I get strangely excited every time the course guide for the next semester is available online.  I wish I could say that this is what marks me as a nerd, but if I’m being honest, I get excited about far nerdier things than the course guide (marching bands, office supplies, the smell of books).  I like the feeling of possibility in the new course guide.  I get the feeling, a little flutter somewhere between my heart and stomach, when I first print out my schedule of new classes—that feeling before you are steeped in research and deadlines, that great openness, a new beginning.

It may seem absurd to wax poetic on the course guide, but for me the guide is indicative of that starting over point that we are lucky enough to get every first class meeting.  Syllabus week is famously boring, but there’s also something thrilling about the textbook list and schedule that stretches into the future, providing a definite plan.  This is something unique to college.  Once we’re out in the “real world,” we won’t have chances to start over, to learn things we never would have dreamed of, to fulfill that childhood hopefulness for the college experience once every fourteen weeks or so.

So when I logged onto Wolverine Access last week to find that the course guide was available, I was first greeted with my familiar feelings of optimism and the adventure of finding unexpected exciting classes (I warned you, I’m a nerd).  But as I began sorting through meeting times and how many classes I wanted to take and figuring out credits, I was struck with a sort of despair.  This will be my last semester at the University of Michigan.  Suddenly, my enthusiasm had disappeared.  Two things occurred to me: one, I will never be able to take all of the classes I would like to, and two, it’s really happening.  I’m really going to graduate.

I transferred to Michigan my sophomore year.  It took me one semester to not feel like a freshman and another semester to really get the hang of it and feel like I belonged here.  Now, three years later, I never want to leave.  I am so excited to go out and start my career and put what I’ve learned to use, but there’s a part of me that knows that I’ll miss seeing my best friends every day in the lobby of the Walgreen and being able to geek out about Tennessee Williams with professors and classmates.  Now, I finally feel like a major part of a major program.  I have friends telling me every day not to graduate, and sometimes, I really wish I didn’t have to.

I’ve always loved school.  I was the kid who woke up at 4 a.m. on the first day of second grade, trying to shake my parents awake because I was afraid I’d be late.  Soon, it will be my last first day.  And while I know it means I’m taking a step toward a (hopefully) awesome career doing what I’ve always known I wanted to do, it also means I’ve really got to make it count.  So if you see me glued to my computer screen the next couple of weeks, don’t mind me.  I’m just taking one final walk through the pages and pages of possibility that is the course guide.

I have approximate answers and possible beliefs in different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything…
— Richard Feynman

One of my psychology professors this fall semester, with humor, flourish — a savoir-faire that crystallized in his not-quite-tangential ambles into anecdotes of: psychological history, his obesity-stricken dog, and the meaning of life… and back again — spoke on two types of hormones that differentially affect monogamous behavior in male and female prairie voles. Eager to take in the conclusions that he appeared to be paving a discussion toward, we dug into the research papers that, with the structure and vernacular that is so characteristic of efforts of scientific rigor, elegantly allowed certain “rules” between brain and behavior to be teased out of the daunting complexity of the nervous system. After all, grant money thrown at the altar of science is for the express purpose of generating results, is it not? It’s in this scientific process, in cleverly controlled laboratory conditions that we can begin the ambitious endeavor of chipping away at the monolith of The Unknown for some shape of the truth. Taken together, the two papers, each on a neurohormone for a particular sex in Microtus ochrogaster, appeared to strengthen the male/female dichotomy – oxytocin facilitates pair-bonding in the girl voles, vasopressin in boys. Ok. I wrote it in my summary and reiterated it in my notes, scribbled definitive-sounding descriptors like “social” and “asocial”, underlined them for good measure.

And then, with an abruptness that was so well executed that its own spontaneity was somewhat suspect, he declared, “But, people love to oversimplify.”

Surely, this thought has crossed our minds before, but that day during that class was one of those moments where that axiom (which in itself is problematic for its meta-simplification) was thrown into sharp relief. The inclination for simplification to become ossified and dogmatic over time is apparent in every aspect of our lives. Headlines, for one, to no fault of their own since they inherently must simplify for constraints of space, are especially prone to pare off complexity in order to offer a good, coherent story. We eat facts up, we love a one trajectory narration and graspable and workable principles so day-to-day living can bear onwards to whatever we like without too much hindrance. Solid anchors of knowledge that we can reliably expect to exist offer traction for our interactions with the world to persist; we must cut the Gordian knot. It’s with no invective that this professor brought up the subject, just a moment set aside to appreciate one more quality, for better or worse, that identifies us as Homo sapiens. He merely cautioned the class to differentiate pragmatic, useful simplifications from the more reckless sort (the line between the two is not as crisp and unwavering as one would like), causing the 30 of us to begin wondering what the take home message was or if we had fallen into a recursive loop that the take home message was that take home messages are no good.

This inevitably brought forth a branching chain of thoughts, some more panicked than others, and terminated quietly on a memory of this video:

Ray Carney, in a very similar vein says, “Art is not about making gorgeous images, but about revealing things that matter. Don’t confuse beauty and prettiness. Real beauty is not pretty. It is scary or disorienting, because it threatens everything we think we know.” And truly, Feynman felt utter reverence for the complexity of the world, going as far as asserting that complexity was in fact, unadulterated beauty. And perhaps it’s at this juncture of “complexity,” rather than the familiar simplicity that we are biased towards, that the humanities and the sciences can brush shoulders and see eye to eye. Why science and theory in any humanities field is challenging is the utter depth of it – at that many fathoms down, at the threshold of what is known and unknown, nothing is certain and knowledge is not intuitive. There isn’t one answer to a query without adequate context and qualifications. Consider how difficult it is to pass a course in a subject versus actually being a productive member of the field; one requires you to memorize facts, the other asks you to challenge or affirm their validity. Beauty, art, and the brain is as complex as the electron is small, as the universe is large.

The big, hot mess of the world might be the greatest art of them all.

Bon Iver, the acoustic, rustic Wisconsin band led by Justin Vernon, famous for “Skinny Love” and that one song you thought you heard on the TV show “Chuck” once, is one of my favorite artists. Bon Iver is comprised of Vernon along with Michael Noyce, Sean Carey, and Matthew McCaughan. Even the least inclined Indie fans can find pleasure in listening to Bon Iver’s music. It is easy to comprehend why Bon Iver has such universal appeal; his flawless voice and ability to transcend multiple octaves paired with his band’s mastery of a wide variety of instruments allow the band to create meaningful, appealing, powerful music. Even if you strip the songs of their lyrics you will still appreciate the beauty in the instrumentals. Add the words back in, and you become consumed with the awe of Justin Vernon’s writing.

Bon Iver has produced two studio albums, For Emma: Forever Ago and the recent Bon Iver. Avid fans of the first album received a slight shock upon listening to Bon Iver for the first time. The second album vividly differs from its previous, a transformation that unsettled the fan base. For Emma: Forever Ago maintained an acoustic overtone throughout the album, occasionally employing different uses of vocals but sustaining an overall similar style. Bon Iver, contrarily, fluctuates in genre and provides much more depth to their original work. While tracks such as “Holocene” and “Calgary” fit into the previous mold, “Towers, Minnesota WI, Hinnom TX and Beth/Rest” most certainly do not. An electric guitar (a sharper, stronger sound than Bon Iver listeners are accustomed to) is prevalent in many of the songs, straying away from the mellow hum of For Emma. Critics instantly attacked “Beth/Rest,” the album’s last track, for its obvious 80’s influence and stark stylistic departure from their tone, which I agree with.

However, while most people were disappointed in the album, I embraced it with gratitude. It is just as stunning as its predecessor in sound quality, and even more inspiring in its lyricism. Each song is titled after a geographic location, all referring to historic places in Vernon’s life. This provides a much more personal connection than did his first album, and in my opinion only added to its appeal. While it is evident that their style is changing, Bon Iver still remains one of the most talented groups of musicians in the business today, and I cannot wait for what they produce next. Which brings me back to my initial plea: I beg of you Justin, do not stop making music.

There’s little point in me picking out the best songs, as they are all fantastic, but:

“Perth, Towers, Hinnom TX, and Wash.”

**Attention: If at any time in your life you arrive at a moment when you feel content, or satisfied, or pleased, and want to reflect on that unshakable buzz of euphoria that remains after true moments of happiness please take a few minutes to sit and listen to this song; allow yourself to be consumed with the amber light that all but perpetually radiates from it, and simply enjoy good music.

It’s nice to be acknowledged for something you’ve worked on, and there’s nothing wrong with not being acknowledged either. Having something you’ve done be attributed to someone or something else however inevitable or justified— on the other hand, can be something of a downer indeed.

Some media frequently carry around a reputation for being supremely effortless hackjobs. (Percussion, for instance, is one such: “So you just bang around on drums and stuff? That’s awesome, man, I should’ve done that, it would’ve been so much easier”). People outside any given field don’t necessarily appreciate that there is a finesse to everything, not just what they themselves do. That’s how there are specialists, experts, professionals. Art is, after all, an art.

Another fallacy assumes that better work is the direct result of more expensive equipment. “The better the oddslot camera, the better the picture!” Friends, on occasion, will be all too glad to ooh and ahh over something I’ve shot. “But you have one of those big black cameras, don’t you,” they add, glancing at the incriminating SLR in my had, as if that explained everything. “That’s a really good picture,” I’ve overheard. Then, as an aside, “he’s got a nice camera.” But things don’t work that way, of course. Out of every hundred clicks of the shutter button and repeated trial and error might a small handful of images satisfactory enough to be post-processed and touched up be picked out. Or, as an oft-quoted anecdote from Sam Haskins puts it:

A photographer went to a socialite party in New York. As he entered the front door, the host said “I love your pictures— they’re wonderful; you must have a fantastic camera.” He said nothing until dinner was finished, then: “That was a wonderful dinner; you must have a terrific stove.”

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TChen realizes she is probably preaching to the choir and apologizes for this overly short and rant-y diatribe.

If, in a twist on the Snow White fairytale, Snow were to carry a gun, I imagine it would be something like one of these singing bird pistols made by Frères (French for brothers) Rochat in the early 1800s – beautiful, harmless, and adorned by a singing bird.

Despite appearances, these two pistols are actually music boxes that move and play music thanks to an extremely intricate mechanism. When the pistols are “fired,” rather than a deadly bullet, a small bird, adorned with real feathers, “shoots” out and rests on top of the pistol’s barrel.  Click here to watch a video of the pistols in action.

The singing bird pistols, though heavily decorated, are made to look and function very similarly to real pistols. Like regular pistols, to “fire,” each singing bird pistol must be”cocked” and the trigger pulled. Unlike regular pistols, however, they must be wound up first, much like an old fashioned clock. The music box mechanism is based on old watch-making techniques, and contains several hundred small parts.

The brothers Rochat were famous for their intricate singing bird music boxes, particularly their snuff boxes. Each creation had a small realistic mechanical bird that could sing on command hidden out of sight. For more information on Frères Rochat, click here.

High-end collectors treasure the surviving Rochat music boxes. These singing bird pistols, which are the only known set in existence, sold for around $5.8 million at auction. Very few other singing bird pistols have survived, and the four other known pistols are currently housed in museum collections.

As far back as art historians seem to be able to go, art has always existed as a means of resistance, a catalyst to revolution, and a construct for exposing societal and political flaws.  With the continual privatization of the art market all over the world, guiding it out of the hands of restricting state and religious direction and patronage, artists are freer than ever to combine their own dissatisfactions with the existing power structure, stereotypes, preconceptions, etc. with forms of art that are more experimental and avant-garde.   Increasingly, the once European and U.S. dominated art market has shifted considerably.  Though cities like London and New York are still the major sellers of art, and Paris may always be the prime location for exhibition, some of the highest selling and most talked about art is coming out of places like Beijing and Dubai.   Themes that are common are usually similar to the same values coming out of Western contemporary art like feminism, war, and consumerism.  Aesthetically, the two hemispheres have been producing vey similar looking art as well.  Some point to this as an achievement in the universality and pervasiveness of art, though the point has also been made by some scholars that European art has had its own form of ‘colonialism,’ and Middle Eastern art (and for that matter, African and Asian) has been overly influenced by Eurocentrism, to the point where the unique Middle Eastern artistic tradition has been overshadowed and replaced with art that is a product of European art history.  If this is the case, the Middle East seems to be beating the West at their own game.  In 2008, Farhad Moshiri became the first Middle Eastern artist to sell an artwork at auction for over $1 million (specifically $1.05 million), and the numbers have only been growing since, with the Dubai Art Faire attracting some of the most elite in the art world, to the point where they have been the ones donating to the Louvre.

In a post-9/11 world, it seems as though anything related to the Middle East is translated through the lens of terrorism, whether it is pro or anti war.  It is not uncommon for news stories or interviews with Middle Easterners to solely focus on how the war has affected them, their opinions on it, the racism that has been engendered by the event, etc.   Though these things can’t be undermined, it is important to realize that there are other issues at stake in the Middle East, and there is a lot of art that reflects this.  They also have their genres of landscape painting, illustration, political cartoons, splatter painting, and so forth.

Though European and American connoisseurs of art seem to be receptive to contemporary art coming out of the Middle East, for many this is still fairly new territory.  U.S. museums usually have much less Middle Eastern art in comparison to their European collections, and after the controversy over the Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad there was a considerable backlash in some prominent museums (most notably the Met), where many ancient works of Middle Eastern art were put into storage out of fear of reprisal.  Even U of M, as progressive as it may be, added for this Fall its first course on Middle Eastern art in years.  However, it does seem as though there has been a significant integration in the recent past of the Middle East into the global art market, and it only shows signs of increasing popularity.