multi-tasking

The other day when we were cheerfully debating the idea of multi-tasking and being stimulated by several different things at once, I thought of this study, but didn't want to cite it without the proper resource at hand. Apparently recent scientific studies show that multi-tasking is indeed less effective than being able to focus on one thing at a time. the link to the file is below.

Multi-tasking.

rhythm and film

So, I was watching the "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" trailer (again) because I am a pirate nerd and am obsessed with these films. And I guess this class is really getting into my head, because I noticed how amazing the trailer was due to their scenes being so in sync with the visuals. I noticed how, even during a sword fight, each "click" of the sword matched a note in the music, as did the final blows shown. It was pretty amazing to me, for a "pop" movie, and I have no idea (as I don't know a ton about film, just historical stuff, not technical), if producers had a specific score designed PURELY for the trailer. Or, if they usually don't, but this film might be an exception.

I only have a link; I tried to find it on YouTube, but I only found a really sad version someone filmed with their video camera at the movie theater, so here it is on apple.com/trailers below:

Pirates 2.

syntaxical

Dykan Thomas, "Poem in October"


Form

- 7 stanzas, 10 lines to each stanza
- lyrical: describes a personal feeling as opposed to trying to tell a story like an epic poem (wiki!)

- spiritual themes also a big ideal in lyrical poetry

- doesn't rhyme
- No pattern in terms of syllables (i.e., the same # of syllables per certain lines in the form)

Word Useage

- "Thirtieth year to heaven" focuses not on an earthly life, but suggests that years on earth are merely a countdown to when we arrive to Heaven (death)
- alliteration in first stanza: "mussel pooled and the heron / priested shore"
- Many adjectives and verbs formulated to be of nature or spiritual themes

- "heron priested," "shower of all my days," "water praying," "sea wet church," "spring and summer were blooming," "parables of sunlight"

- Also a tendency to personify nature

- "rain wringing," "fields of infancy"

- Overall, an interweaving of nature, man, and spirit
- Town is personified

- "town arose, town awoke"

- "The town below lay leaved with October blood," "long dead child sang burning / In the sun."

- violence intersected with nature

photos

FYI, the rest of my photgraphies (not quite photography, not quite just pictures, so it's a new term) are below:

http://flickr.com/photos/alicefound

playwriting

Last semester I took a playwriting class with Stephen DiMenna. One of our assignments was to write a five-page one-act based on an Edward Hopper painting, and I chose this one. Below is the one-act I wrote - it's sort of strange, but it was the first thing I thought of when I looked at the painting. It also kind of goes with the creepiness of Hopper's paintings.

***

The set is a typical living room which looks typical but should have some sort of empty or lonely atmosphere. Somewhere on the set should be the words, "Qui si convien lasciare ogne sospetto; ogne viltà convien che qui sia morta."* A girl, Grace, is kneeling on the windowseat, her back to the almost to the audience, and looking earnestly out of a bay window. She is about seventeen. Her sister, Amanda, is older, about 19 or 20, and sitting in a wing-back chair, facing the audience.

Amanda
Just get away from that window. He's not coming.

Grace
He's coming this time. I know he is.

Amanda
He's not, Grace. Please just know that. He's not.

Grace
He is. You'll see. Because this time I readied everything properly. You told me last week he wasn't coming, and I believed you. So the living room went to hell, the bathroom had the toilet with a ring in it . . . It was bad luck. I let you jinx me.

Amanda
I don't think the toilet's ring, present or not, has any large effect on the universe and its happenings. That was gross, by the way. If you're going to clean it, clean it for the two people who live here, not because of some fantasy guest who never shows.

Grace
I did clean it this time.

Amanda
Only because . . Forget it.

[beat]

Grace
[almost whispering]
He's coming this time.

Amanda
I know. I know. You're right, he is.

[long pause]

Amanda
I saw him a few days ago.

Grace
You did not.

Amanda
I did. Only for a second, but I did see him.

[long pause]

Grace
How did he look?

Amanda
Same as always. Only lighter.

Grace
He lost weight?

Amanda
No, you asshole, he just looked . . . less burdened.

Grace
Ahh. Emotionally lighter, then.

Amanda
Jesus Christ, yes, emotionally lighter, Poet.

Grace
I'm glad. He never looks that way . . . You don't think . . .

Amanda
What?

Grace
You don't think that means he's not coming?

Amanda
What would his emotional well-being, light or heavy, have to do with that?

Grace
Just that . . well, he needs us. And you need people to lighten the load. The emotional one. And if it's already lightened for him, emotionally, then . . . Well, then maybe he doesn't need us anymore, so he's not coming.

Amanda
Grace, you fucking moron, he's not coming because he NEVER comes. Not this week, not last week, not three Tuesdays ago, not Saturday a month from now. You're ridiculous.

Grace
[voice breaking]
I'm not. He doesn't need us anymore, so he's not coming, and I wasted my time getting everything ready again.

Amanda
Well, at least we're not living like a bunch of squatters.

[Grace continues crying]

Amanda
Grace? Grace? Come on. How is it any different? It's always the same - whether you cry now or not, it's the same.

Grace
It isn't. Because this time I was ready.

Amanda
For something different to happen. You weren't ready for the same.

Grace
Either way.

Amanda
No. Not either way. It'll be fine. We can't get any worse off than we are now. I mean, what happens because, for the seventh week in a row, he hasn't seen us? How do our lives change from the other seven?

Grace
It's been eight.

Amanda
Even more so, then.

[pause]

Grace
Where did you see him?

Amanda
[stalling]
When?

Grace
When you saw him. Three days ago. That was Wednesday, right? He golfs on Wednesdays with a man named Patrick. Remember? He came to see us with those awful pants on. He wears those awful pants . . . Though I guess they can be in style now . . .

Amanda
I remember the pants. He wasn't wearing them.

Grace
No pants?

Amanda
Well, pants, of course, but not the golf ones. I think he was wearing jeans.

Grace
But where? Where did you see him?

Amanda
Same place as always.

Grace
Why didn't you tell me?! I could've been there!

Amanda
It wasn't a visit, Grace, not like how you want. I think he was just passing through. Maybe to go see someone else.

Grace
So through the window, then.

Amanda
Yes. I saw him through the window.

Grace
Funny. How he's always through there, even if he's just passing through, and not visiting.

Amanda
[outburst]
Why, Grace? Why is it funny? We eat the same thing every day. We wear the same thing, we play the same board game, we even think the same fucking thoughts, and for the past seven, excuse me, eight weeks, we have had the same fucking conversation by this window. And so why would the window itself change? There's no reason. That's what I'm trying to explain to you about him not coming. That it's the same thing as the food, the clothes, the board game, the thoughts. It's just going to turn into one more thing we can expect.

Grace
Its not true.

Amanda
It is. You'll see. Unless waiting by the window is going to be the new routine to add to our day, in which case I will be sorely irritated.

[pause]

Grace
I can't do that. Wait by it. Every day. It's different when you arrive and have your routine, and it hasn't changed since the first day. But to give someone something and take it away . . . that's not right. It just . . It isn't fair. That can't be how it's done here.

Amanda
Well. Maybe we're not where we thought we were.

Grace
[quietly]
How do you mean?

Amanda
I just . . . I'm missing something. I know I can't remember. But. There's something . . [frustrated] I don't know, I just can't stand this!

Grace
It'll be fine, Amanda, it will. We just have to wait.

Amanda
[continuing on, almost to herself, pondering]
So we can't leave. We can change something. We have to. At least to . . . to see all of our options . . .

Grace
What?

Amanda
So we don't leave any stone unturned, so to speak. [snort] That's poetry. We need to see if we're missing anything. Maybe there's something we could have done forever ago that would changed everything. And we've just been too stupid to notice.

Grace
What's your diagnosis, Doctor?

Amanda
Well, Poet . . I want to break that window.

Grace
It'll just fix itself. Like when I tried to hang wash outside instead of in the basement.

Amanda
The other window did, yeah. The inconsequential window. But this one's important. This one has meaning. And maybe . . . maybe the context around it is different.

Grace
Like a metaphor?

Amanda
Yes, Poet, thank you. Like a metaphor. Maybe we need to find a metaphor.

Grace
Maybe.

[long pause]

Amanda
So . . . I want to break it.

Lights fade.

adventures in black and white

This is what I was dealing with last night. Over here on the right, that's the final image. The one below on the left is what I was working with. Obviously, it is not black and white but shades of blue.

Keep in mind that I DETEST editing. My preference is to take a shot, have it developed, and be satisfied just popping it in the scanner. It's not laziness - I just feel like it's cheating if you're sitting there adjusting this, that, and the other. I mean, let's face it: anyone can do that, but not take a great photo the first time. But I succumbed to it because I KNEW if they had developed better that I would've had some good stuff.

The rest of the set is on www.flickr.com/photos/alicefound

ars longa

3 / 24 / 07

Today I was extremely restless, and the weather was pretty decent, and I wanted to get out of the apartment. Trouble was, it was already about 4 p.m., and I knew I wanted to GO somewhere, but what was open then?

Well, the Met was open till 9, so there.

I at first wanted to venture to the Museum of American Folk Art, or the Museum of Natural History, as I hadn't been to one at all and the other, not for at least 5 or 6 years. But they would be closed soon after I got there, and frankly, "pay what you wish" is music to my ears as I'm on a new, determined mission to save money and curb my spending.

I didn't really know what to see, because I felt like I'd seen it all a dozen times, and then realized that I HADN'T seen most of the American Wing. I was shocked I'd missed it all this time, but then again, I'm thoroughly convinced that the Met is a complex labyrinth only traveled by those with Art degrees and an intense amount of patience and/or lack of care as to where they're going.

I expected to stay for an hour or so, and i stayed for almost three. Everything was gorgeous, amazing, etc., all over again. I got to really look at the Byzantine jewelery, something I always passed by. It's at the beginning of the museum, see; I always said I'd look on the way out, and instead I'm too wiped or forget about it when that happens.

Here's why I'm fascinated by those types of artifacts. Okay, so my favorite thing that I discovered today was a fish-shaped stopper. I read the little description, because I thought, "What in the fuck reason is there to spend so much time and effort making an elaborate bottle on a chain?" and it said only that it was probably used to take oils to the baths. And that just made me giggle. Because there's such an elitism in art, in students of art especially, in terms of, "Who cares about Louis Vuitton's latest $2000 bag?" I've had semi-heated fights with people over the importance of fashion and pop culture in general; I can never seem to find someone who feels it's as important to society and history as I do.

The thing is, maybe our newest Louis Vuitton bag (which, yes, I do consider those purses a work of art, goddammit) is like the fish stopper of the Byzantine era. Paris Hilton shows up to the party with the bag; the hot Byzantine celebrity or rich person of the day shows up at the baths with his fish stopper. The bag took a lot of time and artistry to design and to manufacture, with only the best materials, as did the stopper. We scoff at the idea that things like purses, dresses, etc., could ever be important in times of oppression and warfare, but I tend to believe that it's a sign that at least someone is attempting to put real effort and craftsmanship into something as inconsequential as a purse - or something used to carry bath oil. Who knows, maybe some guy on the street saw Mr. Byzantine walking to the bath trying to look casual as he carried his little stopper and snorted, "He thinks he's such hot shit - I'm having one in the shape of an ox made right now. Wait'll he sees THAT."

The interesting and fantastic part about all of this is the fact that, in the end, what is that fish-stopper that cost a million of whatever-the-Byzantine-currency-was placed across the hall from? The shoes, hats, tapestries, and everything-elses of the peasants they may have dismissed. In the end, we are in fact on equal footing in the world, whether it's soon after or long after. Everything we owned and worked for has meaning, and it IS recognized, whether in our life time or not. There is some kind of calmness we should get out of that. Art turns out to be the Great Equalizer.

This next part has nothing to do with the above, BUT it is more in spirit with my actual personality:

A museum scavenger hunt. Seems harmless, right? Actually, kind of fun. I thought so too. Until I encountered about 5 times a group of the most OBNOXIOUS adults EVER doig their own little scavenger hunt throughout the Met. They didn't just "hunt," which connotes stealth and wit, they TROMPED through that museum like Alexander's horses shouting to each other across rooms, "Is it in there?!!!!! We need a SAINT-GO-DANS!"

Anyone who's been in the Met, or hell, any museum, is appreciative of the quiet that befalls most of the rooms. It is quite ridiculous to have it interrupted by people who don't really give a shit about art, but instead are probably attempting to win some lame prize like a tshirt or commemorable watch.

Another insight into quiet: Sir, you and your girlfriend's opinions about whatever recreated room of American furniture we are viewing is not in the LEAST appreciated by myself or anyone else around us. Reading the plaque and then repeating the information does not in the least make you an expert. However, I have to say that your talent at SOMEHOW finding the same room I happen to be in, despite my desperate attempts to get away from you, is admirable. Your intention seemed to be to irritate me all damn night, but fortunately I lost you in the Frank Lloyd Wright room, and thank Christ, because if you'd ruined my viewing one of the few architects I actually knew something about and can recognize on-sight, I would've gotten a spear from the Medieval section and taught you a lesson.

Buttheads + Museums = Barf.