Writing is not an easy task, unless you are of the 0.01% of the population for whom words simply descend from the Heavens and pour into your lap into perfectly constructed, syntactically adventurous, yet tasteful units. Unfortunately, I must confess that I belong to the other group, papers and hair askew from the daily frustrations of trying to lay something worthwhile onto a sheet of seemingly innocuous paper.

I hope that one day my thoughts will grasp the empty, beckoning lines vigorously – sensing it and exploring it – discerning its every crevice, every minute thread of fabric to better understand the medium unto which my consciousness is reflected. One day, I hope fail to shrug and sit complacently like they do latent in this fickle specimen that is called a “mind”. To write with alarming alacrity, to write so vibrantly in the subtleties, to abate the appetite of allowing time to sift like sand, idle and tired through my fingers. I hope that these commodities are not purely congenital. I hope that in part that it can be acquired, much like the refined and beautiful tastes tapering out of every ethnicity. I want to write because to pantomime for half a century will not suffice; I do not want to be Possibility Girl and bask in the adulation of my potential.

And what does Lady Caroline, say about all this? She would say, shrilly:

“…and pray tell her from me, that she cannot expect to excel if she does not practice a good deal.”

Although I claim to enjoy writing a great deal, it is still a common struggle that I confront with nearly every day to commit myself to sit down and produce something of my own, fresh and original. The ideas, so pristine, so perfect – how could I ever lay them down in risk of tarnishing them with the wrong words that misguided intuition sometimes selects from my internal lexicon? Many writers like myself, are trapped in this guilty paradox of yearning to write but finding ourselves making excuse after (albeit, creative) excuse not to write today because of reason X. Replace X with anything from actually desperately needing to study for that biochemistry exam looming like hawk around the corner of the weekend, to feeling inexplicably compelled to making sure that the entirety of the iTunes library has the correct album art and meta-data. Yet, that elated feeling that one gets when a sentence is successfully wrestled onto paper, that sense that it has been perfectly grafted from the mind to a language that can be conveyed onto others – that’s what keeps the craft of writing alive for the vast majority of us all.

If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.

— Ray Bradbury

This is the reason I had signed up for an English workshop class this semester; the pressure to produce something that would be halfway decent for another human being to read keeps the words coming. It’s an entirely nervous ordeal at times, to present these words and ideas that are lovingly yours to a group of (mostly) strangers for them to scrutinize and turn over in their hands. And yet, despite the anxiety, I could not be more thankful for this same group of people, whom inspire me to write and take the time to thoughtfully write suggestions in the margins. If you don’t belong to that other 0.01% of writers in the world, I highly recommend taking a writing class if you are truly interested in the field. Writing prompt websites like Write One Leaf, are quite useful as well.

Here’s to a week of words!

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

Last night I took some of my own advise and went to one of the many interesting lectures this campus offers. It was called The Social Museum: online community-building and the future of museums, hosted by Matthew Fisher, the founder and President of Night Kitchen Interactive. His discussion was in the plush UMMA auditorium where I found myself comfortably intrigued. I must say I had other motives for attending this event. First off, I have to attend three out of class events this semester for one of my museums classes and secondly the discussion pertained to my current internship at UMMA.

His work deals with forward thinking in museums and calls it a push towards a ‘social museum.’ UMMA was attracted to Fisher and his forward thinking and hired him to work on the project that turned into the Dialog Table as the final project. The Dialog Table is an interactive technological device located on the museum’s first floor. The hand gesture activated system allows you to open up any image in the museum’s collection to learn more about its location in the museum, how it was accessioned and a blurb about its meaning. There are also movies you can watch and links that can be made from one object to another.

The brains at UMMA behind this project are Lisa Borgsdorf and Ruth Slavin, my two lovely, smart, and intelligent supervisors. It is because of their collaborative work with Fisher that the museum has one of four Dialog Tables in the U.S. We are fortunate to have such a gem at our University. The basis for the table is to learn about art through a new, interactive, entertaining medium. The museum hopes people play with the table and strike a dialog with their family or other visitors to the museum. People can learn from each other and share an experience that is not found in many museums.

The table is located in an open area where people can move freely and speak as loudly as they want. The desire is for people to socialize through this technological device. Museums are in transition. They are changing from quiet environments to more social and upbeat settings where complete strangers can meet and interact. The experience is truly unique. Go to the museum and take a look for yourself!

Have a great weekend!

Sara majors in Art History and enjoys long walks!

Two concert tickets: $300

Dinner consisting of dorm food with one of your closest friends: $10

One concert T-shirt to be shared with your brother: $30

An evening spent at MSG watching your younger brother awkwardly “dance” to the sounds of one of the greatest rappers alive while simultaneously getting showered by alcohol and enveloped in a cloud of smoke: Priceless

Two weeks ago my brother and I made our way to New York City to see Jay-Z in concert. To prepare for the blessed event I listened to the “Blueprint 3” album non-stop for two weeks and taught my brother how to properly shake his romper to the beat (unfortunately this proved to be a useless endeavor). This was going to be my first concert ever (Live Earth doesn’t count!) and I couldn’t wait. Luckily for me the expectations were for once far exceeded.

Not only was Jay-Z live was almost as good as the recorded tracks, the various surprise guests really made the evening special. After Jay’s first set Young Jeezy came out along with NICKI MINAJ, DRAKE, AKON, and Lil Wayne (who somehow managed to stall his jail sentence just long enough tot perform at MSG!). Though I wasn’t able to stay for the whole concert (overbearing parents… what can you do?!), the highlight for the entire evening had to be Jay-Z’s performance  of Empire State of Mind- the entire arena was literally rapping/singing along with him word for word (A close second would be when President Obama’s “dirt off your shoulder speech” appeared on the large screens on the stage)!

Although Jay’ part of the concert was great, the opening act Trey Songz left a lot to be desired. Every song was literally the same (all were some variation on the themes of women, sex, and more sex) and his act dragged on for almost an hour! It was so bad that I found people watching more appealing than listening to him. However, Jay-Z definitely lived up to the hype as he performed all of his new and old hits. I definitely came away from that concert with a sense that he truly is “the best rapper alive” and I recommmend that you all check him out on his BP3 tour.

I have always found dead stuffed cats to be creepy.  They’re so stiff and fake looking that at times it is hard to tell that they are not toys/decorations and had at one point been alive.  I mean seriously, do you want your dead friend perched at the end of your couch? It’s so unnatural.

So for those crazy taxidermists, how do you make it more acceptable, how do you sleep knowing that not that far away, the body of say a dead deer, is staring at you?   Answer: take the animal and distort it even more so it becomes something else entirely.  It becomes, well, a piece of art.

Ron Pippin is an artist.  He’s created everything from detailed ships to overflowing adventure journals.  He has also given an antelope guns.

I would have no qualms with having this critter in my house.  He’s interesting to look at and all that metal makes me wonder if there will ever be a time when it’s open season on humans.  But that thought is so distant, so improbable, I can deal with that much easier than a stuffed cat at the foot of my grandma’s bed.

To check our more of his work, click here.

Your blogger,

Jenny

I collect quotes like one collects stamps or stones. I do it in a compulsive manner, and they’re everyone: rewritten in margins, four notebooks, in my phone as texts to myself. I feel that as if I were to write down every inspirational quote that I find in my paper-strewn path, that they might lend me some of their own prowess. And perhaps, as a result of dutifully compiling quotes, I could feel what it might be like to write something so profound, so powerful in a single paragraph, a single phrase (or less) myself – to feel the words as they fall from the fingertips and imagine what that must feel like. Like little vignettes in themselves, these quotes are the cruxes, the essence of contexts vast and mysterious, and before the authors of these quotes utter them into existence, one would not be able to believe they could be articulated. They are observations of the truth captured in a beautifully concise, linguistic format. And they are readily available to be admired by you and I. Personally, I believe that writing tiny kernels of wisdom requires a sort of genius – a genius to distill the convoluted down to a manageable essence while not compromising the initial intricacies, the serpentine coils and twists of life… they say so much without being overstated and gaudy.

Here are some of my favorite quotes that I’ve written down in dire haste within a wide array of note pages and such. I hope that they instill in you some feeling of grandeur as they have done for me.

With me, the present is forever, and forever is always shifting, flowing, melting. This second is life. And when it is gone it is dead. But you can’t start over with each new second. You have to judge by what is dead. It’s like quicksand … hopeless from the start. A story, a picture, can renew sensation a little, but not enough, not enough. Nothing is real except the present, and already, I feel the weight of centuries smothering me. Some girl a hundred years ago once lived as I do. And she is dead. I am the present, but I know I, too, will pass. The high moment, the burning flash, come and are gone, continuous quicksand. And I don’t want to die.
— Sylvia Plath

Emerson, for instance, left his sick wife, Lidian, and their young children in Thoreau’s care to go to Europe in 1847, writing coldly to Lidian, ‘I foresee plainly that the trick of solitariness never can leave me.’
— from the preface to The Journal of Henry David Thoreau 1837-1861

A living entity that regarded its means of survival as evil, would not survive. A plant that struggled to mangle its roots, a bird that fought to break its wings would not remain for long in the existence they affronted. But the history of man has been a struggle to deny and to destroy his mind.
— John Galt

Actual happiness looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamor of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.
— Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

Chaos was the law of nature; order was the dream of man.
— Henry Brooks Adams

You’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them — if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.
— The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger

Algebra is applied to the clouds; the radiation of the star profits the rose; no thinker would venture to affirm that the perfume of the hawthorn is useless to the constellations. Who, then, can calculate the course of a molecule? How do we know that the creation of worlds is not determined by the fall of grains of sand? Who knows the reciprocal ebb and flow of the infinitely great and the infinitely little, the reverberations of causes in the precipices of being, and the avalanches of creation?
— Les Miserables, Victor Hugo

What are some of your favorite quotes?

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

“Sharing is Caring!”

“Spread the News!”

“Extra, Extra, Read All About it!”

A theme that I often find myself circling is spreading the word.  Sharing thoughts and ideas and then reading all about them.  Word of mouth travels faster than anything it seems.  Its also usually occurs during casual conversations at events, parties, and dates.

Recently one of my friends has been sending me some amazing music that I have come to love.  I am a person who loves music, but has always been a little technologically challenged and thus never explored.  Now, I feel like the sacred Japanese Torri gates have allowed me to enter into a pure, relaxing, and unknown world.  Now, I actually know the name of the bands, their songs, and words!  Eureka!  Who knew Pandora’s box wasn’t so foreign as I thought?!

So, this artistic transformation into the music world inspired me to introduce 10 artists who work in a variety of mediums to you, in hopes that it will enlighten and rebirth your soul.  I chose to provide you with an amalgamation and not my top 10, because I’m flexible and benevolent.

Salvidor Dali

Jean-Michel Basquiat

Bankay

Keith Haring

Judy Chicago

Takashi Murakami

Friedensreich Hundertwasser

Frida Khalo

Andy Goldsworthy

Christo and Jeanne-Claude

Hope you enjoy!

Sara Majors in Art History and Enjoys long Walks.