I want to cry.

Want to cry.

Over: The American Landscape at the Tipping Point

(it's a link-- you should click on it)

Why?

Let's do something. Today, try to do one thing that intentionally expresses benevolence to the earth. Leave the car at home: walk, bike. If you're out grocery shopping, buy some local veggies (and avoid all packaged goods), take a military show (wet, turn off water, sud/scrub, rinse), pick up some trash, unplug those devices you aren't using (you'll save a bit of money, too). Or just sit and think about this beautiful planet we live on (because who knows how much longer it'll actually be beautiful for).

I'd love to hear what you do. Please and thanks and pass it on!

Inkspeak!

I'm going to quote Anneliese on this--

"Just a reminder that submissions for InkSpeak are due this MONDAY the 23rd. You can submit pieces in the picnic basket across from the office, or electronically at InkSpeakmag@gmail.com. Directions for submission are on the FH website, under News/Events. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me, Jenn, or Mary. Encourage anyone affiliated with the college-- students, staff, faculty, alumni, anyone-- to submit. Thanks!"

Monday the 23rd, by the way, is today.

For more information on Inkspeak, as well as an online version, click here! and scroll to the bottom of the page.

Please submit!

Concentrations pt.II

My dreams have been commandeered by insane Nordic musicians galvanizing stages across Seattle. Bass riffs storming the marrow of my bones, vocalists just a hairsbreadth from my face and singing so close I can feel the heat and wetness of their sweat, grasping hands with them for just a split second of forever...all these things have happened to me in the past few months, but not recently, and that’s the painful bit. I miss my Finnish bands, the Norsk and Swiss…

I’ve also been thinking about my concentration quite a bit. Some sort of triumvirate of earth, rhythm and words. The stringing-together of words to imitate—and, essentially, create—life; drumming and rhythm as evokers of emotion and energy. Humans and the planet we inhabit inspire me. A muse birthed from the chiseling of earth and nature by human hands. Inspiration driven by decay, the seasons, a mouse, slow supernovas. Stories written about the current suicide mission of homo sapiens and improv on the drum set that emulates the clicking of beetles. These are the emotions and images and thoughts I want to bring to my concentration.

I remember my writing transition from last quarter: I was so adamant that I’d be studying storytelling through creative writing and percussion . And before that, in spring quarter of my freshman year, I was sure I would use Tolkien as the focus of my drumming and writing concentration. I certainly haven’t lost interest in any of these sparks (I’m avidly following the The Hobbit movie blog and recently memorized Tolkien’s Shadow Bride for Poetry and Sound), but what I’ve come to realize is that I should focus on an idea rather than a singular project (such as putting Tolkien’s wildly complex Silmarillion to percussive song…which would still be awesome). I shouldn’t limit myself. I should become widely versed in a focused area of study (such as words, earth and rhythm) and from there, go crazy (I can probably check that last bit off the to-do list). Of course, come spring quarter, I’ll probably have stumbled upon another epiphany. Doubtless it will still involve words, rhythm and earth.

Even so, my plan is to take the concentration seminar next quarter, to expand my self and my passion. Ultimately, in my collegiate afterlife (and perhaps before), I’ll be an internal, self-sustaining cycle, feeding myself with my passion. My food will be my drumming and my writing (literally, if I manage to support myself with them). And at some point, I won’t be waiting for those Nordic musicians to come to me. I will go to them.

Blogging

I ran into my adviser as I left Fairhaven today. I feel like we sometimes have awkward interactions, despite the fact that he's my favorite professor.

"So, you're a blogger now," he said.

"I guess," I answered.

It's good to know that someone is reading this thing.

But seriously, thanks Niall.

Concentrated studies

School has begun to take over. It's not so much that I'm ridiculously busy, because I'm not. It's more just that I look at the work I have for next day of school and it's just so intimidating. Eventually I psych myself up for it and get it done in a reasonable amount of time, but until I do that I'm stuck thinking about how I have to do it - and that is certainly the worst part.

In any case, lately I've been spending time thinking about what I want to concentrate in. Over the past few months I have come to a conclusion, and so this quarter I am taking the Writing Portfolio and Transition conference, which is basicially Fairhaven's equivalent of writing proficiency. It also signifies moving out of exploratory studies and into concentrated studies. My studies have always been pretty concentrated though, as I came into college with a pretty good general idea of what I was interested in.

It's crazy to think that after less than two years of school I already have nearly 100 credits, when you only need 180 to graduate. Over the past week I have declared my majors (Political Science, and a Fairhaven Concentration). Next quarter I plan to take the concentration seminar, and design my concentration and I hardly feel like I've been in college that long.

I guess that's the sign of a good college experience - you hardly realize it's going by. That's easy for me to say right now though, as I sit at home. Hit me up in the middle of a lecture class and I might be telling a different story.

Poetry in the bathroom...

Sleeping nine hours on a school night is luxurious.

And probably not the smartest course of action for studying. Yet, after a point you learn that it’s less detrimental to go to bed at a decent hour and cram in an hour before class than to nod off over those inverted 7 chords. So that’s what I did—slept from 9:30 pm ‘til 6:30 am. But that’s not normal. This, rather, is my normality:

12:00 am-1:00 am (depends on the amount of torture my profs decided to allocate): bed
6:30 am: haul body from bed, eat (all in a groggy haze). If raining, don the clown suit (rain pants, reflective strips and a slightly-shredded-brilliant-orange-reflective-vest to go over my conveniently black rain jacket) and ride bike to school.
8:00 am- 5:00 pm: class/studying/grueling hours in the practice room/pretending I have important stuff to do on the internet (like blogging!) when I really should be doing the aforementioned things…

All my classes have proven themselves worthy of the exponentially diminishing amounts of sleep I'm currently getting. Intriguing discussions about menstruation and the clitoris in my Pregnancy and Childbirth class, instruction on the mind-boggling 7th chord (mind-boggling to me, the percussionist, who’s shamefully been able to avoid those collections of notes that create—I know, this is going to be stunning—melody!) in music theory.
Anything else? Ah, yes, two interesting conversations. One was with my poetry professor. We discussed the intricacies of nursery rhymes while washing our hands in the restroom facilities. The other was during Elements of Style, about how the simple placement of a comma can create two types of panda: benign or nearly-homicidal. Only in Fairhaven, dear readers, only in Fairhaven…


Feedback feeds me, so...don't let me starve?

(and in case anyone's wondering...the inability to make indentations to my paragraphs is really quite a nuisance...anyone have a solution, O computer savvy folk?)

The usefullness of Fairhaven's stairwells

Read poetry in one of Fairhaven’s many stairwells yesterday:

By flat tink
or tin, or thin
copper tong
brass clang
bronze bong*

...........

Where else but in Fairhaven could you sit in a dim and drafty stairwell and recite poetry? Put like that, it sounds dismal, but I honestly love those stairwells; the shadow of rain falling through window , the resonance and echoing acoustics …perfectly atmospheric for reciting poetry focused on sound. Every alliteration and assonance was amplified and accentuated by the stairwell’s hollow depths.

…so maybe I’m dramatizing the atmosphere of Fairhaven’s stairwells, but they served their purpose: a place to read, listen and feel the poetry.

Class began with a cookie. Let me explain—it’s not uncommon for Mary Cornish (an especially excellent poet, person and professor at Fairhaven College) to begin the first day of class by reading about the sweetness of learning. Of course, for any of us especially intelligent college-goers, such things need validation. Thus the cookie.

And with cookie in hand, we embarked upon the study—no, the experience—of Poetry and Sound (the title of the course). Started off with a video by Evelyn Glennie (an amazing solo percussionist) about the importance of listening. Later, we broke into small groups to read poems and discuss their play with sound.

And ever since class finished, I’ve been splashing in puddles, listening to the way my hair-in-the-wind sounds like the rustle of thin metal filaments and so on…after I made it to the house I share with five other girls, about 3.5 miles from campus, I practiced my drum set for two and a half-ish hours, listening to how the vibrations and the sound of the drums spoke, just playing them in weird ways.

It’s this that I love about Fairhaven. I’m not simply going to class, studying, sleeping eatingbreathingexisting during every insipid moment of the day. No. I’m living—my passions intersect with my academics and not in an overburdened, suffocated way. It’s more of a harmony.

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*Bell, by Valerie Worth

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...feedback is always a good way to get me to write more. Of course, if you don't want me to write more, you should still comment and tell me that...