It's been awhile since I've posted.I've been busy I guess, distracted with classes and midterms and myriad little ventures.
As this last month in Boston stretches on into eternity, I find myself intensely, powerfully homesick. I see my friends talking to each other about Thanksgiving reunions... I read their facebook statuses and peruse the homecoming pictures they post. In Tennessee it's balmy and autumnal. The leaves are freshly turned and the air still has that latent summery high. I'm told by my Bostonian roommate that this is warm for Cambridge in November, an idea that has terrified me into buying long underwear and cold-weather boots and all sorts of large, voluminous layers.
As ideas for the two final papers I'm working on (Expos and Memoirs) stew fitfully in my head, I feel the constant need to write down what I'm feeling and sensing. I have so many ideas that I feel the need to articulate. The process of getting to that point, where my words and my thoughts meld effortlessly and with finality is what's got me down. I just need a moment to breathe, to forget these deadlines and put my life into perspective.
I'm counting down the days till I return home to my friends and my bed. I'm counting by tests (three to go), papers (three half written) and weekends (four I believe?).
How hath time flung itself by with such haste?
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
Journal Prompt #6
When I think of Italy, I always think of Under A Tuscan Sun--not the book, the movie. I remember watching it on HBO when my family first got cable. It was a lazy summer Sunday; my parents were out of the house, and I didn't feel up to doing anything really besides schlepping around watching trashy reality T.V. shows and sickly-sweet romantic comedies.
In that particular depiction of Italy, the nation, and Tuscany especially, is almost a supporting member of the cast, reintroducing the main character to romance, elegance, and independence, concepts she had lost touch with in her middle-age. The book the movie is based on is a memoir of its author, Frances Mayes, and I remember feeling that the movie too had a remarkably memoir-like quality with its reflective inner monologues and idealized little moments.
In a way, Tea with Mussolini is similar to Under a Tuscan Sun in that both are based on memoirs and both draw heavily upon the landscape and atmosphere of northern Italy. Continuing along these lines, one could also postulate that both Diane Lane's character in Under a Tuscan Sun and Zefferelli's Luca in Tea with Mussolini are strangers within Italy--the former because she is a foreign tourist who decides on a whim to make Tuscany her new home and the latter because he is born on the outskirts of Italian society and raised amidst an enclave of aged British dowagers in Florence. This sense of otherness forms a dynamic tension that underlies that central themes of redemption and self-discovery that propel both films.
Since both these works are also loosely based on the actual life events of two individuals, it is also interesting to think about how they were realized both in the context of the time frame in which they were conceived and in the subjective story-telling of Zefferelli and Mayes respectively. In other words, how do these two films actually re-imagine rather than simply regurgitate the lives they are based on. In the case of Tea with Mussolini, the life of Luca (aka Zefferelli) is given a certain theatricality and grandeur that is not wholly couched in truth. Yes, Zefferelli certainly did have a childhood of unique circumstances, but several of the events and characters within the movie can be seen as loose interpretations of real-life individuals or even fabrications on the part of Zefferelli intended to help the movie convey larger themes about life, war and disillusionment. Characters such as Georgie and Ester and Lady Hester are added to add a dramatic flavor to the film that would have been lacking if the movie had focused more closely on Zefferelli's actual life. This manufacturing of life history obviously reflects Zefferelli's own ideas on the memoir-process. As a director, Zeffereli's talents lie in showcasing the flashy and indelible, and this is a philosophy that he applies liberally to his own life.... some might say with even more ardor than in more impersonal works.
Besides drawing heavily upon Zeffereli's successes as a showman and raconteur, the film also reflects the time in which it was conceived. Filmed in the late 90's between the fall of the Eastern Bloc and the September 11th terrorist attack, Tea with Mussolini resonates with the general optimism and new-found openness of the time. The movie's liberalized content and bevy of brash, worldly characters also correlates with the sentiments of the time period. Zefferelli may be telling his life story in Tea with Mussolini, but he can't help but color the story with his own directorial background and the overarching feelings of the time.
In that particular depiction of Italy, the nation, and Tuscany especially, is almost a supporting member of the cast, reintroducing the main character to romance, elegance, and independence, concepts she had lost touch with in her middle-age. The book the movie is based on is a memoir of its author, Frances Mayes, and I remember feeling that the movie too had a remarkably memoir-like quality with its reflective inner monologues and idealized little moments.
In a way, Tea with Mussolini is similar to Under a Tuscan Sun in that both are based on memoirs and both draw heavily upon the landscape and atmosphere of northern Italy. Continuing along these lines, one could also postulate that both Diane Lane's character in Under a Tuscan Sun and Zefferelli's Luca in Tea with Mussolini are strangers within Italy--the former because she is a foreign tourist who decides on a whim to make Tuscany her new home and the latter because he is born on the outskirts of Italian society and raised amidst an enclave of aged British dowagers in Florence. This sense of otherness forms a dynamic tension that underlies that central themes of redemption and self-discovery that propel both films.
Since both these works are also loosely based on the actual life events of two individuals, it is also interesting to think about how they were realized both in the context of the time frame in which they were conceived and in the subjective story-telling of Zefferelli and Mayes respectively. In other words, how do these two films actually re-imagine rather than simply regurgitate the lives they are based on. In the case of Tea with Mussolini, the life of Luca (aka Zefferelli) is given a certain theatricality and grandeur that is not wholly couched in truth. Yes, Zefferelli certainly did have a childhood of unique circumstances, but several of the events and characters within the movie can be seen as loose interpretations of real-life individuals or even fabrications on the part of Zefferelli intended to help the movie convey larger themes about life, war and disillusionment. Characters such as Georgie and Ester and Lady Hester are added to add a dramatic flavor to the film that would have been lacking if the movie had focused more closely on Zefferelli's actual life. This manufacturing of life history obviously reflects Zefferelli's own ideas on the memoir-process. As a director, Zeffereli's talents lie in showcasing the flashy and indelible, and this is a philosophy that he applies liberally to his own life.... some might say with even more ardor than in more impersonal works.
Besides drawing heavily upon Zeffereli's successes as a showman and raconteur, the film also reflects the time in which it was conceived. Filmed in the late 90's between the fall of the Eastern Bloc and the September 11th terrorist attack, Tea with Mussolini resonates with the general optimism and new-found openness of the time. The movie's liberalized content and bevy of brash, worldly characters also correlates with the sentiments of the time period. Zefferelli may be telling his life story in Tea with Mussolini, but he can't help but color the story with his own directorial background and the overarching feelings of the time.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Journal Prompt #5
Besides a brief and terrible dalliance with the piano when I was younger, I've only ever been a listener of music --and not a particularly good one at that. I've been told on numerous occasions that I am "the most tone deaf person I know." It's nothing I'm embarrassed of; I came to the conclusion long ago that music was not my forte and never would be just like art or physical activity doesn't gel with some people.
That is not to say that I don't like music. Like most people, I enjoy music. When I run, I listen to poppy 90's hits and angry chick rock; Most Friday nights you can find me dancing somewhere or another to the current club mixes and Top 40 hits: Katy Perry and Akon and Cascada. If you want to make me feel wistful for my all but lost childhood just hum to me any song from Aladdin or Mulan and I guarantee I'll join you enthusiastically in song, albeit in an off key manner.
Music is inescapable in our daily lives. Only when I sleep can I arguably say that music is truly silenced. And who knows, perhaps records spin on repeat in my slumbering mind unbeknownst to me. This is a ubiquity that I am sadly reminded of every time I am in my room attempting to study, only to have my focus broken by the Hebrew hymns my Jewish roommate loves to play. So I guess my relationship with music is that I find it unapproachable in the sense that its curlicue notes and esoteric motifs are utterly beyond my ken, and yet by virtue of its omnipresence in my life, it's an alien entity I've learned to coexist with.
If I were asked to articulate just how exactly music permeates my life, I think I would refer mostly to its strange properties of memory. Songs can be repositories or at least aids to a person's memory. Many of my memories concerning family road trips I took when I was younger have snippets of songs playing in the backdrop. When I listen to Copeland's cover of "Every Breath You Take" by the police, the visceral tremor of each lyric, how the phrase "oh can't you see, that you belong to me..." draws out in haunting fermata in my mind, plays back to me a memory slide show of the Grand Tetons all snow capped and jagged rising up out of the Wyoming flatness. My impression of that moment, the desolation I perceived from the car window as the world slid by so smoothly outside blends into my feelings about the song. They exist intertwined in my consciousness and I don't think I could nor want to dissociate the two. The music enriches my memory and vice versa, and now whenever I think about great swaths of gray plain or the crenelated spine of the Rockies, I think also about Copeland and the Police and how it felt to be in a car, listening to my brother's Ipod nano as he snored in the seat beside me.
Experiences like this pepper any life. There's one snippet of "Kids" by MGMT that I will always associate with the laundry room raves my friends and I would have the summer I spent at Governor's School in the sun baked ghost town of Martin, West Tennessee. Play "Daylight" by Matt and Kim for me and not only will I smile, but my eyes will get that detached, glassy look and you know that I will be thinking of Andrew, and how we would drive around town aimlessly to that song on nights we didn't feel like doing homework, just talking about school and life. Then there's "Recessional" by Vienna Teng, which I hear sidling through my mind every time I see snow because it was the song I was listening to that time I was walking Airik in the woods near my house and before I knew it, the first and only snow of that year was falling in soft white waves onto my face.
The thing is, most of these memories I feel like are more about the images and the tactile sensations then the music. "Every Breath You Take" is an important addendum to my memory of that car drive from Colorado to Yellowstone, but what I remember even more vividly is the visual impact of the Mountains materializing in the distance and the cool compress of glass against my forehead as I stared at their approach, utterly transfixed. So in a way, music seems to be only tangentially related to my memories; the soundtrack of my life has no inherent value of its own beyond the fact that it allows me to conjure up my memory of a moment more readily.
If there's one memory, or perhaps almost-memory, of mine in which music is an integral part of the recollection rather than just a framing device, it would be my memory of an event that occurred in my life on Friday the 13th my freshman year of high school. Sometimes a song has such eerie symbolism within a memory that it's hard to dismiss as a instance of chance. The song in question here is "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol and the instance I'm remembering is a car crash that nearly took my life. My memory of the crash itself is spotty at best, my mind has blocked out much of what happened. I remember no crunching metal or the flash of car lights. I can't envision in my head the moment of impact, the instance where my face slammed into the head rest in front of me, the bloody intrusion of my teeth into my lower nasal cavity. These things all happened, and yet I don't remember how or when. What I do remember with almost vicious clarity is the sound of the radio playing right before Jesse's mom slammed on the brakes. I was singing along, my mouth luxuriantly open, eyes half-closed.
"If I lay here... If I just lay here. Would you lie with me and just forget the world."
And then nothing.
That is not to say that I don't like music. Like most people, I enjoy music. When I run, I listen to poppy 90's hits and angry chick rock; Most Friday nights you can find me dancing somewhere or another to the current club mixes and Top 40 hits: Katy Perry and Akon and Cascada. If you want to make me feel wistful for my all but lost childhood just hum to me any song from Aladdin or Mulan and I guarantee I'll join you enthusiastically in song, albeit in an off key manner.
Music is inescapable in our daily lives. Only when I sleep can I arguably say that music is truly silenced. And who knows, perhaps records spin on repeat in my slumbering mind unbeknownst to me. This is a ubiquity that I am sadly reminded of every time I am in my room attempting to study, only to have my focus broken by the Hebrew hymns my Jewish roommate loves to play. So I guess my relationship with music is that I find it unapproachable in the sense that its curlicue notes and esoteric motifs are utterly beyond my ken, and yet by virtue of its omnipresence in my life, it's an alien entity I've learned to coexist with.
If I were asked to articulate just how exactly music permeates my life, I think I would refer mostly to its strange properties of memory. Songs can be repositories or at least aids to a person's memory. Many of my memories concerning family road trips I took when I was younger have snippets of songs playing in the backdrop. When I listen to Copeland's cover of "Every Breath You Take" by the police, the visceral tremor of each lyric, how the phrase "oh can't you see, that you belong to me..." draws out in haunting fermata in my mind, plays back to me a memory slide show of the Grand Tetons all snow capped and jagged rising up out of the Wyoming flatness. My impression of that moment, the desolation I perceived from the car window as the world slid by so smoothly outside blends into my feelings about the song. They exist intertwined in my consciousness and I don't think I could nor want to dissociate the two. The music enriches my memory and vice versa, and now whenever I think about great swaths of gray plain or the crenelated spine of the Rockies, I think also about Copeland and the Police and how it felt to be in a car, listening to my brother's Ipod nano as he snored in the seat beside me.
Experiences like this pepper any life. There's one snippet of "Kids" by MGMT that I will always associate with the laundry room raves my friends and I would have the summer I spent at Governor's School in the sun baked ghost town of Martin, West Tennessee. Play "Daylight" by Matt and Kim for me and not only will I smile, but my eyes will get that detached, glassy look and you know that I will be thinking of Andrew, and how we would drive around town aimlessly to that song on nights we didn't feel like doing homework, just talking about school and life. Then there's "Recessional" by Vienna Teng, which I hear sidling through my mind every time I see snow because it was the song I was listening to that time I was walking Airik in the woods near my house and before I knew it, the first and only snow of that year was falling in soft white waves onto my face.
The thing is, most of these memories I feel like are more about the images and the tactile sensations then the music. "Every Breath You Take" is an important addendum to my memory of that car drive from Colorado to Yellowstone, but what I remember even more vividly is the visual impact of the Mountains materializing in the distance and the cool compress of glass against my forehead as I stared at their approach, utterly transfixed. So in a way, music seems to be only tangentially related to my memories; the soundtrack of my life has no inherent value of its own beyond the fact that it allows me to conjure up my memory of a moment more readily.
If there's one memory, or perhaps almost-memory, of mine in which music is an integral part of the recollection rather than just a framing device, it would be my memory of an event that occurred in my life on Friday the 13th my freshman year of high school. Sometimes a song has such eerie symbolism within a memory that it's hard to dismiss as a instance of chance. The song in question here is "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol and the instance I'm remembering is a car crash that nearly took my life. My memory of the crash itself is spotty at best, my mind has blocked out much of what happened. I remember no crunching metal or the flash of car lights. I can't envision in my head the moment of impact, the instance where my face slammed into the head rest in front of me, the bloody intrusion of my teeth into my lower nasal cavity. These things all happened, and yet I don't remember how or when. What I do remember with almost vicious clarity is the sound of the radio playing right before Jesse's mom slammed on the brakes. I was singing along, my mouth luxuriantly open, eyes half-closed.
"If I lay here... If I just lay here. Would you lie with me and just forget the world."
And then nothing.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Left Behind
I wish now that I had brought my journals with me to college. There's seven plus years of my life stored away in those cheaply bound, messily smudged pages, seven years that I was willing to leave behind back in August when I began to pack for Harvard. I packed in in spurts essentially: loading and unloading my two suitcases with clothes and pictures and random trinkets, letting myself get more and more flustered as I tried to decide what parts of my Tennessee life were necessary to bring with me to the far-off northern mecca that was Boston.
I ended up making a lot of poor packing choices, bringing hot sauce and plates but no utensils, stuffing the sides of my suitcases with colorful socks but neglecting to bring any long underwear... my thought processes were jumbled, I wasn't quite there in the packing process I guess, lost as I was in the last sweet days of summer. When it came time to decide whether I wanted to bring all my journals with me I decided against it. I reasoned that I was making this grand leap forward in my life and education, and to bring my journals was to dwell foolishly in the past. I would be strong and unsentimental and just leave them behind. It was a moment of closure in a way, physical proof of the benchmark I wanted to cleave into my life at this time.
But now.... ten weeks into my Harvard experience, I feel slightly foolish. I've come to realize that there's a difference between moving on and giving up your past. The two actions aren't mutually exclusive. Indeed, as we've been discussing in class, manifestations of our past color our present and future whether we wish them too or not; memory and self are inextricably tied. I can leave my journals behind, but memory still shadows my thoughts and actions, patiently, assiduously.
What I left behind at home then is a physical evocation of my nostalgia. My journals serve as tool to organize years and years of built up sensation; in a sense, they bring a tenuous order to my unruly thoughts as they progress through time, imposing words and enumerations and dates upon the fractal images that haunt my mind. There's a dynamic tension there as well, a sense of time (the dates, the seasonal shifts in tone, the disconnected plot of mundane moments) that is beautiful to me, reminding me that this is where I come from, that my perception lies at the crux of all these movable pieces of time and that my memory is what drives this narrative forward.
I miss the sensation of leafing through an old journal, the sense of wonder you get when you read something you penned so long ago you feel detached from the voice behind those words, and then you know that the intervening time has changed you, that each moment in between has knocked you slightly off course, led you down a thousand side paths and brought you here, where the present feels so real and the past like a sepia-toned dream.
I miss that tactility I guess, how I could use old entries as a jumping-off point for my nostalgic reflections, how when I read my thoughts from say March 25th 2007 I could almost still remember the feeling of writing those words, what emotions were thronging the spaces of my mind, my physical condition, the state of my spirit--all these things that I otherwise probably would've lost.
Without my journals, I feel like I'm just groping in the dark.
I ended up making a lot of poor packing choices, bringing hot sauce and plates but no utensils, stuffing the sides of my suitcases with colorful socks but neglecting to bring any long underwear... my thought processes were jumbled, I wasn't quite there in the packing process I guess, lost as I was in the last sweet days of summer. When it came time to decide whether I wanted to bring all my journals with me I decided against it. I reasoned that I was making this grand leap forward in my life and education, and to bring my journals was to dwell foolishly in the past. I would be strong and unsentimental and just leave them behind. It was a moment of closure in a way, physical proof of the benchmark I wanted to cleave into my life at this time.
But now.... ten weeks into my Harvard experience, I feel slightly foolish. I've come to realize that there's a difference between moving on and giving up your past. The two actions aren't mutually exclusive. Indeed, as we've been discussing in class, manifestations of our past color our present and future whether we wish them too or not; memory and self are inextricably tied. I can leave my journals behind, but memory still shadows my thoughts and actions, patiently, assiduously.
What I left behind at home then is a physical evocation of my nostalgia. My journals serve as tool to organize years and years of built up sensation; in a sense, they bring a tenuous order to my unruly thoughts as they progress through time, imposing words and enumerations and dates upon the fractal images that haunt my mind. There's a dynamic tension there as well, a sense of time (the dates, the seasonal shifts in tone, the disconnected plot of mundane moments) that is beautiful to me, reminding me that this is where I come from, that my perception lies at the crux of all these movable pieces of time and that my memory is what drives this narrative forward.
I miss the sensation of leafing through an old journal, the sense of wonder you get when you read something you penned so long ago you feel detached from the voice behind those words, and then you know that the intervening time has changed you, that each moment in between has knocked you slightly off course, led you down a thousand side paths and brought you here, where the present feels so real and the past like a sepia-toned dream.
I miss that tactility I guess, how I could use old entries as a jumping-off point for my nostalgic reflections, how when I read my thoughts from say March 25th 2007 I could almost still remember the feeling of writing those words, what emotions were thronging the spaces of my mind, my physical condition, the state of my spirit--all these things that I otherwise probably would've lost.
Without my journals, I feel like I'm just groping in the dark.
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