December: A Big, Big Blast of Science Fiction

My immediate family is all currently in the state of Indiana to celebrate Thanksgiving, and yes, we mean the state.  Indiana, PA is a lovely town, but it is not the only Indiana out there.  (I’m looking at you, Huntingdonians).  Even though four of us currently live in Pennsylvania, the one of us who lives here has the least flexible schedule, so this is the second time that we’ve decided to bring Thanksgiving to her.  You guessed it, we’re at my older sister Kaleigh’s place.

I did not take this picture. We drove through a snowstorm to get here and it was the middle of the night.

So, since I’m not exactly working right now, and since on average, I see Kaleigh twice a year, and since I am always concerned that she might be lonely on her lake island*, we’ve decided that I’m going to crash here until Christmas.  So I’ll be in Indiana for the next twentyish days!

Recall that the reason we’re here in the first place is that Kaleigh has the least flexible schedule of us all.  It’s because she’s a high school chemistry teacher, and we control the lives of high schoolers to an absurd degree between the end of August and the beginning of June in this country.  So, even though I’m finally gonna get to spend some time in the physical presence of my sister, there will probably be very little hanging out happening.

And since there’s not going to be too much to do for my own schooling until January, I’ve decided to dedicate the month of December to reading some good science fiction and to teaching myself part two of the tai chi long form.  If you were in my senior seminar class at Nyack last spring, you might recognize a handful of titles from that course.  I pinky promise that it’s not that I didn’t try to read them all when I was supposed to read them (I’ve read parts of all of them from that class).  These are just the ones that I couldn’t finish/couldn’t get into, and now that I have time and leisure, I want to give them another shot.

Here’s what I brought to read, including the non-SF:

• Bohemian Girl – 2011 – Terese Svoboda (Finished this already! Check!)
• Dune – 1965 – Frank Herbert (Currently 135 pages in)
• The Dispossessed – 1974 – Ursula K. Le Guin
• Perdido Street Station – 2000 – China Miéville
• Ringworld – 1970 – Larry Niven
• The Dazzle of Day -1998 – Molly Gloss
• The Handmaid’s Tale – 1998 – Margaret Atwood
• When Fox is a Thousand – 2004 – Larissa Lai
• The Difference Engine – 1990 – William Gibson & Bruce Sterling
• Jesus Feminist – 2013 – Sarah Bessey & Rachel Held Evans
• The Convalescent – 2009 – Jessica Anthony
• Their Eyes Were Watching God – 1937 – Zora Neale Hurston
• The Bluest Eye – 1970 – Toni Morrison
• Gilead – 2004 – Marilynne Robinson
• You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know – 2010 – Heather Sellers
• Pirate Talk, or Mermalade! – 2010 – Terese Svoboda

Again, not all of these books are SF, and I don’t expect to be able to read them all, or in that order necessarily.  BUT this is what I am planning on doing for the next month!  Hopefully I can find a way to keep you in the loop on how the reading is going.

Right now, for example, I am reading Dune.  Dune is often considered to be a master work in science fiction world building, and my friend Nick H. is going to be referring to this book in his seminar during the coming January residency in Tampa.  Dune was also on the syllabus for my senior seminar class back in Nyack, and I tried so hard to get into it then, but I couldn’t handle it.  We hit a few really intense books in a row, and by Dune, I was kind of wiped out.  Plus, the book I have is trade paperback sized, so it’s roughly 1000 pages long.  I read the first couple of chapters and gave up.  I also had this preconceived notion that I wouldn’t like it, so I didn’t even give it an honest shot (to be honest).

Harkonnens and sandworms and Fremen, oh my!

Now that I’m reading Dune for real, I so far have only two three four real opinions.  First, I get annoyed by all of the “a million deaths are not enough for Yueh!” talk, partially because I got it already and partially because of Yue in Avatar being the moon.  Second, I really really like it (complete surprise to me).  Third, although I really like it, I can’t read more than three chapters (about 30 pages) at a time.  Fourth, why on Earth (or Caladan or Arrakis) would you come up with some great names (Leto, Yueh, Thufir) and then name your two main characters Paul and Jessica????  Seriously.  No offense to the Pauls and the Jessicas out there, but the first time I tried to read this book, those names threw me out of it, and they still do, especially Jessica.  Gah.

And I also read Bohemian Girl by Terese Svoboda, who has previously been on staff at UT and is an absolute doll.  Bohemian Girl is a lovely book about a girl who is sort of named Harriet who is sort of cousins with a boy that she raises in her sort of uncle’s general store.  Her name’s not really Harriet, the boy’s not really her cousin, and the uncle’s not really her uncle (but he’s dead), so nobody has to know.  Harriet’s father lost her in a bet when she was a tween, and she spends young adult life getting into scrapes and getting out of them, and meeting people and taking care of them, and she never stops looking for her real father.  This book is historical fiction at its finest.  Svoboda captures the harsh realities of life along the border between North and South in the years encompassing the Civil War and the cruel fate of the Native American people on the border of East and West.  But “Harriet” has enough levity to lift even a popped balloon.  This one is awesome for history buffs and historical fiction fans alike because of its compelling story line and its cultural accuracy.  Go read it.  Trust me.

Ps. she’s Bohemian like from Bohemia. Get that Rent song out of your head.

*I have these concerns for my sister because she is the Jane to my Lizzie, even though character-wise, she’s pretty solidly like Lizzie Bennet.  In fact, of the three of us, none my sisters nor I are like Jane.  We all fall in the character continuum between Lizzie and Lydia.  Kaleigh is pretty much spot-on Lizzie, and I think I gear more Lizzie and Kari gears more Lydia, though we’re both kind of in the middle between them.  I guess we grew up with too much snark and sass for any of us to come out like Jane.  Or maybe Kaleigh is more Charlotte and Kari is more Caroline and I’m more Maria Lu or Mary (because everyone forgets that I exist)?  You know, I’m Kitty Bennet.  I would win in a fight against Anny-kins.

Pictures from Kansas! A.k.a. Pictures of Nyah, The Most Adorable Infant in the World.

I’m not going to lie to you; I took a three-week long vacation from Huntingdon, during which I took approximately twenty pictures, half of which are on my phone, and 80% of which are pictures of my friend Kimmy and her eight month old daughter, Nyah.  Also a couple of really blurry/badly lit pictures of Ursula K. Le Guin.  BUT — I did promise to post some photos, and here they are!  Now everyone who stops by can see the beauty that is Nyah Mercy*!

Nyah with Kimmy’s phone in Fogo de Chão, located in the Kansas City Plaza. Yes, we dared to do an expensive lunch.

Kimmy and I have been friends for what honestly feels like forever, but really only dates back to June 2006.  We went to the Amazon together with a big, awesome team of people that I was pretty good about keeping in touch with until like my sophomore year of college.

Nyah likes spoons. Kimmy likes head scarves.

Yes, indeed, we have been friends for over seven years!  That means we were both shrimpy high schoolers when we met!  Yay for shrimpy high schoolers!  But we lived in two different states, even two different time zones.  How would we ever make a friendship work?!?!?!  I’ll tell you how.  Voicemails.

Nyah likes cameras almost as much as she likes iPhones.

Despite having been solid friends for nearly seven and a half years, if you add up all of the time we’ve been around each other in person, it’s barely over seven and a half weeks.  Which is heinous and can hopefully be remedied at some point in our lives.  She has been to Huntingdon once, and I have been to Kansas City twice since she moved there (and I have no experience of her Milwauke-an roots).

Nyah inherited that sweater from Kimmy’s own infancy.

So, I only have one more picture of Nyah and Kimmy from my camera, but it’s almost identical to the first one.  I only took my camera out on those two days, because while I don’t suck at taking photos in the artistic sense, I suck at taking photos in the literal sense.  I get too wrapped up living life, and most of the pictures I’ve taken over the past few years have all been of food.  But! now you get to put a face to Kimmy’s name, and Nyah’s as well, and you get to know that Kimmy is probably the best friend a person could ever ask for.  I love her to pieces.

Here’s  my crummy pictures of the decidedly not crummy Worlds Beyond World Symposium in Eugene, Oregon:

Can you see them? They’re a bunch of Hugo/Nebula/Tiptree winners.

The conference was awesome!  And if I still weren’t in squee mode over Nyah, I would tell you more about it.  Perhaps another time, alas.  In fact, definitely another time, because I’m just not prepared for theorizing right now.

Of my two Le Guin shots, this one is clearer. Blame the camera/the lighting/the bald guy in the corner/the wild heart.

*Last name excluded, but Mercy is a nifty middle name that I would not have thought of myself. I do have permission from the mother of Nyah (that would be Kimmy) to post these photos of the two of them.  And isn’t she just the most beautiful child you have ever seen??????  She has two teeth and can stand and she says dada and mama, and she likes to “dance,” and she’s just so wonderful and I can’t wait ’til she grows up, because Aunt Maggie is going to spoil her silly.  Seriously, I love this little girl!!  Kimmy’s progeny, for the win.

MFA? MF, Hey.

(Warning: This is Parenthetical-Remark Heavy) (It’s almost as if I’ve forgotten how to write a blog post) (yeah)

Hello, hello, hello, interwebs!  I write to you from the lovely Tampa, Florida (which I mentally pronounce FLAH-ri-duh like a Bostonian.  Thanks, Grandma), where I am about to begin my first residency with the University of Tampa Low-Res MFA in Creative Writing!  Woot!

It has been a long day of travel.  I woke up at 3 a.m., ran into my sister who was going to bed, and showered in the dark (which I do, on occasions when I am still tired, in honor of Things Not Seen by Andrew Clements).  My wonderful father and I left at 4 a.m. on a long, roller coaster-esque drive to Dulles in Washington, D.C., stopping at five for Sheetz schmuffins.  My flight left at 8:08 and landed at 10.  I took a shuttle to my hotel, puttered around for a little bit, and fell asleep at about one until about four.  At 5:3o, I was wandering the blocks around my hotel deciding where I could eat (having gone over 12 hours without food), when I met another MFA student who was also wandering around.

Instead of me eating then, we both went back to the hotel, where she posted an open invitation to others in the program to come out to eat, meet in the lobby at 6:30.  So, come 6:30, six of us went for Thai food.  Because Thai food is delicious.

Now — what you really care about:  Over the next ten days, I will be in workshops and seminars all day long.  Literally.  We start at 9 a.m. and end at 8:30 p.m., according to the schedule.  I’m looking forward most to the following seminars (in no particular order):

Piecing a Story out of Sketches and Ideas… with Josip Novakovich

How to Design and Teach a Class in Poetry or Fiction with Heather Sellers

Screen Grab: Using Movie Conventions to Create Unconventional Narratives with John Capouya

Anthology with Denis Johnson

A Workshop with an Agent with Chris Parris-Lamb

Collaborative Place-Based Storytelling and Fiction-Enhanced Reality with Jeff Parker

At least one of these overlaps with something else that I may be required to do instead, but I’m hoping to attend all of these seminars, and then some.  I’m also really looking forward to my workshop group with none other than Jeff Parker (from DISQUIET, for you long-term followers of my blog) and five other talented prose writers (I know they’re talented because I did my homework and read their stuff).

Argentina! Yeah!

Guess what, world?!  I’m in Argentina!

If you’re not super familiar with my life, then I should let you know that I lived in Argentina, in the province of Buenos Aires, in the city of 9 de Julio, for almost exactly one year while I was in high school.  I was a Rotary student (best choice ever!).   Also, for those of you not super familiar with my life, you should know that it was both the best and the worst experience of my life.  Very formative.  Obvio.

So I left the US from JFK on the 1st, and it was the roughest series of travel luck (or lack) of my life.  First, TAM at JFK couldn’t find my second flight, then I had to pay this crazy impuesto.  Then, I missed my second flight.  When I finally got to Ezeiza, it took 40 minutes to find my bag.  Out of the maybe baker’s dozen people that I approached for help, only two helped me at all.  What I get out of this:

1) São Paulo GRU airport is a mess, both physically and in its management.

2) With numbers, I can be a little dyslexic.

3) Brazilian Portuguese doesn’t make sense and sounds weird.

4) Whenever you have a serious problem in an airport, start crying.  It helps.

Anyway, more importantly, I arrived in Argentina will all my body parts and all my cash intact!  And my very wonderful best friend Maria Pais was there at Ezeiza waiting for me!  Woohoo!!

Can I just tell the internet how much I love this girl?  She’s wonderful.  Es única.  Mery has been a friend since I started in her class at school in 9 de Julio (Cs. Nat.) and has worked to keep in touch with me more than any other friend I’ve ever had.  When we became friends, we literally could not speak in the same language, but through patience, body language and the Beatles, we got along swimmingly.  Now, she’s just recently received her degree to teach English for elementary and middle school students, and in one year, she’ll have a second degree to teach high school ESL.  You all have no idea.  She speaks such good English.  It’s impresionante, especially since when we met in 2007, she didn’t speak a word of English at all.

So I’ve been mostly hanging out with Mery, her boyfriend Ramiro, and mate.  Why don’t I have friends in the US who drink mate?  I love mate.  My friend Laura, who lived in 9 de Julio through Rotary during the same year as me, once said that mate tastes like friendship.  So glad for the mate.

And the empanadas.  And the milanesa.  And the Argentine pizza.

Pizza in the US is disgusting.  It’s got waaaay too much sauce, too much grease, not enough cheese.  Pizza in Argentina is perfect.  I never eat pizza in the US; it’s become an inside joke with my friends.  But in Argentina, si.

Mery threw a surprise party for me!!

She told me that we were going to a birthday party for Ramiro’s uncle, but when we got to the quinta, she honked the horn of the car, and as we got out, the people inside started playing “You Make Loving Fun” (Fleetwood Mac, Rumours, 1977) on the computer.  We got inside, and there was a giant banner in the colors of the Argentine flag that said “Welcome to Argentina!  We love you!” (or something like that; I need to find it and take a picture).  I saw two of my classmates from Cs. Nat., and a bunch of Mery and Rami’s friends.  We had a great time talking, laughing, listening to a bunch of music that I love.  Mery’s family came, and some more of my friends from school arrived.  A big group of people fell in love with a karaoke program that Rami had on his computer, and I went with my former classmates outside to catch up after years.  Some of them hadn’t seen each other in almost as long as I had seen them.

The girls from school stayed with me and Mery until after 4:00 in the morning catching up, and it was buenisssssima.  Mery and I stayed the rest of the night and the next day in the quinta, and I slept until 2:30 in the afternoon.  We listened to music and laid out in the sun for a while, until her family and Rami’s family both came out to the quinta to drink mate and hang out.  I said to Mery at one point, “I could stay here for forever.”  Of course, there are some people that I would want here, too (I’m looking at you, Arturo Barrezueta).

Speaking to of Arturo, can I tell the internet how much I love my boyfriend?  Well, I love him a lot a lot a lot, and we’ve been talking through Skype while I’m here.  Via Skype, he’s met Mery, Ramiro and Mery’s grandmother.  Also via Skype, Mery met Art’s father.  It’s wonderful.  Everyone here really loves that I have a Latino boyfriend who speaks Spanish so well.

I’ll post at least once more before I leave, and it’ll be full of wonderful pictures!

A Sandy Storm!

With my minimal, limited internet access thanks to the wonderful Arturo B. and the Nanuet Barnes and Noble, I have just enough time right now to post some photos of the post-hurricane Sandy Nyack College Rockland Campus.

Between Simpson Hall and Pardington Hall

 

Sky Island Lodge

 

The Bubble

 

The path leaving Boon

 

The Hub (aka Betty Olsen House)

 

Power lines down outside of Simpson Hall

 

So, that’s what campus looked like yesterday (Tuesday) after the hurricane blasted through Rockland County.

Public Computers, Gloria Steinem, and the 19th Century

Oh, Blog, oh, Blog, oh bloggy-blog Blog!  I’ve missed you!  I can’t quite recall the last time I’ve posted to you, oh Blog of my blogs.  I must fill you in on what’s been going down in my life.  I think Greenday got it wrong when they asked to sleep through September; October’s the month to punch through.

First, I have been without functioning computer for over a week and a half now.  That means I am on Public Computers.  Where do I find these computers?  Mostly the library, where the whole place is decked out with about two dozen or so Mac desktops.  As a Macbook Pro user (2009, hence the computer difficulties, since a bunch of people are having problems), I am happiest on the library’s Macs (though still downtrodden).  I’m also using the PC lab in Boon and the Macs in the fourth floor lounge of Simpson Hall.  Because I traditionally get my best work done in the morning, I’ve been waking up between 6:00 and 6:30 a.m. just so that I can shower and get to the library when it opens and start working on my homework.  Of course, I haven’t been managing to get to sleep two hours earlier, so I’ve been running short on sleep this week.  It is actually exceedingly difficult to get homework done when you can’t do any of it in your room.  The library and the lab both close, and sometimes all of the computers will be taken and you can’t do anything anyway.  Plus, since I no longer have access to my music library and Spotify account, I am without my own tunes.  There is nothing like destressing alone in my room to When the Pawn… or Mirage, but alas.  I am without my music.

So I guess what I’m saying is that I didn’t just crawl into a wifi-less hole and shelter up for winter.  And I have proof!

These past two weekends, I have been on the move.  Last weekend, I took a trip out to Hartford, CT to attend the Connecticut Forum’s panel, The State of Women 2012.  Panelists included Michelle Bernard, Ashley Judd, Connie Schultz and Gloria Steinem (!!).  This event was super-awesome-flipping-sweet-cool, and if you’re conveniently following my women’s history blog (which is getting much better updating right now, as it is being graded), you’ll be hearing more about this trip soon!

This weekend (which is still happening) found me spending two nights in Westchester County, NY, lost on Vassar College’s campus, holding letters written by Sarah Hale, and at Phelps Hospital near Sleepy Hollow NY with a friend.

I had an appointment on Friday morning at 10:00 a.m. to do some research in Vassar College’s special collections, where they have about 70 letters written by Sarah Hale.  For convenience sake, and because I promised to pay him fifty dollars in gas, a friend of mine agreed to drive me up to Poughkeepsie.  Four of us went (me and three friends).  We spent the night at my driving-friend’s house in Westchester and then trucked up to Poughkeepsie the next morning.  We made it to campus at about 10:00, but we couldn’t find the library, so I didn’t actually make it to special collections until 10:30, which only left me an hour and a half to do research (they close at noon and reopen at one)!  I managed to get pictures of and read 13 of her letters and was planning on staying in Poughkeepsie to do more work, but then my camera battery died (another consequence of having no computer), so I sadly left.  We went to a 1950s themed organic diner, which I enjoyed but half of our group did not.  Then, after arriving back at my friend’s house, three of us ended up spending several hours in Phelps hospital (one of our party had a kidney stone, which is supposed to hurt worse than having a baby).  They took good care of my friend, and we had a fun time playing games with scrabble tiles and watching Llamas With Hats (not for everyone; sociopathic llama named Carl destroys things).  My friends rock, and I like it when they don’t have rocks inside of them.

Hanging out with the Sarah Hale papers was one of the most magical experiences of my life, and I just want to go back again!  It turns out that I do, in fact, have a lot of trouble reading her handwriting because it is so perfect.  She writes in perfect script — the kind of stuff that third grade teachers pretend to be able to do in order to impress their eight year old pupils.  Thankfully, there were typescript copies of most of the letters, so I could read them clearly.  Sarah Hale, by the way, is hilarious.  In one of her letters to John Raymond, she says, “men have never yet considered woman’s learning of much benefit.  Loveliness was worth more than Latin.”  She’s so wonderful!  According to my driving-friend, when I came out of the library, I was glowing.  Again, more about this (and about Sarah Hale, probably), will appear on my baby blog within this semester.

I have more Fleetwood Mac Attack! for you, and I did promise advice on How to Date a Marxist, and I promise that eventually these will get up.  They have been started, and they are waiting patiently in my Drafts folder to be finished, but between the baby blog and the computer problems and the general occupied-ness of October, I would like to kindly implore you to wait a pinch longer.  I promise I won’t have you arrested if you protest, and it won’t take 43 years.

Dear Steven Moffat, You Promised Me Scary Daleks

This is my 100th post!  Yay!  Be forewarned that here be spoilers:

Dear Steven Moffat,

You promised me scary Daleks.  You made sure that I knew that they would be frightening again, like they are supposed to be.  Not these endearing little pot-shaped plot devices for the Doctor to destroy, but vicious and ruthless destroyers of all that is good.  I was excited for terrifying Daleks.

However, save the PTSD-addled Daleks, the most terrified I got of the Daleks was early on, before the Doctor, Amy and Rory even arrived at the asylum.  Thousands of Daleks begged the Doctor (in unison) to save them.

If this is the scariest the Daleks were, begging for salvation, I am less impressed than I wanted to be.  I was more afraid of Amy and Rory’s marriage potentially dissolving than I was of the Daleks.

I want to see the Daleks be fierce.  I want to see the Doctor try and fail to stop them a handful of times before he wins.  I want to see the rumored and fabled hatred of the Daleks.

The last time the Daleks were even a little bit scary for me was when Rose pops back out of the parallel world, and Tenth Doctor is running to embrace her, and the Dalek shoots. him. down.  Daleks have no mercy.  And they want to destroy the Doctor.

The Dalek/Cyberman standoff in series two was also a little intimidating for me.  I ended that episode saying, “Holy crap!  Daleks can fly!”  It was scary.

But let me tell you what was not scary:

• Daleks pretending to help Winston Churchill
  
• Daleks turning people into pig slaves
  
• Daleks in a museum
• Dalek/Human hybrids in Manhattan
• Daleks with existential crises

These are all choices that have happened over the past seven years involving the Daleks that were not really scary.  I want my Daleks to give me nightmares.

To be sure, there were some scary parts of “Asylum of the Daleks” — very scary parts.  Like the nanogenes turning both living and dead things into security puppets.  Zombie-Dalek grabbing at Amy was just creepy and gross.  I was scared for Rory when he first landed in the asylum and was talking to the defective Daleks (“Eggs?  Are these eggs?”  No, Rory, those are balls of dalekanium, and you should not be touching them).  I was a pinch worried that Amy would grow a little eyestalk out of her forehead and they would have to figure out how to reverse it.  I was afraid of the Doctor going through “intensive care” (Daleks with PTSD chasing down their traumatic event?!).

So yes, there were some scary parts, which makes “Asylum of the Daleks” better than most of the other Dalek stories of New Who.  It’s been the best Dalek story with Matt Smith by far.  It was well done.  I loved Oswen.  I guessed that she was inside of a Dalek (I was hoping for it to be something like the teselecta, but alas.)  Her fight to remain human was great.  This was by no means a bad episode.  It was good.  And sometimes, it was scary.

But I was promised scary Daleks, and I didn’t quite feel it.  I want my Daleks to be scary!  I want them to be like Nazis.  They are supposed to be like Nazis.  I want them to be like the Spanish Inquisition: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical dedication to the Pope, nice red uniforms.

I wanted to be properly scared for the Doctor.  But apart from the Post Time-Lord Stressed Daleks, I never was.  And I guess that’s why I want them to be scarier; it’s not that they weren’t scary, it’s that I wasn’t scared for the Doctor.  I knew he would win in the end.  And I knew that Amy and Rory would fix their marital problems by the end.  And I knew that Oswen wouldn’t make it out in the end.  And I knew that they would escape the place in the end.  I wasn’t scared enough, consistently enough to suspend belief in the Doctor.

So basically, Steven Moffat, All Daleks should be PTSDaleks.

Sincerely,

Maggie Felisberto, a fearless fan.

Everyone Should be Jealous of Mumford & Sons

Because, unlike John Fogerty, I am a fortunate one, I was able to go to Portsmouth, VA, on August 9th to see Mumford & Sons in concert. And it was EPIC!!!  So, because I know that you are all jealous (except for the 11,000+ people who were checked into the concert on Facebook), here are some highlights:

Aaron Embry says, “You could start America all over again!”

This is Aaron Embry, otherwise known as the first opener (check out his website here).  He came with a guitar, a harmonica, and a hat.  My cohorts and I were impressed by his fish shirt, but by little else.  The music wasn’t bad, it was just a pinch boring (and Embry was just a pinch patronizing).  I wanted him to throw in a few songs in a faster tempo and different key signature (and maybe a different key).  But all in all, after waiting for the bands to begin, I was happy to get him on the stage.  I would probably listen to recordings of his stuff, and maybe with a whole band, he could develop into a great live act.  Marcus Mumford described him as “the kindest man,” so I’m sure that he’s great to know.

Dawes, aka the band that wrote a song about airplane phobias.  Ft. Marcus Mumford.

The second act, Dawes, was amazing (website here).  I mean, absolutely amazing.  I would go to a Dawes concert again, even without Marcus Mumford (though of course, Marcus Mumford makes everything better).  Their music was dynamic and enjoyable, and lyrically entertaining.  Mixed within the melee of themes that usually come from guy groups (love, relationships, getting dumped, falling in love), they pulled out a song off of their upcoming album about the experience of flying in the window seat…with a severe phobia of flight.  The front man was engaging, and the music was so good.  Plus, the addition of Marcus Mumford for one of their songs was fantastic.  Even though I was so ready for Mumford & Sons to perform, I was sad to see Dawes leave the stage.

“Plant your hope with good seeds. Don’t cover yourself with thistle and weeds…”

Mumford & Sons.  Mumford & Sons!  MUMFORD & SONS!!!!!!

Typing it out in all caps with exclamation points cannot even begin to convey how amazingly awesome this band is, recorded.  And that sheer, raw awesomeness is a drop in the ocean of their live performance divinity.  I can’t even explain, so here, check it out for yourself:

How to Date an Impressionist

NOTE:  This article, due to the specificity of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, will treat both art movements together under the umbrella of Impressionism.  My apologies to Art History.

Last week, I gave some advice on how to date a Postmodernist.  Some people found these tips extremely helpful in their relationships, but still others called on me, requesting help with other types of people.  Particularly, my cousin asked me to help him woo an Impressionist beauty.  How could I not help?

Let’s begin like we did before with the definition of Impressionism, according to Dictionary.com:

noun

1. Fine Arts .

•  ( usually initial capital letter ) a style of painting developed in the last third of the 19th century, characterized chiefly by short brush strokes of bright colors in immediate juxtaposition to represent the effect of light on objects.
•  a manner of painting in which the forms, colors, or tones of an object are lightly and rapidly indicated.
•  a manner of sculpture in which volumes are partially modeled and surfaces roughened to reflect light unevenly.

2. a theory and practice in literature that emphasizes immediate aspects of objects or actions without attention to details.

3. a late-19th-century and early-20th-century style of musical composition in which lush harmonies, subtle rhythms, and unusual tonal colors are used to evoke moods and impressions.

The Japanese Footbridge, Claude Monet, MoMA

Because of the nature of Impressionism, I’m not going to give you rules on how to approach Impressionists.  I will, however, give you a few suggestions.

Suggestion One: Take her/him to an art museum.  But make sure you go to a museum that showcases work by Manet, Monet, Degas, Renoir, etc.  An Impressionist will look at these artists in a paternal way, particularly Manet.  If you live near The Courtauld Gallery in London, take your date to see A Bar at the Foiles-Bergère.  Your Impressionist date will marvel at Édouard’s masterpiece and your masterful knowledge of Art History.  Plane tickets too expensive for a first date?  The Met’s Impressionism and Post-Impressionism wing houses the beautiful By The Seashore by August Renoir and van Gogh’s famous self-portrait.  Museums are really the place to begin your relationship with the Impressionist, because you will be able to understand the Art History that comprises your date’s artistic beliefs.

Suggestion Two: Buy a coloring book and color outside the lines.  This is great practice in seeing how well you work together as a couple.  Given the picture already provided, what visions do you have for the ways in which colors could elicit the emotions best?  How do these colors interact with each other?  Does your date’s understanding of color and emotion correspond sufficiently to your understanding of them?  Can you make this coloring book Art?  I recommend silly subjects like flower fairies and garden gnomes to begin with, then work your way through dinosaurs into Disney.  By the time you’re coloring in Tiana kissing the frog, you’ll be able to use your joint understanding of color to create the chartreuse pallor on Tiana’s face that show how disgusted she is.

Suggestion Three: Learn the difference between Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.  How does Impressionism grow into Post-Impressionism?  How does that then become Modernism (then Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism, etc)?  Impressionists are a century ahead of the cutting edge, and learning the history of the original movement in Art History can only help you to understand your Impressionist girlfriend/boyfriend.  You can have a conversation about how this:

Dancers Practicing at the Barre, Edgar Degas, the Met

Became this:

Fountain, Marcel Duchamp, SF MoMA

Scary progression, huh?  Thank you, Art History.

Suggestion Four: Do everything in “plein-air.”  Plein-air, which is fancy French for outside, is key to the majority of Impressionist paintings.  The concept of taking your canvas and your paints outside was so new to the 19th century, that it became the kind of signature for Impressionist painters.  The Impressionist masters (except, I believe, Degas… or was it Renoir?), would scout out locations that they wanted to paint, and then go outside and plop down in front of them.  This was to capture the feel of being in the location instead of in the artist’s studio imagining the location.  Plein-air is theoretical realism with visual abstraction.  So instead of watching a TV show about life, go do things in plein-air.

Suggestion Five: Take off your glasses.  This will be less easy for people with contacts, and impossible for people with “perfect” vision.  But if you really want to get into an Impressionist’s head, and you have the capability to see the world in blurs and swirls of color and light, then do it.  Take off your glasses and describe how the shades and nuances of the green hills blend and roll together, instead of being rigidly connected to the individual types of trees.  Find patterns in the stars at night, and describe the feeling of their glow as candlelight sprinkled through a pepper shaker onto a bowl of blue soup.  Take off your glasses and explain the softness of your girlfriend/boyfriend’s face as being like early cinematography.

Judy Garland as Manuela in The Pirate

Suggestion Six: Learn French.  Now, I’m not a huge supporter of the “French is the most romantic language in the world” camp.  But for your Impressionist interest, what better language for love than the language of the Impressionist masters?  So pull out your Carla Bruni CDs, cook up some eclairs, find your fanciest French red wine, and immerse yourself in faux-French.

Mont Sainte-Victoire and the Viaduct of the Arc River Valley, Paul Cézanne, the Met

Suggestion Seven: When going to the movies, go see artistic films.  Yes, that means more Wes Anderson.  If you’re going to be going to current films, of course (Moonrise Kingdom is still in theaters).  But my real movie suggestion would be to watch lots of classic film.  My mother recommends A Room With a View.  I would recommend How to Steal a Million.

Peter O’Toole, Audrey Hepburn, and a fake van Gogh = Best. Movie. Ever.

The Easiest Way to Time Travel

By far, the easiest way to time travel is in a TARDIS.  Let’s go ahead and acknowledge that.  But let’s also acknowledge that we’re not all Rose Tyler or Tegan Jovanka, so the likelihood of being able to hitch a ride on that little blue box is pretty low.

Tegan Jovanka!

Rose Tyler!

Now let’s get practical.  Legitimate time travel may be out of our reach, but it’s not so hard to be nostalgic.  And with the massive amounts of information technology at our fingertips, it’s easy to recreate stimulus from the past.  In particular, the key to mental time travel is probably in the music.

I’m on this kick because of the book I’ve been writing.  I have a character who makes a mix CD for his girlfriend, and the book is set in 2005/2006.  So I decided that it was essential to spend three days with one of my best friends from home creating the playlist for the mix CD that my character would have picked.  My friend and I spent hours listening to piano rock/alternative/indie music produced primarily between 1999 and 2005.

These were some of our guidelines:

• This CD was created in early January of 2006.  As such, we may only listen to songs released before January 2006.
• This CD should have music on it that we would have listened to ourselves in 2006.  Thus, pre-hipster hipster music.
• This CD should not reflect the way my friend’s music tastes changed after he met my one cousin from Portugal.
• This CD must reflect the same themes and feelings created in my novella.
• This CD cannot reflect what we wanted it to be.  It must be what my character would listen to and want to put on a mix for his girlfriend.
• A CD-R in 2006 could hold at max 92 minutes of music (despite the 90 minute labels.  This CD must not exceed 92 minutes.

And so, with all of these guidelines set, we began to work.  Between the two of us and another friend, we came up with almost 30 songs that had the potential to be on the list.  And it was a lot of fun, but kind of difficult.  We had to remember band names and song names that we hadn’t thought of in six or seven years.  We had to listen to each song we considered.  We had to check each song’s release date (even though the album or the video came out in 2006, when did the single?).  And we had to think like a sixteen-year-old quasi-emo indie kid boy living in 2005/2006.  We had to remember the levels of angst involved with being sixteen, in other words.  And (even though both my friend and I had to deal with some pretty serious heartbreak earlier this year) we had to remember what it feels like to be freshly in love with someone for the first time.  What would he have wanted to convey to a girl?  What message would I have wanted to receive from a boy?  What was it really like to be a teenager seven years ago?

The Shins, Oh Inverted World (2001)

Which also led into what was it really like to be us?  And what is it like now?  We have inevitably evolved into artsy, pretentious hipsters, but what led us there?  How have we evolved as people?  As friends?  Are we really getting any better (wiser/braver/more mature) as we get older?  Or are we forgetting something that we knew when we were kids who thought we were adults now that we’re adults who think we are kids?

I got another blast of this thinking the day after I finished the list.  My mom and I were in the car driving home from work, and the classic radio station was on.  Each song that came on during that drive had come out while my mom was in high school in the 70s.  And as each song came on, I remarked that the radio was really owning today.  So we talked about how my generation in relation to hers is so different from her generation in relation to her parents.  My grandparents were born in 1925; they were teens and young adults during WWII (my grandfather is a vet).  But by 1977, the year my mom turned 20, the world was radically different socially.  And that level of radical change doesn’t exist between my generation and my mom’s.  Her parents would have never listened to the music she listened to in high school, and vice versa.  However, my mom and I have very similar taste in music, and I tend to prefer the music of her generation to the music of mine.

Stevie Wonder, “Superstition” (1972)

Except, of course, for the alternative/indie stuff that I listened to in ninth and tenth grade.  That music, for me, makes me feel infinite.

So maybe it’s not time travel in the most literal of senses, but it’s a mental travel through time when you actively pursue the music that you listened to in an earlier era of your life.

What was your favorite music while you were in high school?  Does listening to it now make you feel like you’re time traveling?