I’ve been doing a lot of work on the blog for ||8ve (The Parallel Octave) which is the project name for the recordings-of-poems chorus group I’ve been running here for the past 2 months. I am going to try to finish it tomorrow, and it’ll be great to share it. I’m very curious to hear what people think of these sound files.
Monthly Archives: May 2010
on roach velocity
Saw THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO tonight. Excellent, although people who don’t like seeing lots of mutilated bodies onscreen should avoid. Also, unnecessary Swedish National Socialists. Really good movie, though. Fantastic acting.
After, with friends, observing slow-moving Baltimore roach saunter across sidewalk, I found myself defending Los Angeles’s superiority yet again, saying, “If we were in LA, that roach would be moving much faster.” Now, that isn’t true. I can think of slow-moving LA roaches: I can even think of one I’ve written into a poem. However, I think that I now have my new poetic theme around which to organize thesis: Ways In Which LA Will Usurp Your City’s Greatness By Winning Battles No One Wants To Win. Best traffic, best roaches, best heat, etc.
Chorus meeting, tomorrow: THE APPARITION
Dear Baltimorean actor/singer/musician collaborators, come lend your voice and musical instruments to a improvised choral rendition of John Donne’s THE APPARITION, tomorrow, 2-3:30 pm, 3032 St. Paul.
The Apparition
When by thy scorne, O murdresse, I am dead,
And that thou thinkst thee free
From all solicitation from mee,
Then shall my ghost come to thy bed,
And thee, fain’d vestall, in worse armes shall see;
Then thy sicke taper will begin to winke,
And he,whose thou art then, being tyr’d before,
Will, if thou stirre, or pinch to wake him, thinke
Thou call’st for more,
And in false sleepe will from thee shrinke,
And then poore Aspen wretch, neglected thou
Bath’d in a cold quicksilver swear wilt lye
A veryer ghost than I;
What I will say, I will not tell thee now,
Lest that preserve thee; and since my love is spent,
I’had rather thou shouldst painfully repent,
Than by my threatenings rest still innocent.
– John Donne
I don’t think I’m allowed to title any more posts on this blog “don’t call it a comeback”
Drove out to Mt. St. Mary’s today, and attended a career interest lunch for Maryland sophomores, which meant I got to spend an hour and a half at a table with seven sixteen-year-olds who were interested in writing, theater, or both. They were running around from one leadership event to the next, and were a bit worn down: the way we ran it was I talked while they ate, and then I ate quickly while they asked questions. I had a great time with them. I hope some of them will email me.
I found it surprisingly inspiring. Telling other people not to give us has a good effect on making you (one) not give up.
After it was over, my friend dropped me off at the art supplies store on North, and I bought colored pencils (Lyra) and markers (Sakura) and the best pencil sharpener ever (Staedtler tub sharpener with a lid, for those of you who sharpen pencils / draw in bed) and spent a couple of hours scribbling. I now think I have the new concept for the ever-shelved Sander Lamori project.
So, hear me out: instead of a first-person narrative (Sander’s blog, Sander’s journal, etc.) I’m thinking of a first-person narrative told by multiple writers, a la Moonstone, in the form of a collective blog put together by a group of art students. This means that I don’t have to make Sander’s personality incorporate all of the visual things I want to do with the project: I just have to invent enough other co-bloggers for him. This is a very attractive idea to me. There can be co-bloggers who tend to supply more of the writing, or others who do more of the visuals.
I’m exhilarated about this, but if I had a nickel for every time I’ve reinvented Sander’s concept platform over the years, I’d have ten years of Sander comics / graphic novels / blog posts.
Also cleaned bathroom.
Commencement
The quad behind the library has so many people in it it looks like a political rally. Graduates, sweating, shielding their faces with massive envelopes. People in mortarboards wandering around Charles. A younger brother, too excited to listen, bounding around the cafe, asking everyone where the vending machines are. He asked me, and then five minutes later, he asked the guards. Older relatives, with swollen feet and nowhere to sit down. I saw a man walk up a set of narrow stairs and back down the same set of narrow stairs. A petulant girl to her family: “I want to stay with the group!” Not going to happen. The point of this is that you have to leave the group. Making my way in to campus, I saw a couple of the usual-suspect graduate students, caught in the flood of families, looking like squirrels at the tops of trees with the water rising, resigned to getting no work done today.
back from NYC
enjoying the Baltimore weather, playing soccer (for the first time ever!) Commencement is tomorrow. I’m working in the library by day, reading–plowing through the enormous Raymond Carver biography–by night, making more recordings on the weekends. Yes, still thinking about choruses. I played some sound files from the recent chorus projects for friends in NYC, and although I liked doing it, I think I need to be more stringent with sound quality in the recordings we make. It’s one thing to document and another to distribute. I want to start making recordings that are so good they need no explanation. This is going to mean learning more or finding someone who knows more.
To the (current) owner of the gunmetal-gray old-school BMW 350i convertible with brown leather interior parked with the top down on St. Paul between 31st and 32nd
This is just to say
that I am going to steal your car after I get off work
and I am sorry for the inconvenience it will cause you
but not for the action.
You know it’s going to be a good weekend
when you wake up with the Norton staring at you, opened to “Oh, she was perfect past all parallel…” There could be worse things. I read “Church-Going” last night before going to sleep, and for some reason, it sent me wandering over to Byron. Something about the clippedness of it. Maybe I’m finally going to make it through Don Juan. Maybe Larkin has some Byron in him. I don’t know.
Today, going on a morning bagel run–then the composer/lyricist group is meeting at noon, for the last time this semester–then a liquor/party supplies run–then the Interdepartmental Flasker is happening this evening, a co-party between the graduate students of the English and Writing Seminars departments. It is definitely the end of the semester. It is definitely also summer: yesterday was the first uncomfortably muggy and humid day. The sky, right now, out my window, is unbrokenly blue and hot-looking.
I am furniture-sitting a friend’s comfortable, overstuffed striped armchair for the year, and its presence in my room makes me feel like I am an adult. Sure, I don’t own it, but it’s going to be around for awhile. Can’t say fairer, etc.
Dara Weinberg 