The 80th Academy Awards were like the 4th of July. You hear fireworks, and think perhaps to go to the window, but on second thought decide to keep on sitting on the couch. You’ve seen fireworks, but at this point … Read More
So I was cold lounging with my niece in Seattle, just sitting, watching Dora the Explorer and shooting the shit. My niece is nearly a year old, so her opinions are not quite as developed or polished as they could be, but she’s got some thoughts and a taste for the higher things.
I can’t say I’m anything to be anyone to be saying a thing about it, but I’s heard it enough, I have, as much as any. But it was, gah, it was over yonder ways near Bristhlewaight or Skinnamarok or … Read More
One of my primary introductions to the Arts, and more specifically the Performing Arts, was through the little-known genre of Modern Dance called “Site-Specific Dance-Poetry Fusion.” I have been taken with this unique blend of spoken and written words and dance since I was a child, and have done much reading about it, including the seminal works Poetry, and also Dance by Klaus Fuchten and Movement through Word in a Particular Place by the legendary Mary Timrock. Oh god, I’m lying!
Last month, senior music major Steve Eaton presented his thesis composition. The performance was broken into two sections. In the first, the audience sat in typical fashion, facing the musicians as they played. The last piece of the first section was two minutes long. The song consisted of one chord, played once and sustained over the duration of the piece. The movement of the song was all in the flux and change of the chord as the wavelengths gradually distended, warped, and eventually faded.
My favorite movies are always about dreams. As are my favorite books. In my mind, the standard by which all artistic output should be weighed is how successfully the creative mind has tapped into his or her dream-world, and how … Read More
The President of Italy and his three friends, a Duke, a Magistrate and a Bishop, sit at the head of a table surrounded by teenage SS officers, a few older women, and about twenty young boys and girls. Some of the youths are dressed in suits and dresses, others in their underwear, while still others sit naked. A nude girl emerges from the kitchen with a large tray of steaming shit…
~and~
There is a neighborhood on the outskirts of a city with a lousy bar and grimy brick buildings and orange lamps in the alleys. There are towns where in the deep hours of night cars prowl the streets full of dumb menace. Vague criminals and edgy losers grope at women dressed in cheap finery and the sex is drunken and ugly and brief…
Cinema O.K., so I’m a bit of a film snob. I’ll just put it out there; it’s not as if my pretension is intentional as I, say, swirl my martini in my East Village loft and carry on sotto voce … Read More
If one is to stand in opposition to the middling masquerade that is Princeton culture, to scowl openly at every meaty guffaw or celebratory chant, then one would hope to rest confidently on a wealth of personal depth. It is … Read More
On the eve of World War I, an aged Alice checks into a Swiss hotel, carrying with her a large looking glass. Next door, Wendy, still reminiscing over Peter Pan, lies side by side with her dry, buttoned-up husband. Later … Read More
It would seem the mad dash to fill the Nass’s literary issue might best warrant a clandestine mafia negotiation; by this logic, the editors (in fedoras and spats, sure, and affecting a Sicilian shtick) would send out coercive e-mails to … Read More