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Planes are monstrous and magnificent things. When you’re buckled in one, idly glancing towards the stewards making the rounds with their carts teeming of individually wrapped pretzels – the stewards whose carefully pressed linen look is asserted with a fresh knotted kerchief, undulating to its owners’ deceptively therapeutic voice — habituation from the utter mundaneness of their motions, their comportment, is but trickery to the mind. The sheer ordinariness instilled by the moderate prevalence of flights in the cultural narrative – this insane ritual that provides a strong sense of order — prevents the conception of what is actually occurring.

And then very steadily, as not to betray my not quite fully realized fear, the eyes move to peer through the double-paned windows, landing on the turbines whose diameters span at the very least two full-grown adults across. As I, with a perfunctory smile, accept the coffee from the attendant, continuing with this exchange of charades, the turbulence can’t help but etch itself on to the surface of the drink, and thoughts, in one fell swoop, latch back on to the very real turbines drowning in their white noise immensity, whisking cloud to cumunolimbic dust. And it’s only then that I let myself become the inconvenient victim of the “intraocular effect”. It hits me. Between the eyes. With the light of a thousand suns.

I have full faith in science: Bill Nye held a significant place in my childhood during my most impressionable years; he was always there, unfailingly adorned with bow tie, to explain what’s happening in a way that a seven-year-old could understand. Nowadays, one can find me in a lab, Feynman’s books in my bags and dotingly following Dawkins and Neil DeGrasse Tyson on Twitter. Hobbies include physics problems. I could diagram the aerodynamic description of lift on an exam. In spite of all this, it just seems impossible for this plane, currently encapsulating my body and a hundred or so others, to be able to do with any ounce of grace or swiftness what paper planes slicing classroom air can do. Under the proper circumstances, I simply don’t care what Bernoulli or Newton say – that moment when the wheels lift from the ground and the wings take over with the roar of the engine knocking every neuron between my ears to the brink of a neurological disaster, my palms invariably get sweaty. It’s all very antithetical. The climb both excites and disturbs me greatly; my autonomic nervous system’s wires are crossed – am I in fight or flight? – I watch the city shrink, as the machine works a geometrically sensible upward arc. The earth falls away to trim and neat Euclidean shapes, almost indistinguishable from a circuit board, copper wires for luminescence. Life on the ground begins to look like an elaborate plaything, toiling away as determinedly as ever, and the moon peeks out from under the swooping wing. I tend to remain seated, my sole focal point centered squarely on the seatbelt light, hands flexing aimlessly, masochistically reminding myself this is indeed a live show and there really are thousands of cubic feet of air beneath me — interrupted perhaps by only, a flock or two of birds — that those really are glaciers and glaciers are truly quite cold and we’re bearing cloud. And it really isn’t until the seatbelt light turns off that the sweat glands in my hands return to default productivity and I can muster up some other facial expression that isn’t tainted with distress.

There are times when I can’t quite feature certain tendencies in human behavior, our endearing follies crystallized by our own devising. It’s egregious to me that global warming or evolution is even a contentious issue. I can’t, with logical might, convince the dogmatic to consider a spectrum of options or alternative views. Reason, no matter how watertight, is dashed to bits by the solidified sediments of fear. With feet cemented to ground, gazing upwards at the plane’s chalk-like traces thrown into sharp relief again the tresses of blue, it’s easy to proclaim without hesitation how formidable modern technology is, that we can outwit our own anatomical limitations, or make some fine and heart-ravishing poetic gestures. But buoyed by thin air, in the culmination of elegant equations into a tangible craft, I look down a narrow vista with bated breath.

In a world of mass-produced consumerism, there is left little room or regard for the handcrafted. Why opt for the latter when the former offers more finished product for less time, more profit for less effort? Certainly, there is not much about creating things slowly, individually, by hand, that can qualify as more practical or more productive. Where efficiency is given the first priority, other qualities— quality, creativity, among others— must take a blow. Who is to say one is worth more than the other?

Nonetheless, there is a sort of an air of romanticism about the idea of handmade. It’s something of an idealistic fancy, perhaps. Building and crafting things by hand, one may argue, is best left to those who can afford leisure, who have time and resources and patience to spare. Grow your own oddslot food, build your own furniture, sew your own clothing. It’s satisfying, really, to be able to claim that you made something.

If the state of the market for self-produced items may be a bit iffy, the marketplace for it is a mixed bag. E-commerce sites for artists and artisans such as the fabulously coded and designed Etsy allow the soap-maker and the scarf-knitter and the whittler to sell their wares. The things one finds range from “good god, what is it” to “I wish I’d thought of that” to downright impressive. The site itself is well- thought-out, including features such as (the often very aesthetically pleasing) member-curated collections of others’ works or the ability to browse new, neglected shops. A personal favorite is the browse-by-color (which is loads better than ticking “red” or searching “lime green”):

Etsy may have reached a saturation point in volume, however; there are so many items that specific ones are difficult to locate, much less sell. In recent years, quite blatantly mass-produced products (often from China) have flooded some sectors, and have been listed as handmade or vintage (which is allowed) when it is evidently neither. People have complained— site owners have studiously ignored, understandably— but life goes on. It’s really less about the commerce than about the feeling of finally having a community that not only valued but catered to crafters, then having it infiltrated by commercialism.

The conclusion? Keep art-ing it up, my creative friends. Do it for yourself, do it for others. There’s some intrinsic value and plenty of satisfaction to be found in what you create yourself.

Zion I – Coastin

Greetings, arts, ink! My name is Alex and I’ll be focusing my posts on music. Usually I will post on Sundays (sorry for stepping on your ground here, Abigail) but I wanted to introduce myself before my regular posts start. I am an avid Hip-Hop and Mashup fan, but I also enjoy some rap, jam bands, acoustic, indie and some dubstep. Also I can always get down to some terribly addicting Top 40 jams. I defy anyone not to bump Lady Gaga on a regular basis.

The purpose of my blog entries is to provide a constant source of music: new, old, mixed, mashed and everything in the middle. I’ll accomplish this by including frequent reviews of new albums and live shows, paired with a stock of older music to give you a foundation for the new releases. Each of my posts will have a song for you to taste, see above, (I chose “Coastin’” because it epitomizes my music taste) pertaining to whatever topic I’m writing about. I’ll probably also throw some “Songs of the Day” on the blog throughout the week to keep that flow going.

Just for reference, my favorite artists presently are as follows: Kanye West, Frank Ocean, Lupe Fiasco, Kid Cudi, Bon Iver, Girl Talk, Milkman, Jack Johnson, Jay-Z and Beyonce, and Mumford and Sons.

For the time being, I suggest looking at two albums which just came out this Fall: Big Sean’s “Finally Famous” and J. Cole’s “Cole World: The Sideline Story.” Both are examples of a slightly lower-tier Hip Hop artist making his debut, Sean with the help of Kanye West and Cole under the guidance of Jay-Z. In my opinion, “Finally Famous” is an all around better album; Big Sean shows a lot of promise by creating an extensive collection of songs. While J. Cole released some incredible tracks, there are too many that are barely listenable. “Mr. Nice Watch,” terminating with Jay-Z’s abomination of a verse, is an embarrassment to his career. J. Cole has showed a lot of improvement in terms of his lyricism since his mixtapes, however the album as a whole was not as cohesive and impressive as it could have been. Check out these tracks from the albums:

Finally Famous: Marvin and Chardonnay, Wait For Me, Dance (A$$), My Last, Memories

Cole World: Can’t Get Enough, Lights Please, Nobody’s Perfect, Work Out

Considering we are so close to Halloween, I decided that the most fitting subject for my first post should be something creepy:

Death and beauty have always had a tense but entangled relationship.  In ancient Egypt, if a particularly beautiful woman died her body would be left out in the desert heat for 3-4 days before being given to the embalmers to stay any temptation for necrophilia, Georges Bataille wrote that thanatos and eros could never truly be separated, and of course it’s been the subject of countless cult horror films.  This strange attraction to the visual side of mortality has been, possibly most poignantly, encapsulated in the tradition of death masks.  The tradition of the death mask began in ancient Egypt and continued through the Roman Empire, wherein a prominent person’s face would be duplicated in a stone carving shortly after death and the resulting mask would be placed over the deceased’s own face during funerary proceedings.  In Middle Ages Europe the technique was switched over to a casting process, where immediately after death the mask would be made of a plaster type material.  These masks were usually used in effigies and not kept with the dead person after burial.  The Medieval French had a somewhat unsettling tradition of using the death mask of a recently dead king to create a puppet-like figure with movable limbs.  Death masks were almost exclusively used for identification and scientific purposes starting in the 19^th Century, but the new subversive Bohemian artists emerging mid-century saw merit in the unique realism and individuality of the death mask.  One particular mask, titled L’Inconnue de la Seine, was adopted above all others by the Parisian avant-garde as the ideal of tragic beauty.  The legend goes that in the late 1880’s the body of a drowned woman was pulled out of the Seine and the pathologist at the Paris Morgue was so enchanted by her loveliness and soft smile that he had a mask made of her face which fell into the hands of a manufacturing company who reproduced large numbers of L’Inconnue.  Her image became the paradigm for misunderstood beauty and the spectacle surrounding death, with sophisticated Europeans hanging copies of it in their houses and writers like Albert Camus and Rilke hailing L’Inconnue’s smile to be as alluring as the Mona Lisa’s.

The art of the death mask lies in the shocking reality that it isn’t simply a sculpture but an impression of the moment almost directly after the subject passes from life to death.  The fame and public interest that it found in the late 19^th Century coincides with the beginnings of modernism’s move toward capturing the everyday and the objective, which death masks like L’Inconnue are reflective of.

Hello blogosphere!

I feel like I should introduce myself, since you’ll be hearing from me once a week for the rest of the year.  I’m Aislinn Frantz (kind of like the lion, if you say it really fast), I’m a senior, and I’m a BTA (Bachlor in Theatre Arts).  I’m concentrating in dramaturgy (I’m sure I’ll devote a blog post to trying to define that field), playwriting, and new play development.  I think that’s all you need to know for now.

Being a theatre student is different than many other fields, because there is always something new beginning.  As we finish up fall break, which more or less marks the middle of the semester, my semester is getting a breath of fresh air.  This is the time that many students begin to get bored or frustrated, but tomorrow will be one of the more exciting days of my semester: a first rehearsal.

I will be 2nd assistant stage managing the University Productions mainstage show The Beaux’ Stratagem.  The show goes up in mid-December, and tomorrow will be the first day that we all get together and read the script.  First rehearsals are always exciting for me.  It’s a little bit like the first day of school.  You’re not sure exactly what to expect.  It usually consists of some paperwork for the actors, a design presentation, and a read-through of the script, but there are no givens when it comes to first rehearsals.

Each first rehearsal is different.  Why?  Because each cast is different.  Each crew is different.  Each director is different. Each show is different. And that is why those of us who choose to spend our lives in theatre love it so much.  Each show is a new experience.  There are a few things I know about this process going in, but the rest of it I will learn as I go along.  The give and take of theatre is the best part.  The way that everyone involved works together influences how rehearsals will run.  I don’t know how many times I’ve heard the word collaboration since I’ve been at this university.  There’s a good reason for that.
I, like many of my colleagues, am a very independent person.  I hate group projects, I was never very good at team sports, and I am a writer, which means much of my work is done in solitary, in front of a computer screen.  However, I am also an incredibly social person, and there is a dependency at work there.  I depend on my friends, and I like being able to depend on other members of a production team.  I thrive on the input of other people.  Theatre is so interactive.  It isn’t like a group project where everyone has ideas to further their own means.  Everyone is working together for the same goal, and when the overall vision is executed well by everyone, the results are stunning.  Each job is done alone, but the real fun comes when everything is put together.  Theatre is a creative art.  We are creating something.  For Beaux’ Stratagem, tomorrow will be the beginning of this creation.  And I can’t wait.