(WARNING: Twilight fans beware… May contain offensive content)

Twilight is quickly becoming the new Harry Potter for female fans from the ages of 12 to 52.  What is it about this crazy wacky novel that has these ladies going so over the top to get their own sparkling Edward?

Not knowing anything but the simple basics of the story, I accidentally happened upon a link on my friend’s facebook site (“Why Breaking Dawn should be made into a movie”) and read a very sarcastic ending of the final book of this series.  I wasn’t expecting such a comedy, honestly.  I mean, the idea of sparkling vampires was amusing enough and could be somewhat endearing, but this series seems to have taken a scary turn.

Is this what our younger generations should be reading?  Initially, I played it off as a fantasy romance novel for teens, a little strange but innocent enough.  Yet the more I heard some of my Twilight-reading friends talk about it, the more I became aware that it wasn’t as innocent as I had thought.  Even they, too, were conscience of the sexuality and rooted physical tensions of the series.  The content itself is not what is being posed as a problem (after all, writers are free to express their creative energies as they wish); rather, it is the simple fact that in the beginning, Twilight was marketed to teenagers– even tweens.  This target audience was thereon exposed to a wide range of subjects that does not seem too appropriate for them.  Especially in the newest and last book when it speaks of Edward and Bella’s consummation and Jacob falls in love with a newborn child.  Is this something girls 12 years of age should be reading?

In this current day society, people cannot and should not be held back  from their own personal liberties in freedom of choice– the choice to express, the choice to decide what to read, what to consume all remain rights in a democratized and capitalized society.  Censorship is considered to be wrong.  Perhaps the fault lies not in the creators or consumers of this content or products, but in the intermediaries– the market, the marketers, the businesses who choose which content to place where and what products to sell to which customers.  While the Stephanie Meyer’s agent or publicist or marketers may not have known the direction that this series would take, was it their social responsibility to rework the promotion of Twilight to better fit its natural audience (ie older, more mature young adults)?  Particularly in this period where young mothers are increasing in statistics and children engage in sex from the ages of eleven or twelve?  Could the insistence on Twilight’s younger generation audience have social ramifications on its impressionable readers?

Descending to human affairs:

An accurate report on the transforming shapes of my cognition as I leave the grace and levitation of celestial things and orient the axis of my mind back on societal matters. I’m that kid scuffing my dirty sneakers in Barnes and Noble and sifting through the books in the Science section, sampling Darwin, poring through Copernicus to Hawking, sympathizing for Tesla the underdog of electrical history… though I suppose immortalizing your name for the units of magnetic density flux somewhat compensates for the fact you have been commercially thwarted by Edison. An old man bespectacled with thick glasses once gave me a smile loaded with a sympathetic understanding when he saw what I held in my hands. These whorls of information contained in the seemingly innocuous text would undoubtedly form themselves into arrows of abstraction: the physics of a soap bubble to the physics of consciousness to theories on the shape and direction of Time. I always wonder how anyone can root their feet firmly back on the ground after such a perusal since I for one, have a difficult time completing this seemingly simple task of closing the book, returning it to its proper place on the shelf, and continuing on without feeling though my innards have transmogrified into some erratic fitful of lightning about to storm. I get stuck.

These endless hours, the paychecks I spend, this need to delegate someone with the duty of prying these books from me when I have fallen asleep with them – why? Is it for that Holy Grail men and women for centuries have aspired and died for — Truth? For sublime and magnificent thoughts? Frankly, I don’t know what it’s all for. For the past two weeks, I’ve had this sticky-note stuck to my wallet that blotchily reads “In awe of the universe, one develops a detachment to life” which was some muck of a thought that surfaced when I was on the brink of falling asleep one night, causing me to grope for a pen in the dark. It’s not at all as dramatic as it sounds, in fact, it’s the apathetic air about it that renders the gravity of the meaning. All life has evolved from the constraints of purely physical laws and given the right conditions, this phenomenon of life will proceed to occur — we, these entropy-facilitating mechanisms have no choice but stir to life.

And it’s fascinating. We’ve created such a wondrously crazy system here that has little to do, and even blatantly ignores the existence of the rest of the Universe — those sprawling fringes of infinity. Nobody told me when I was kid that I was just stardust or anything and that every carbon within me has suffered the cosmic violence of a supernova (picture an explosion in deep space; there’s something almost poetic about it). Instead, I obediently memorized the multiplication table.  We are decorous, and dutifully, we more or less pursue respectable jobs, marry, have kids and the whole shindig, which essentially boils down to a cycle of small rituals, predetermined by repetition, falling unspoken and uncontemplated into their places. Our manners are a history of civilization. It’s utterly irrelevant that the Andromeda galaxy is scheduled to collide with our own in 3 billion years. Down here in this enterprise on Earth, pragmatism triumphs and beautifully, it’s the source of our humanity. We are ballooning with desire and memory, are moved by the color of the pounding tides, a familiar scent…

So what exactly does this have anything to do with art?

Possibly — probably everything. The most compelling art forms allow us to come to terms with these fundamental spatial and temporal truths, looming overcast in the peripheries of thought. Shadow-like and operating at quiet plane of conscience, profound arts remind us of the fabric and texture of our humanity; it humbles us, as does the sheer, utterly magnificent magnitude of the universe.

Art allows us to begin to comprehend the incomprehensible.

Admittedly, there have been days when I just want to be an amoeba for the sake of simplicity.

Sue majors in Neuroscience & English and tends to lurk in bookstores.

Art, for me encompasses every creative aspect of human life.  Art defines and redefines the individual.  Often it is hard to put into dialect because it has the ability to reach your heart like no other.  It is the glue, which has held and continues to hold humanity together.  Without it, we would be wandering souls lost in the abyss.

Think about the ‘art’ in every aspect of your life.  Care for it, follow it, and live and breathe it each minute, for art is who you are.

Your art takes you places.  It has even taken you here, to college.  Your dialect, appearance, wisdom, skills, actions all speak about and from your art.  Interestingly enough, art and he[art] are intermingled and twin like.

Your art is in your heart.

Be intentional about the way you present your art to others.  Don’t put it all out there at once, but don’t hide either.  We all have individual artistic expressions that need to be shared with each other in order to grow as individuals.

So live every moment mixing your introverted and extroverted artistic self.  Learn who you are and what your heart is made of and express it through your art.

Have a great week.

Sara majors in Art History and enjoys long walks.

“Dad can you turn on the radio?”

 “Oh Neethi, why do you always have to listen to some kind of noise?”

 “Daaad, pleaaassseee.”

 “Okay, okay.”

 It is a constant struggle. My mom wants silence, my dad wants Rush, and I want Jay-Z. Most of the time we all (meaning my dad and I…remember- “two out of three ain’t bad”) agree to listen to a station dedicated to the oldies like LiteFm since my Dad can’t handle the auditory assault that is Hot 97. But today was a different day. I managed to guilt my parents into letting me fully control the radio dial (oh the joys of going to school halfway across the country!). Excitedly, I switched the radio on and turned the dial to 96.5. “Po, Po, Po, Poker Face,” blasts from the speakers. My mother looks at me, as if to further prove her point. My dad starts laughing at the absurdity of the song. I didn’t care. My afternoon with the Lady had begun.

 To be honest, when I first heard Lady Gaga’s stuff I didn’t like it. Both her music and persona seemed superficial and ridiculous. I mean anyone can spastically dance around in an outfit made up of stuffed animals of Kermit the Frog- what made Lady Gaga so famous? And what the hell does the name Lady Gaga mean- why can’t celebrities just be normal?! Don’t get me wrong, I liked Just Dance, but Poker Face was mildly annoying and Love Game was downright vulgar. However, a few days ago I discovered her song “Bad Romance,” and I became hooked. Maybe it was the fact that I was delirious with fatigue while writing my Women Studies paper (the night before…don’t judge) or I was in the middle of a sugar coma, but I just couldn’t stop listening to that song. Even though the verses were a little too boring, the chorus was glorious and catchy. Upon further investigation I stumbled upon another one of her new songs called “Telephone.” For any of you Beyonce fans out there, this is a sister song of sorts to Beyonce’s “Video Phone,” except it’s a million times better. Seriously, it’s nearly impossible to not get this song stuck in your head. What is truly fantastic about this track is the production of it. Darkchild (producer extraordinaire) manages to seamlessly infuse real telephone sounds and tones into the track, which make it musically interesting. Also, unlike in Beyonce’s “Video Phone” where Lady Gaga’s contribution seems to be forced and awkward, Beyonce adds to the track by keeping her hip hop influences within Lady Gaga’s song.           

After listening to these two musical gems I decided to check out the entire album. Though I had high hopes for Gaga’s latest creation, I was unfortunately under whelmed. Many of the tracks fell victim to the Gaga formula- synthesizer heavy with a strong 80s influence and similar vocal presentation of the lyrics (i.e the vocal repetition that made Poker Face such a hit). Also, on several of the tracks such as Dance in the Dark, the lyrical content and vocal strength of Lady Gaga is overshadowed by overproduction. You really see her musical and artistic abilities on tracks like “Speechless,” which is by far the best track on the album. This song gives listeners an all too brief glimpse of the person behind the persona with a track uncluttered by dance beats and engineered sounds. Gaga truly shines when presented naturally and stripped down to her essence. I would have loved to hear an album filled with raw and simply produced songs. I think that the world has heard enough of the Lady, and now needs to hear from the woman behind the sensation.  

 Check out Lady Gaga’s new record The Fame Monster and let me know what you think! Have a great week  🙂

There’s a lot of art out there; plays, concerts, gallery showings, cinemas, and even the natural beauty of the Arb.  But as large as the variety of what to see it, there really is only one way to view it; with a friend.  Or preferably more than one so you have help beating up the one person who fails to see the attractiveness of the main character.

While viewing art solo is something I have done on occasion, it just isn’t the same. I want to share the experience of a moving final act or the excitement of an action movie.  Plus having an extra set of eyes can help determine just what that particular painting is supposed to be.  (I’m guessing a pink elephant. What? It’s totally a vase of flowers. On it’s side.)  Art just seems a whole lot more meaningful if the wonder of it is shared, if the adventure of finding that gallery is a joint venture.

Who doesn’t like to share?  I’m always doing so with my own art. I admit I’m fishing for praise and self-worth half the time, but the other half is just so happy at creating something I  have to share!  Who hear hasn’t shared poetry that they’ve written, for that high school English class or other reason, with others?  It enables more people to access the work. And as a self proclaimed budding artist I can’t think of anything more rewarding than knowing someone likes my work enough to share it.

So go out there, part take in something artsy this Thanksgiving weekend and drag someone with you.  It could be your parent, younger sibling, or that friend from high school that you’ve lost touch with but ran into at the grocery store on a last minute panicked ‘My mom needs stuffing!’ run.  Make some memories, share something beautiful, and live a full life.

Your only occasional anti-social blogger,

Jenny

On November 17 at around 4AM, I witnessed a meteor shower for the first time. Every November, the Leonid Meteor Shower occurs, scattering hundreds of stars among the skies for eager, waiting eyes to see. At 3:30AM, my friends and I bundled ourselves up with layers of clothes to combat the cold and trekked over to the Arb to lie down on the grassy fields and stare up at the skies, waiting in anticipation for the streaks of fire that would burn across the ashen sky.

As the ten of us sprawled on the grass and listened to music streaming from a friend’s iPod Touch, I lay in silence, looking up at the sky sprinkled with constellations that I typically can never see nor notice, and that, I am sure, most people can never see nor notice. It’s funny that stars are constantly surrounding us and they are consistently present in our lives, without fail, due to the sciences of nature and the solar system, yet a lot of us hardly realize or recognize these brightly shining spots in our lives.

Art is not always considered to be things of beauty, especially with the realization that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but after seeing these blazing balls of flame tearing across the night sky, it made me wonder if the one thing that is always beautiful would be nature. People can vary on their views of physical beauty, of “artistic beauty”, but I feel that it is cultural-wide, this notion of nature as beauty. Maybe the one thing that is always beautiful in our eyes is that which we can never escape. Nature always encompasses us, our small human selves, in this great expanse of the world, and whenever we are approached by the awesomeness of the natural, we encounter the sublime and we tremble and we are affected by something so intangible and inexpressible, but something we recognize to be beautiful.

Indeed, that early, dark morning, with the entire, never-ending skyline looming above us as we lay, each linked to the other in testament to our friendship and the closeness of our emotional ties with each other, as we ‘oohed and ahhed’ over the various constellations and the fast-moving snippets of meteors entering our atmosphere, I was yet again struck by the beauty of it all. The beauty of the stars, the sky, the trees, the grass, but perhaps most importantly, I was struck by the beauty of the mere moment. This precious hour when people who love each other and enjoy each other’s companies gather together to partake in a moment that is once-in-a-lifetime and so breathtakingly beautiful. Maybe it will happen again next year, maybe not. But this year, it happened, and painted such an amazing picture in my memory, one that I am sure to never forget.

—–

Gabby Park is a triple concentrator in Communication Studies, French, and History of Art and enjoys lying on the grass to look up at the stars.