For my final blog post of the year, I wasn’t sure what to write about. Girls aired an amazing two-part finale to a great fifth season last night, so I could write about that, a sort of check-in since my last post about it. I could write about the finales of Better Call Saul or Shameless, or the second Story Slam I went to, or any other arts-related thing I’ve been to on campus.

But I most want to write about goodbyes, and friendship, and closure, and the high school I went to that’s closing in 2019.

A lot of my friends and former teachers have posted things about what Harrison High School meant to them and why they’re so sad about it, and at first, it seemed a little odd to me. Justified, maybe, but there are three more years before the school will actually close—it seems weird to be reading things like “I’ll miss you, Harrison,” like it’s already all over. There are a few more years! We’ll still be able to visit! It’s not closing tomorrow!

But, of course, one of the things that sucks about endings like this is that you have to create your own ending. Maybe there will be some day down the line, in 2019, when there’ll be a Harrison closing party, and everyone will come back to Farmington and catch up and reminisce and be sad together. But we can’t wait for three years to start the grieving process. Everything is set in stone now.

It’s easy to argue for why Harrison shouldn’t be closed, or to name the specific qualities that make it great. Aside from the football team and the IB program, there’s a diversity at Harrison that just doesn’t exist at other schools in the area. Really, though, I’m not one of the most qualified people to argue for why Harrison—the building, the school—is objectively a great school. All I can tell you is what my very subjective, personal perspective is, having been a student there at four years.

High school is kind of where I became a person—at least, the person I am now. Sometime around 2012, I kind of hit on something and started liking myself more than I was used to. Before that, I’d considered myself a pessimist. Seeing the world as full of douchebags and evil people somehow seemed hip and fun to me, and being a consistent user of sarcasm, I thought I was supposed to self-identify as a pessimist. Then I kind of realized being happy and being sarcastic weren’t mutually exclusive, and I started looking at everything more positively, and I stopped worrying about at least a handful of my insecurities, and I started accepting sometimes that what would happen would happen, and I went into my senior year at my peak.

I still sometimes think of my senior year of high school as my peak, even after three pretty good years of college. There was just something so beautiful about senior year, about facing the gaping hole of the future and not knowing exactly what it would be like but being excited for it. There was something so bittersweet, so oddly beautiful in its somberness, about hanging out with my friends and having fun but knowing that it was almost over. I had more friends than I ever had, and I was more confident than ever. I genuinely liked spending time with myself.

Remembering my senior year of high school reminds me that as much as college has helped me become a smarter, more open-minded person, it’s not where my personality was formed. College may have given me new experiences and pushed me out of my comfort zone, and I’m really happy with how it’s gone, but high school is where I had the most years of actual change.

And it’s hard to think of a life before high school. There were 14 years of my life before, and I have a ton of memories from then, but somehow I’m unable to conceive of myself as a real person with real experiences before then. Facing the void at the end of 12^th grade wasn’t terrifying just because of college; it was terrifying because it felt like I was leaving my own life entirely.

So when I think about Harrison closing, that’s what I’m most sad about. The place where I became a person who I actually liked is not going to exist. And no matter how happy I am now, no matter how grateful I am that I got to experience Harrison while it was still there, the fact that it’s closing kind of sucks.

***

There’s a curious thing that happens when some sort of end is approaching: everything leading up to the end seems to happen specifically to provide you with a sense of closure. Conceiving of an ending as a sort of real-life TV season finale has been written about ad nauseam, by myself, by my fabulous friend Chloe Gilke, and by anyone who consumes much too pop culture. It’s a classic case of life seeming to imitate art.

I’m at the end of my junior year of college, which makes next year my last year. That’s really terrifying, and I kind of hate talking or thinking about it for a variety of reasons. For one, I still kind of feel like I’m 17 years old, completely dependent on adults who know more than me and unable to live on my own or do my taxes or think seriously about a career. Another weirdly big thing: I’ve made a bunch of new friends at The Michigan Daily who are all freshmen and sophomores, so it’s deeply sad to me that they’ll have at least one or two more years there without me. It’s like I’m facing a two-year case of FOMO between the time when I’m done at the Daily and the time when most of my friends are.

But, for now, the end of the school year isn’t a culmination of my whole college experience; it’s more just a culmination of the year I’m finishing. And several of my interactions with people have already seemed perfectly fitting with a season finale-esque ending. There’s been one big, cathartic drunken sharing of previously unspoken feelings. One pleasant agreement that a friend and I wanted to rekindle our dormant friendship next year. One final fiction reading my friend gave, which showed me how far she’d come since we first met in our creative writing class two years ago, and which somehow seemed a fitting last time to see her before she moves to Chicago.

Today I hung out with a bunch of Daily friends and luxuriated in the warm temperatures. At around 7:00, it was perfect out; the sun was beginning to set as a casual concert happened on the diag. It was my friend Melina’s last night in Ann Arbor until the fall, but my friend Karen is graduating and leaving in a week, so Melina and Karen had an emotional goodbye.

I got into a conversation with Karen about how, for all we knew, once all of us eventually left school, many of us would never see each other again in our lives. Sure, we’d all love to see each other again down the road, but many of us aren’t from Michigan to begin with, so we wouldn’t have much motivation to fly back. And life and jobs and relationships all get in the way of casual reunions.

I’m personally not that concerned about it because being mostly English, film, and communications majors, my friends at the Daily are mostly heading into similar fields. I know we’ll end up running into one another at weird times in the future, and maybe contacting each other to network and get new job opportunities. Many of us will probably end up in New York City or Los Angeles.

I talked to my friend Julie about all this, and she brought up high school. She said something that I’ve heard from a lot of my friends: leaving high school made them realize how little they really cared about keeping most high school friends in their lives.

I can understand that. I’ve experienced it a little. I think back to some of my friends I considered great friends in high school and feel no serious need to reconnect with them now. I mean, like, it’d be nice if I ran into them, but I only really think about many of them once in a while, if I’m in a particularly nostalgic mood. Most of the time, I’m focused on the people who are still in my life.

But the real reason I’m comfortable with where I am right now with most of my high school friends isn’t that I don’t really miss them. I do miss them! Even the ones I don’t actively think about I wish I could see again. Sometimes I fantasize about high school reunions when we’ll all reunite and reminisce.

It’s amazing to think about the fact that when college first started, I had a schedule to contact high school friends, some sort of systematic way of keeping up with them. I assigned people to different groups based on how often I ‘had to’ talk to them. Of course, it inevitably failed, and I don’t know how I thought it could actually succeed. But my happy surprise is that it’s unnecessary to talk to someone every single day or every week or every month or even every year to still feel love and closeness with them. It can wait.

When I hung out with my high school friend Allison last winter break, I wasn’t sure when I’d see her next. When she dropped me back off at home, I could’ve said, “Okay, I’ll see you over spring break, maybe?” or “Are you ever planning on visiting Ann Arbor?” or “Maybe I’ll see you in the summer, if our schedules overlap.” But I didn’t say any of those things, because I understood that none of that was necessary. I just said, “I’ll see you when I see you.”

So yeah, I’ll miss Harrison High School. Yeah, I’ll miss Karen when she leaves, and my creative writing friend Holly, and Chloe. And a year from now, when I graduate from college, when I do say goodbye to all of these great people in my life, it’ll inevitably be sad, because it’ll mean seeing them a lot less often than I did before.

But I also know it’s not over. It never really is.

The 1940’s was a Golden Era for radio: from FDR’s fireside chats to Ralphie and Randy listening to Little Orphan Annie and the Lone Ranger in A Christmas Story. It was a new way of storytelling, a new way of communicating news. Instead of the communal fire of our ancestors, the radio became the centerpiece. Children were presented a story aurally and had to create mental motion pictures. Like an American Sign Language interpreter, your brain is always lagging one sentence behind of your ears; therefore proving that listening and comprehending stories rather than seeing them (in film) makes better brains.

In the past one or two years, we have entered into a new Golden Era for radio. We’ve entered the Podcast Zone.

Podcasts are pre-recorded audio files that can be downloaded at any time and in any order. They typically are released serially, like the old-fashioned radio shows used to be. Think of podcasts as Netflix for your ears, except that they require more imagination. Podcasts really are portable – the most “low-tech as high-tech gets,” says Lance Ulanoff of Mashable. All you need is your phone and earbuds. No wi-fi necessary. Completely hands-free. Just press play and enter a new world through your ears.

A particularly fruitful app for podcast exploration is Podbay, which can be downloaded on both Apple and Android products. It’s easy for just about anyone with any particular interest to find a podcast that suits them. Health, books, psychology, politics, comedy, spirituality – you name the subject and I promise there will be a podcast out there for you.

What am I listening to right now? (Except for Cabin Pressure, all available via Podbay).

1. Ask Me Another – Everything you ever wanted from an NPR trivia game show. Quick: name a famous jazz artist whose first name rhymes with ‘precipitation’ and sing about the origins of Subway to the tune of Blink 1-82’s “All the Small Things.”
2. Serial – The groundbreaker series for podcasts. Loved the first season.
3. Welcome to Night Vale – A twice-monthly radio show in the style of community updates for a small desert fictional town called Night Vale. Features include a weather report, news, announcements from the Sheriff’s Secret Police, mysterious lights in the night sky, dark hooded figures with unknowable powers, and cultural events.
4. The Dead Authors Podcast – In support of 826LA, this podcast is hosted by H.G. Wells who has rigged his time-traveling machine to transport dead authors and poets to the 21st century and what follows is an hour long conversation about their lives, their writings, their loves, and their sometimes (mostly) strange idiosyncrasies.
5. Invisibilia – For psychology nerds out there, this ones for you! Explore the “invisible things” of our world, like why we have thoughts, emotions, dreams, and beliefs.
6. Cabin Pressure – Want to hear Benedict Cumberbatch before he was famous? This comedic BBC radio show (which is sadly no longer produced) takes place on a fictional airplane and drama ensues between the oddball crew.

Tune in next time for my last Arts Ink blog ever!

P.S. I’d love to find out which podcasts you’re all listening to! Over and out …

This website has been my sounding board for the past three years, a place where I have thrown my thoughts and ideas into the deathly silent abyss of the internet. Many of my posts have been inconsequential – although I have been paid to write for the past few years I by no means consider myself a writer – but every so often I stumbled into a post that meant something. The posts which people commented on, that prompted peers and professors to stop me before class and revealed that my private abyss was much more visible than it ever felt.

Looking through my old posts there are clear trends beyond my obvious affinity for opera. Fear of failure, pride in my unlikely duality and a refusal to be defined by external forces subtly accented my posts just as they lingered in my daily thoughts and actions. These undercurrents, the parts of me that are not pretty or glamorous or perfect, were revealed, unpacked and resolved here in a quiet corner of the internet. While not every post provided some deep insight into art, music or life, I strived above all things to be honest

Now my time as a student is coming to a close and with that I will lose the privilege of being an Arts Ink blogger. It is odd approaching graduation; I am neither excited or scared by the concept of receiving my diploma, or phased by the notion that so much will change in less than two weeks. Rather, I feel and I am ready. I have accomplished all that I can here and it is time to move on to the next adventure. Just as my time with UMGASS or Ann Arbor Civic Theater naturally resolved and pushed me on to my next feat, it is time to post my last few thoughts and allow a new student the same privilege that Arts at Michigan afforded me for so long.

If there is one message which I can impress upon you it is this: be honest in your life and in your art. Art created for the sake of beauty alone is meaningless. I do not care, and will not remember if every note is perfect, each line of a drawing unerring or if every word flows out uninterrupted. I will forget and be unaffected, because perfection is not real and not relevant to me or my life. Yet, show me something true and honest, dirty, broken and hidden and I will see myself. I will see my life reflected in your vulnerability and be swayed by the influence of your art. I can only hope that every now and then I accomplished this here, and will continue to strive for these lofty goals whatever the next adventure.

When music comes out, no one is really sure if it will stand the test of time or become influential to future artists. When the Beatles first started, there were just another pop band. Same thing with Justin Timberlake or Bruno Mars, nobody actually thought they would have a significant impact on the music industry, but they clearly have. Keeping with this same idea, I have a list of three albums that I believe have and will have significant impacts in the music industry

1. Lorde’s Pure Heroine

This album came out during an interesting time of music. We were still recovering from the self-congratulatory pop of the 2000’s and newer artists were beginning again to create more serious and personal music. All of the sudden a 16 year old from New Zealand came out with Royals. This song was a response and criticism of the shallow music that was prevalent at the time. I believe this song paved the way for artists’ more serious music to be released by the recording companies. The extreme popularity of the song forced executives to recognize the fact that  music listeners were craving something more than pretty ladies, parties, and shallow love.

2. Sia’s 1000 Forms of Fear

Nobody expected Sia to come back with as much force as she did. She only had minor hits before her hiatus and she seemed content to never produce her own music again. But then Chandelier came out and became a huge success. People connected with the deeply tragic lyrics, but the music made it possible to listen to it without the sadness overwhelming the song. Similar to Pure Heroine, 1000 Forms of Fear takes pop music and makes it a personal affair. She takes the style of pop, but makes it work with her personal story. The album is a collection of songs that were too personal for Sia to share with another artist and it shines through. I believe this will be a model that other artists will follow where the songs are deeply personal to them. I would not be surprised if Gwen Stefani said that 1000 Forms of Fear was an inspiration for her new album, one that is also a collection of songs about difficulties in her life.

3. Taylor Swift’s 1989

Whether you like her music or not, you cannot deny that Taylor Swift is extremely successful.  She makes pop songs that are accessible, but still contain clever lyrics with significant messages. Her wordplay in some of her songs is really unparalleled when compared to other artists releasing music right now. A lot of people like to disregard her because of her bubblegum pop aesthetic, but she’s really someone that lyricists should be looking up to. Clealr yshe is already a huge influence as one of the most recognizable celebrities in America, but I believe this album will have lasting affects on the music industry. It’s no longer acceptable in pop to hide poor lyrics behind a lazy ear-worm beat. I hope that this album will cause a significant impact in the writing of pop songs in the future.

These three are obviously not the only albums that will have a significant impact on the music industry, these are just the ones that I have the most background with. Some other artsist include the more obvious big names that will have an impact no matter what type of music they release, like Beyonce or Nicki Minaj. Then there are the ones that haven’t broken out to the public yet that would probably have huge impacts if they could, like Melanie Martinez, Misterwives, or Janelle Monae.