Thursday, October 31, 2002

He said, "Someone asked me to go over Brancusi again, since they were apparently intrigued."

Well, that's not exactly true; I asked him if we'd be going back over Brancusi because he had rushed to finish the information before the midterm. I am not intrigued by Brancusi, but rather just quite quite admiring. But then, maybe he wasn't referring to me at all.

So he showed the first slide..."Bird." A very polished and smoothed bird-shape in bronze. Then another in marble with fewer distinguishing features of the bird. Lastly, a bronze missile, thrusting hopefully upward in an exultant soar. We'd seen them all before. A week earlier, actually, on that very projector screen. I'd seen them in person in the museum. But this time, the medium interested me. Not the bronze or the marble, but the slide.

Yes, I looked carefully at the bronze "Bird" and the bronze "Bird in Space." The forms were clear, as were Brancusi's famous pedestals, but what I saw was the photographer. Yes...careful scrutiny of the slides revealed to me the distorted, bronzed reflection of the taker of the slide images. Of course not even the gender of the photographer could be discerned, but there was the essence of that person...taken by the sculpture, warped slightly, and sent back into their own lens.

Wednesday, October 30, 2002

There was a time last winter when I was introduced to Dar Williams. Let's just say that we wound up playing her album Out There Live upwards of fifty consecutive times. Do you know how long that takes? A week or two. So...thanks, Dar, for shaping my musical tastes, my freshman year of college, and probably my mind. That's it. :)

Tuesday, October 29, 2002

The world is supposedly round. Cosmologists suppose that the universe, however, is flat and that it has edges somewhere. I, personally believe that my universe is flat. Not flat as in "weary, stale, flat and unprofitable" but simply that all the edges don't come back to the same place. But I don't really know what I mean by that. I suppose only that some things in my life are totally unrelated, and that I could never imagine the shape of my world to be a nice round bubble. But it has to do with boundaries, too. There are boundaries, but they are not enforced, I only have yet to pioneer past them.

In figuring the theoretical shape of the universe, there's a figure called critical density. The density of the universe would of course be the mass of the universe divided by the volume of the universe. If the actual density of the universe is above this 'critical density,' the universe is shaped like a sphere and will one day cease to expand and gravity will cause it to collapse in on itself. If the density of the universe is less than critical, the universe is shaped as an infinite, three-dimensional hyperbola and will eventually grow to be so large that every particle of mass in the universe will be so far from every other particle of mass in the univserse that everything would basically freeze and disintegrate. If, however, the density of the universe is the critical density, the universe is a flat plane and will continue to expand forever, but at an inifinitely decreasing rate.

My universe works the exact same way. So what I want is a marginally bounded universe, except that the matter in it needs to change shape every now and then. The density should probably remain pretty constant, though. Yep.

Sunday, October 27, 2002

Paraphrased:

"I'm not going to keep IMing you if you're just going to ignore me."
"I'm not ignoring you!"
"Well it feels as if I'm typing just to see the style of my own font."

Friday, October 25, 2002

I really didn't mean to go this long without posting. What have I been doing? I don't know. All I can remember doing this week is waiting for it to be Friday, so that we'd have Treblemakers rehearsal. We didn't do my song, unfortunately, as I had thought we might. Instead we worked on, Like a Prayer, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Walkin on Broken Glass, and Possessions. All of which are pretty damn fun songs to sing. Really, all the songs we have are pretty great. Sweet Dreams is the only song we've worked on at all that we didn't practice today, I think. I can't wait til we get to my song. Peter devised some really sadistic instrumental lines that I won't have to learn because I get to sing lead. Wohoo! So, that's me just going on and on about how much I like singing obscure bits of pop music.

Am I a waste of virtual space, yet?

Tuesday, October 22, 2002

Despite the fact that I remember looking up the url previously, I seem not to have mentioned my recent attempts at arranging the Sophie B Hawkins song "As I Lay Me Down." Or if I did mention them, I didn't go into specifics. Well, here I sit...I've been reading music since I was...oh six or seven, and yet I really know nothing about music theory. Some term soon, I will get into Music Theory I, but that day has not yet come.

I muddle through...I look up the guitar chords on OLGA which are at correct intervals, but in the wrong key, fix the key with a capo on the third fret, and proceed with the business of giving everyone notes. How is this done? Well, I play the right chord on the guitar, then I look at each string. EADGBE. Every Aardvark Does Good Before Evil. Yep...that string there is Good. No fingers. The note is a G...in respect to the capo. Ok, now this finger...Ok, Before..but on the third fret...ok, open is B, then C, then C#, then D. Ok, D. ect. Yep. That tedious. Fortunately, much of the song is the same three chords...which I now have written out on paper as little bubbles on staves. So I give out notes to the supporting lines, then play each line back to see if the phrase makes sense. If not, then I shuffle notes around so that all the same ones are there, but that each person sings something a little more logical. Ok. There are even repeated sections that I could copy and paste in, mostly. I pickily transcribe the melodic line. Add in the parts that don't come in until after the chorus. After the second verse. Ok...Bridge. This is where it gets scary. What to do...there's a big key change. Ok, well I'll start with writing out the melody. Alright...I now suspect that the bridge is in Ab or Db. Ok, do the bass line. Sounds awful with the melody, but I know it's right. I think the bridge is in Db. Pick out the top supporting line. Hm. Alright. No help there...

It stares at me...a wall, blank, uncaring. There are footholds in it, but I don't know where to begin looking. Someone has a map of how this damn thing works, and I just need to figure out who it is.

Monday, October 21, 2002

I've developed a sudden interest in mutual understanding. So I pose this question to my oh-so-extensive readership: What would you like me to talk about? Is there anything you'd like to know about me?
I want to know what you're interested in, and I'm open to satisfying those informational curiosities. So...hit me with whatever you've got. :)

Sunday, October 20, 2002

To do:
Shoot two more rolls of 'glow time' light
Contact print both rolls
Shoot one roll of 'weather'
Shoot one roll of 'available light' in strange places
Print one print of each of the two immediately above rolls
Read for all four of my classes
Practice awful spirituals for choir
Visit a museum or gallery to start on my art history paper
Study for midterms?

Time actually spent:
Building wings
Sleeping
Baking and painting cookies
Eating
Spending obscene amounts of my mother's money at downscale department stores
Practicing Treblemaker's music
Clicking through the Nameless Forest

I am so screwed.

Friday, October 18, 2002

Sometimes I just have to wonder what I'm getting myself into.

Wednesday, October 16, 2002

Doubt. A relatively unfamiliar sensation. There are many metaphors that deal with doubt:

the seed of doubt
a gnawing doubt
etc.

One of these describes doubt as a plant, the other implies an animal. I guess plants could gnaw, but I think a metaphor that strong deserves a better emotion than doubt. So, if doubt were a plant, I'm having a lot of trouble picturing it being something green and stemmy like a bean plant. I picture it as more of an eroding force like a fungus, but fungi don't have seeds, so that's out. I guess doubt might be a dandelion (you can get rid of it but it will keep coming back), but it seems incongruous, then, that the seed of doubt would be pretty and floaty.

Doubt as an animal...now that I can go with. The gnawing refers, I suppose, to that clenching in your gut, that turning over and over. Gnawing also seems to me like the sort of thing that is done with little success. By that I mean simply that something being gnawed is not being bitten in half...no, no, that would be too quick to be doubt. The discomfort would be over far too soon. Doubt has blunt little teeth that cause a pressing sort of pain rather than cutting. It bruises. On the other hand, I think it would well suit doubt to have some sort of acidic saliva with which to coat the inside of your stomach. Its long slimy tongue could just swab your innards with this corrosive stuff to cause something like heartburn but a little milder. Longer lasting, of course, and doing lots of permanent damage. A thick layer of scar tissue would grow to cover all sensitive spots if the little demon ever left you alone long enough for you to heal.

feeling today--doubtful.

Tuesday, October 15, 2002

I don't know what made me click through my sidebar to her, today, but Martha, welcome back. Also...striking...today is Kat. Don't blame me, I didn't feed her the pizza before bed. Or whatever it was she ate.

I was up before dawn yesterday to get sunrise pictures for my color photo class...I decided that I quite love mornings. Still, silent, and by the way, rushing to find camera batteries before the orange sunrise light was gone. Later in the day I had a girl-doctor appointment. My friend Sarah asked how my day was and I said to her, "Trust me when I tell you that you don't want to know about the horrible injustices that were visited upon my flesh, today." She said she'd take my word for it.

In other news, happy birthday to Mom and Grandpa. I got my mom a coffeemaker yesterday because I knew she wouldn't spend the money on herself. That, according to Peter, is what gifts are all about. Buying people the things they want but wouldn't buy for themselves. It seems to make sense, unlike some of his other ideas, but that's neither here nor there. Ok, so it is definitely there, but that's not here, and that's the point.

Wednesday, October 09, 2002

There were pink roses.

Pink roses on the left, yellow roses on the right side of the path, climbing the wrought iron arch. My footsteps were muffled by the soft, damp ground, and the light was diffused and silver. Fences through the garden were adorned with their customary riot of violet morning glories, despite the afternoon hour. Above me, trees bent their long branches down towards the little trail, dangling swollen green seed pods in a most tempting fashion, and the garden was peacefully still. I had grown accustomed to the large bed of neon orange impatiens, and the red and fuschia nasturtiums (nasturtia?) had become increasingly familiar, but today I noticed other things. Not only the roses which had never before been evident at the entrance to the garden, but also daisies, white and yellow, red and peach roses near the northeastern corner, and most surprisingly, a tall cone of small pink flowers with red veining in their petals. These, I think are some type of laurel, but I am not sure. The one peach rosebud I see every day has always enticed me, but today I wanted to take a daisy home with me. There are so many, I thought. Who could miss just one? But if it were my garden, I know I would.

Tuesday, October 08, 2002

I've never really noticed the day when spring turns into summer or when autumn turns to winter, but winter to spring and summer to autumn do always call my attention.

I remember the onset of spring, and how I had begun writing here at the tail end of February. As I watched the pale winter fade just a bit more into green and pinks, every blowing breeze would prompt me to narrate. Every fall off of a bed meant for one but filled by two was fodder for this new outlet for text.

I now go at least a day or two between posts, usually. This isn't because I have less to say, or that I want to share it less. It's more just that, these days, I'd rather spend my thoughts appreciating what I've got than figuring out what I have to say about it.

Monday, October 07, 2002

So we made it! Amy and I are now both official performing members of the Drexel Treblemakers acapella group. *pats herself on the back profusely and then squeals with delight*

yep.

Sunday, October 06, 2002

Why is it that secret meetings are usually so much more inspiring than official ones?

Tonight we had a meeting for Drexel Players to discuss their ideas for the year...away from the spirit-quelching glares of our official advisor. And yes, we did get a lot done. We decided to make the studio shows stronger...to try to make them as strong as the mainstage productions. We decided that we have, between us all, enough power to push those shows through, if we work together, agree to tech and build for student-run shows. We began building a propaganda...I mean...I mean promotional machine, and we decided to make the green room a more comfortable place for the players...a lounge, almost, but that could still function as a warm-up and even rehearsal room. This last part, really, holds the bit that I am the most interested in working on. Of course, I want the studio and student-run shows to be huge, that'd be great, but what I personally can realistically contribute is a library-building effort. What I want to do is to stock the bookshelves of the green room with books of plays...drama...theater...and possibly books on acting or the like. Things that are obviously of interest to us. You see, boredom occurs in the green room, sometimes. We wait there. Books of plays will not only provide education and entertainment for us while we wait, but they will hopefully give us ideas...ideas for plays that we want to perform. I plan to ask for maybe fifty dollars, when we get our hands on funds for bettering the green room, and buy as many books as I can, often for about a dollar on Ebay. I will put them all in the green room, and I will then attempt to read them all. Soon, the green room will have campus network internet access. I think it should also have some basic school supplies that no one will find worth swiping. Cheap pens and pencils, paper, paperclips and the like. It should also be green, and have just a bit more atmosphere. A few more (or just more comfortable) pieces of furniture.

I'm such a homebody...always wanting to redecorate.

Saturday, October 05, 2002

For three hours, we sat in semi-darkness. No computer, no stereo, no electric teapot. For a good part of that time, I paced my room with Peter's portable cd player glued to my head. I picked a disc to warm up to but it caught my fancy. I painted my fingernails and toenails. I ran through some of the tracks over and over, stretching my voice, pushing it. There came a point at which I knew I'd have to stop or get overly nervous, and so I stopped.

I showered by the light of five tealight candles, since the other three refused to light. Sprayed my hair in all its little braids and waited for it to dry. Practiced some more. At that point, the song that I had chosen two weeks ago to use for my audition had become doubtful. I could certainly sing it well when I was calm, but could I when I was nervous? Would it be too boring and slow? It was a question between the comfort of two weeks rehearsal versus the pleasures of spontaneity and challenge. I took my hair out of the braids and let all the crinkles down around my face. Decided against that, since it was very flat at my scalp. Pulled it all up into a ponytail. Left the house not knowing what I was going to sing for auditions.

Got to auditions now knowing what I was going to sing for auditions. I whispered conspiratorily to one of the girls, "I don't know what I'm going to sing." She told me I had to decide before I got up in front of the room to sing. She lied.

"Hi, my name's Tam, I'm a photo major.....I guess I'm a sophomore...what am I going to sing? Hmmm........um......well...." I have no idea what was really going through my mind. I suppose just that I knew I was nervous enough that I could hit the high notes. "...I guess I'm going to sing "Heartbreaker" by Pat Benatar" (insert Peter having a cow because I'm not singing what he expected me to sing)

So, I don't know if it was because of the size of the audience or my lack of preparation, the components of the audience, or just my hopping around the room and dorking out during my solo audition, but last night was the first vocal audition that I haven't choked on. By all accounts, I did well and was on pitch and cute. It looks like I have a lot of things going for me, and the audition was totally fun. The list goes up Monday morning. Wish me luck.

Wednesday, October 02, 2002

On the subway...again. I rode alone a few times. In and out of Chinatown, shooting film and picking it up at the lab...and later with company. Kat talked, as we rode the train, of an experiment done with NYU students in which they asked strangers on the subway to give up their seats. On our way east, a girl sitting behind us insisted on giving up her seat to a middle-aged woman.

Going home, a very cute boy suggested that I take his seat, and he simply wouldn't take no for an answer.

I got on the subway and watched the litter on the platform through the window. As we pulled away, it all stayed behind except for one reflected piece...just next to my foot.