Light and Darko

The junior studio majors had an art crit today that lasted from 5pm-9pm. This piece is significantly weaker, but unlike the other piece I put up, I am not intending on working on it anymore, so you are stuck with it for illustration. I think its 29''*44'', oil on canvas.

On the way back I talked to the freshman I met on the train to NYC a while ago, for the first time since. It had been a subtle weight on me; that I had been so stressed after coming back that I wouldn't registered that we had passed each other until it was too late to say hi, and thus inadvertently ignored him. Though, I'm not sure if our conversation relived me of that weight. 

Friday I went to an African dance performance Adrienne was in, and then we all went to Diwali. It was fun: it's amazing what a combination of spicy food and dancing can do to me in terms of improving my mood.
Saturday I went to the Junior dance show with Amanda and then we re-wached Donnie Darko.  The first time I had watched it, I was at Max M's house, and I came home amped up on Dr. Pepper and spent half the night writing down how I believed the world worked.

Studio Arts Major

2:20 AM-- (a great time to write)
just finished hanging my work for my moderation board tomorrow-today. All that work does sum up: it takes up three walls, much more than it does all rolled up, one piece inside the other inside another.
my feet: the balls of my feet, the heal, and less so (oddly) the arch, cried with every step I took on my walk back to my room. As I passed Robins, someone was having sex (she was an "oh God"-er)
Last night I had a dream that I was walking and turned around and there was an old man behind me and he took this as an invitation and I kept running from him and was afraid he was going to rape me. I woke up around six am because I'm anxious about tomorrow. Life, Death, and everything in between.

11:20 PM--(a great time to write, not in a sarcastic way)
I woke up at 7am and then went to eat around nine. One of the girls sitting next to me said "I don't eat carbs. Well, I do, but only good carbs, like, organic" and I just had to leave. Jeff (my painting prof) looked at my work and said "you're going to do great" because I was clearly anxious.
The board consisted of my adviser Laura Battle, Kristen Lucas, and Ken Buhler. They asked a lot of questions. Why do I like painting. What do I see in my work. Why. Why. How. Why. What. Why. Where?
It was scary.  I got some good things out of it, mostly from Ken Buhler.
Positive: I was able to carry things I learned in one class over to other classes (i.e. drawing to painting) and said "I can congratulate you on that"
Negative: Just how confused I felt and how confused I am about what to do next, what I want, and that I want to do everything.
Mixed: "I see talent and I see skill but I don't see what you want to do next"
"you wrote in your paper, almost apologetically, that you do not do more of the conceptual stuff, and you don't have to be apologetic about it"
Useful: "Some people feel for their senior project they have to do something totally different than what they did before. And you don't have to do that"
And they talked about working slow versus working fast. And what classes to possibly take.
Laura came up to me after and said "we are looking at that course list"

I knew I was in the green when Laura said "second semester of junior year is great. You don't have to worry about moderation, and you don't have to worry about senior project- well, you're moderating late but"

So I moderated! I'm officially studying both psychology and studio art.

Jeff asked me how I was going to reward myself. I said "I'm going to sleep" and he responded "I'm a firm believer in gifts"

Titanium White

Things that make me unhappy right now:

1. That I am out of white oil paint and white acrylic
2. That my moderation board is so soon
3. The state of my room
4. That I keep waking up at 7am
5. That I am behind on reading for my psych and history courses
6. That I am not certain which part of psychology I am interested in
7. That I always get better grades in non-psych courses
8. That my feet hurt from standing in the studio so much
9. That my hands get raw from washing brushes
10. I’m hungry

Things that make me happy right now:

1. That a girl in my drawing class lent me some white oil paint
2. That I will get my phone, which I left at Carnegie, back soon, through the mail
3. My self-portrait is going well, and my drawing professor looked at it and liked it
4. That despite the time I’ve been spending at the studio, I made a new friend
5. That my brother called me last night
6. That I got a few letters in the mail in the past week
7. That Hannah, Kalena, and I made a cake
8. That Kalena and I watched Lost in Translation
9. People I’m not really close with but who I am friends with coming up to me and saying that my work in the moderation show looks really good; that specific group because they are not obligated to tell me, or remember, or care.
10. The prospect of dinner with Lauren, Alana, Adrienne and Cat

The Vote! so far.

The results are coming in! This is what I've been keeping track of, mostly because this is where my vote counted. Plus electoral count. It's 163:163 now.
Manor Hall is filled with people and food (cookies and chips and ice-cream) and Walter Mead and a projector screen which has been flickering between different news sites.

Sandy

I don't really believe in fate, but I ended up choosing this article to write an essay, and I'm going to pretend I'm being told to go to Germany and study schizophrenia. Probably not Dusseldorf though. And it doesn't have to be schizophrenia (though it is incredibly interesting). That sounds like a pretty good future- no?
Maybe it doesn't even have to be Germany. The countries I've been to are: USA, Canada, Mexico (Cozumel though, it was super touristy so it doesn't really count) Israel (but not since I was eight and half) Germany, and Russia.
There are other countries out there.

Bard barely got hit by Sandy. That is, Sandy didn't hit us at all, all the while two hours away havoc was brought down on Manhattan, as well as areas not two hours away, but much closer (and further) away.

Our electricity didn't even go out. It was the first time classes were uniformally canceled, because everyone was worried, but hurricane Irene last year made a much bigger impact on campus (we had to re-build half of the chapel) than this, and even earlier this year the rain fell harder and we lost power.

One of my friends went down to Boston until NYU gets running water and electricity back.
I hope that everything will soon be well in places that were hit harder than Bard.

Mahler's 8th Symphony at Carnegie Hall

Right now I’m at Carnegie in the choral dress room. It’s four. Rehearsal ended around one and then I went to eat at a diner with some members of the chorus. I ordered pancakes. I don’t even really like pancakes (I know that to many ears this is blasphemous, but I had my first one freshman year of college, and blini and oladushki are significantly tastier, in my humble opinion.)

Last night we were at the Riverside Church rehearsing, and we got out around six and then I met up with Liza. She showed me from the street which window was her dorm room. We got Korean food together and we were both exhausted beyond our wits. Still, it was nice to see her.

 

Then I got to Kostya’s apartment somewhere near 1^st Ave and 14^th St, where I stayed the night. We had tea and talked and he practiced a presentation he has to do today on me and then I fell asleep.

Maybe this is why I didn’t last very long in NYC; I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t fall asleep. I watched the light in the window come and brighten. I dreamt that I was in a glass botanical garden, and a family lived there and then suddenly there was a ball there. But the girls were trying too hard and the guys just wanted to get high. We were trying at something that wasn’t going to happen. It was awfully realistic.

--

We got back to Bard a little after one in the morning.

After the diner I wandered off, turning onto whatever street looked most interesting, photographing. I bought some licorice and then found a fountain on the same block. It was such a pretty open space, and the rush of water blocked out NYC but for some reason the glory was fleeting, and soon I found myself back in the choral rehearsal room, where I had napped and started writing and talking to members of the Collegiate Chorale.

The concert went well, but everyone at Bard was more than slightly disappointed to see that we weren’t even mentioned in the playbill, while the Brooklyn Youth Choir was listed in full, though they sang a tenth of the time we did. It didn’t bring up moral to get those half an hour before we were to go out.

The licorice is delicious, I still have some left.

Teaching Fellow

But now I am back at Bard, full of anorexic boys and girls with bouncy walks.


I just got back from buying more watercolor paper and tights with Emma and Lauren.

Before the break I made pancakes with Kalena at 11pm and attended a teaching fellow's event. The one for Manor Annex and Proper is Walter Mead, who is apparently fairly well known and meets famous people and been published in big journals and has been kissed by Yasser Arafat. The talk was on being a public intellectual, and he was somewhat entertaining, but my ambitions hardly lie in the area of political writing. Also, he is less of a conversationalist and more of a lecturer. Still, there was apple cider (and okay cake.) Marina van Zuylen's event freshman year had been better. We had discussed boredom and the cakes provided were truly fantastic.


Sumdedah and I made it to the burrito stand last Friday the day before it ended its season, and Wednesday I went over to lahl's house (lila amanda hallie and lia) and wrote.

But other than that, it's work work work. The most tangible bit is that last Friday I read all of Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse in one day for history class. There has been a band, a theater company, a film, and many other things inspired by the book, which is partially unique in that it was grossly misinterpreted by people who loved it while the author was still alive.

movies; The Third Man, with my parents over break.