, one of us yelling throughout the house, “where’s the camera, where’s the camera!”  Those of us in the house hear the urgency in our roommate’s voice, knowing what it is about and scamper in and out of rooms looking for the camera.

Even though our cat looks adorable day in a day out, we still feel compelled to capture her essence daily.  Absurd?  I think not.  So where does this compulsion come from?  Possible hypotheses include, we are simply cat ladies.  Our cat really is the cutest cat and should obviously be as popular as Boo is on Facebook (dogs are always stealing our thunder.)  Another option is our cat and pets are extensions of ourselves and we are intrinsically self absorbed species.  Taking pictures of yourself on a daily basis is frowned upon and often labeled ‘vain,’ however taking pictures of your animals is normal and widely condoned, thus getting around the system of vanity.

Check out Princess Tigerlily Mancos-Davis on Facebook.  She is eager for new friends and photographers!

Transition periods are often fraught with the uncertainty of non-belonging. They are not precisely anchored to one end, but neither are they to the other. Human logic tends to separate things into binary oppositions, dividing concepts not only into categories but demanding the certain identity of one or the other. Black and white, up and down, right and wrong. But who is to determine the precise boundaries, the exact points of division, when nearly everything is a gradient? And so these distinctions are rendered almost arbitrary.

And then, there is night and day.

Twilight is itself already a murky time, somewhere between sleep and waking, silence and noise. Then there is what is known as the blue hour, so termed for its literal appearance. These are the hours situated just before sunrise and immediately following sunset, when the sun itself has not yet risen above (or has only just dropped below) the horizon, but there is an diffused, ambient sort of light filtered down from the atmosphere. The first glimmerings of sunlight scattered in the upper atmosphere give the sky a deep, jewel-toned glow, while the land remains unlit by direct light.

What this time of day provides is an ethereal in-between transition period, valuable for its unusual quality of light and, perhaps, because it is so fleeting. Moving inward towards the daylight hours, light progresses into the golden hour, the first and last hours of sunlight. A lower solar angle and more atmospheric interference translate into longer, redder wavelengths, and it is during this time that light takes on a strong, warm glow. Building faces are gilt, landscapes turned to amber.

Dusk and dawn and the times surrounding them are often perceived as boundaries, as lines, as borders between night and day. But in truth they are segments of time, unbounded at either end, melting seamlessly from one to another. They are quiet, brief, and go frequently unnoticed, yet they provide such drastically contrasting types and temperatures and qualities of light that they remain unique, and, as ever, a sight to behold.

Those who are interested in a twilight-hour jaunt (with or without camera) may find this site invaluable. It comes with location/coordinate input, charts and maps with hours and angles and latitudes of everything the sun and moon are doing, and all sorts of helpful things.

I would like to devote this week’s post to \”A Very Potter Musical.\” I’m not sure why, but the topic of AVPM and “A Very Potter Sequel” have both come up in several conversations I’ve had this week, but inevitably, in each of these conversations, at least one person participating had not heard of either of these two StarKid productions.

AVPM and AVPS are musical, theatrical spoofs of the Harry Potter series. Both of these productions were written and performed by  UofM students, and they are brilliantly done. I feel these two performances should not be missed, so I encourage everyone to check them out on YouTube!

The acting in these two plays is enjoyable and comedic.  The sets are imaginative, and the humorous pop-culture references, clever story re-imaginings, and exaggerated characterizations make the time spent watching these videos well worth your while.

I do not consider myself a person with an obsessive personality.  However, when it comes to Frida Kahlo, I would only use one term to describe my feelings for her, obsessed.  I don’t know when the obsession started, I cannot pinpoint one day or event, but somehow I have accumulated books, artwork and small images of her around my room.  Where I go Frida seems to follow.

I read the book Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo, by Hayden Herrera a few years back.  From this biography I learned about Frida’s relationship with Diego Rivera, how he would often have numerous lovers while with Frida and how they loved each other, yet hurt each other so often at the same time.  I also read that one of Diego’s lovers was no other than Frida’s sister!  What betrayal.

Frida never fit in growing up.  She was the black sheep and the odd ball out, so to say.  An accident when she was a teenager only worsened this label.  She was in a streetcar accident where one of the railings from the streetcar entered her body through her back.  After this incident, she never fully recovered, and complications due to this event were eventually what killed her.  She had numerous surgeries on her back and leg that left her bed ridden and this is where she painted a lot of her self-portraits.  She walked with a noticeable limp and finally had to get her leg amputated.  I have had back problems of my own, not nearly as bad as hers, but still like to equate my pain with hers.  I look to her paintings as a place to examine her suffering.  Her honesty through her self-portraits is comforting for me and I think this is why I love her so much.

She is my inspiration.  Even though she lived a hard life, she lived it well, creating masterpieces that created not only an outlet of her own, but also an example for others to follow and resonate with.  She was beautiful, truthful and inspiring as both a female and an artist.