Reading and Writing (but not 'rithmetic, sorry)

I recently finished reading A Visit from the Goon Squad  by Jennifer Egan, and was struck by the variety of voices in the novel. Egan seems to be a sort of literary chameleon: she shifts between middle-aged adults and their younger selves, their children and even their childhood acquaintances seamlessly.

 One of my favorite things about Egan's writing is her ability to use virtually any method to convey a beautiful narrative -- she even used PowerPoint slides for an entire chapter and it made perfect sense. Many of the techniques I admire in her writing are ones that I would like to try myself. I have always loved the idea of writing a cohesive work that examines events from multiple perspectives.  I tried it sophomore year during NaNoWriMo for creative writing, but the result fell far short of my expectations -- I got angry with one of the characters in the middle of writing it, and it was extremely apparent (hilariously so, but that's another story entirely).

 

When I try to write a longer piece, I tend to move the plot so quickly that I've run out of things to talk about within the first 15-20 pages.  I also picture individual scenes as I want to write them, but without any idea of how to piece them together.  I'm much better with smaller, more contained pieces, so maybe that's why a more "episodic" narrative, where each section is self-contained, is more appealing to me. I really like vignettes, probably because they are more poetic than prose-like.

 

There is one thing I'm absolutely sure about when it comes to writing novels: it is difficult and time-consuming. I have yet to hear a writer say their novel basically wrote itself. Although it would be wonderful if that could happen, such an easy solution would take away much of the value the writing  process provides.

 

 

El español y yo

I first started learning Spanish in kindergarten, and although most of what we learned consisted of colors and classroom objects, my five-year-old self loved it. Throughout elementary and middle school, my mind became a deposit box for all kinds of sweet-sounding words: las zanahorias, el paraguas, la alegría.  Granted, some of them were trivial things (carrots, umbrella), but I treasured them nonetheless.

After taking four years of Spanish at Uni, I still can't get over the fact that I can listen to music and understand almost all the lyrics, or read poems and watch television. I can read the work of authors like Gabriela Mistral and Gabriel García Marquez in their original language, and see the words they wrote, unfiltered by translation.

Keeping up my Spanish is difficult, especially since my 45 minutes of Spanish class have been exchanged for French class (j'aime le français aussi).  I've held Cien años de soledad by Gabriel García Marquez at the library, and can't wait to start reading it. I've also taken up watching a Colombian telenovela (television show/drama-like thing) called Betty la fea (Betty the Ugly One) once in a while. The American television show Ugly Betty was adapted from this version, and it's interesting to see how the two shows treat situations and characters differently. Plus, each episode is around 45 minutes!

I would love to visit a Spanish-speaking country one day, and want to study abroad in college. I haven't really had the chance to practice my speaking abilities lately, but hopefully listening to other people speak at rapid-fire speed (you would not believe how fast people in telenovelas speak when they are angry) has been maintaining my accent a little.

Kinetic Typography: Dancing Words

I've always liked words, so perhaps that's why typography holds a certain appeal for me.  The artistic ways in which words can be relayed fascinate me: word clouds, alphabet photography, and shape poetry, among others. To me, the written word is in itself a kind of art form.

Kinetic typography takes the aesthetics of words to a whole new dimension by giving  them life. The creator of kinetic typography is able to add color and vibrancy to words, and make them even more mesmerizing and captivating than they already are.  The kinetic typography videos that I hold near and dear to my heart are the ones that incorporate both audio and motion -- adding music or voice to words can bring out their meaning in a way that goes beyond their appearance on a page.

Here is one of my favorite kinetic typography videos. The typography is to one of my favorite songs, "The Lion's Roar" by the Hush Sound.

I really appreciate the technical skill involved in making something like this (it took them about a year to make!), but I also love that the creators were able to emphasize certain aspects of the song that they deemed important. Each portrayal of a song or poem in portrayed kinetic typography reflects the interpretations of the creator, and allows them to share how they feel about a particular work.

I tried my hand at kinetic typography myself last year, when I did my Dancing Haiku Public Poetry Project. I didn't  have the software to do the motion that I wanted, but I had a lot of fun animating the text and picking music to fit the winning haiku submissions.

Here is the most technically advanced piece of kinetic typography that I made while working on the project:

The dandelions and dandelion fluff were a mess to animate -- they took over 20 layers in Photoshop, and then I had to import them  to After Effects, spending another hour-and-a-half tweaking them so that they appeared to fall or appear at the right time. I have become ridiculously familiar with all the quirky little add-ons and animations that After Effects hides in its occasionally frustrating menus.

 Unfortunately, my copy of After Effects has become prone to displaying a red screen relaying an unwelcome message: "Your 30-day trial is over". For now, this has hindered me in my quest to create works of kinetic typography. But once the frenzy of applications and schoolwork dies down a little, I will address this perturbing issue and try my hand at creating once again.

Objection!

Your Honor, the witness is clearly lying! She does, in fact, play video games. She's just too embarrassed to admit it!

Not a whole lot of people know this about me, but I like video games.  Ace Attorney is one of my favorite game series, even though I have little interest in ever being a lawyer.  In the first three games of the series, you play as Phoenix Wright,  a slightly hapless lawyer who is ridiculously skilled in the art of bluffing. For some crazy reason, his bluffs are always correct, no matter how far-fetched.  There is always some key piece of evidence that manages to turn the case around, and enables you to defend your (usually) falsely accused client successfully. It's like reading a mystery-- except you get to draw your own conclusions and see how they measure up to the truth.

This game appealed to me initially since I love mystery novels, shows, and the like. Solving the mystery in this game usually involves finding out that one of the prosecution's key witnesses is the true culprit. But the characters are surprisingly well- developed -- more so than in most video games I've played. A character that is near and dear to my heart, Ema Skye, is an aspiring forensics scientist.  The relationship between Ema and her sister Lana (who is Phoenix's client) is so complex that the case is worth solving simply to get to the bottom of what's going on.

Something that surprised me and (continues to surprise me) is how the games manage to maintain such a lighthearted atmosphere despite dealing with serious topics such as murder and betrayal. The games boast punny names galore: Luke Atmey, Ted Tonate,  Ini Miney, Winston Payne, Lotta Hart, Detective Gumshoe -- the list goes on and on.  Sarcasm is peppered throughout the court proceedings, and Phoenix Wright's self-proclaimed assistant, Maya Fey, never misses a chance to have a laugh at Phoenix, or anyone else, for that matter.  An issue of contention between Maya and Phoenix (and a running joke in every game) is the issue of step-ladder vs. ladder:
 

Maya: Look, a ladder!

Phoenix: That's a "step"-ladder.

Maya: So? What's the difference? You need to stop judging things based on narrow-minded cultural assumptions, Nick!

Phoenix: R-right... sorry. (This girl is OUT there!)

Nevertheless, there are still plenty of serious moments, some of which are all the more frightening since they are  indicative of real terrors. For example, the games deal with corruption in the police force and deadly blackmail among corporations. In one of the games, an assassin kidnaps one of Phoenix's dear friends, and refuses to let them go unless Phoenix can pull off a not guilty verdict in court.  On this occasion, Phoenix is faced with an ethical dilemma. Although such a dilemma is much more dramatic than what the everyday lawyer might face, it is true that lawyers may find themselves defending guilty clients and making difficult ethical decisions.

I never thought that I would ever become so invested in the characters or the plot of the Ace Attorney games, but the truth is, the experience of playing through the games is almost akin to that of reading a well-crafted book.  I would definitely recommend them to anyone who likes a mystery with dynamic characters, and a good bit of fun mixed in.
 

 

The Muses and a 7:1 Ratio

"For every good poem, there are seven bad ones."

This one bit of advice from Creative Writing class has stuck with me for a while. I tend to write poems en masse, spilling out stray thoughts onto a page for a few hours at a time. Usually, I don't read them again until much later, but when I do, almost every single one has something wrong with it. One or two seem to show some promise, so I reluctantly share them via the Unique projection screen.  It is then that my worst fears or my wildest dreams are confirmed. I have been met with everything from scathing remarks (it's all more dramatic when people are criticizing your own work) to gushing praise. The praise usually is for a poem that I was either nervous about or disliked -- I can never quite figure out the critics.

The seven bad poems can sometimes become fourteen, or on certain fortuitous occasions, three. They may tumble out all at once, or take on a slow, steady gallop. More often than not, I sit idly, twirling my pencil or twiddling my thumb. I am, albeit foolishly, entertaining the hope that the Muses may take some pity on me.  Should they be late, there's always the vapid time-sucking abyss known as the internet. Or should I decide to be more productive, there's always homework.  Some of my best poems come to me while I'm churning out essays or math problems.  For some reason, the busier I am, the better my writing becomes.  If I was the subject of a nature documentary, this would be the time the narrator announces, "The writer thrives under pressure, reaching towards the sun despite the spiraling chaos outside her doorstep."

The Muses tend to pay me a visit right when I'm about to fall asleep. In a crazed frenzy, I attempt to ingrain the idea into my brain,  convincing myself that I will write it down first thing in the morning.  The second I wake up, I find that it has scurried away. Disappointed, I  spend the rest of the day shifting through the cluttered corners of my mind for an answer.  A few hours, days, or even weeks later, I will finally find an inkling of the original idea. At this point, I have probably come up with ten other better ones -- more than enough to satisfy the beautiful seven-to-one ratio of poetry creation.

The Plight of the Musically Fickle

She surveys the room carefully before turning the computer and finding the headphone jack. Her fingers become red from the pressure of plugging the headphones in and out. She must be absolutely sure no sound escapes the metal walls. She shirks from the discussion of musical artists, nodding emptily at the preferences of her friends. No one can know, she has told herself countless times.  And so she lives a life of personal espionage, forever closing computer windows and muting speakers.

I haven't known you all for very long, technically speaking.  And yet, the thin veil of relative detachment afforded by the internet has granted me the ability to share this with you.

My music taste is varied at best, fickle at worst. I am the kind of person that will devote herself to one song for a solid week, and never listen to it again. If I happen to encounter it again, I will likely be writhing in pain, utterly embarrassed at my poor judgment. Of my musical phases, there are many that I would rather forget (most of them concentrated in the murkiness that comprised  the latter half of elementary school and middle school). I am not quite comfortable enough to detail them here-- let's save that for never.

Perhaps my fickleness isn't as bad as I make it out to be. I can safely say that I have become (somewhat) more culturally aware due to my chronic tune-sampling tendencies. Eclectic would be

a nice way to put it, but in all honesty, I'm not quite sure how to describe it.

A few of the bands I have added to my ever-growing list over the past year or so include Daughter, Florence and the Machine, and The Hush Sound.   At the moment, I have become enamored with a band called Metric, and have been listening to a few songs of  theirs nonstop for the past two weeks. Like most of the artists I encounter in my strange trek through the music world, they are a little old, but still active.  I cannot claim to adore their entire repertoire, since I have only listened to five songs, give or take. My favorites, as of 5:37 p.m. on Saturday, happen to be "Sick Muse" and "Black Sheep." I would post a link to them here, but I will leave you instead with a warning: listen at your own peril.

Oh look, visitors!

I often find myself considering writing as a sort of spontaneous generation - suddenly genius strikes and the words manifest themselves in perfect succession, accompanied by a grand concerto of praise and applause. It's a futile daydream, I know, but the idea has always seemed glamorous.  Of course, most things that seem glamorous rarely are.  Beneath the sheen of good writing, there lie the sweat and tears (and sometimes furious scribbles) of a fellow human being, who has decided, for some reason, to open their door to you.

I suppose that I will be following in the footsteps of these door-openers. I can't pretend to be nearly as interesting  as they are, but you may step inside if you wish.  I am quite certain that I have the strangest taste in music the world over, (I switch favorite artists/musical genres almost weekly) so I apologize in advance for whatever may be roaring on this blog's metaphorical speakers should I decide to play something.  I also have a strange affinity for hoarding cake recipes (I've never made a cake in my life, but I have about 20 recipes on my computer.) Speaking of cake, chemistry is my favorite science. I could write ten pages about that, but I'll spare you for now.   I also like writing poems, but sharing them with others - let's just say you'll have to wait a bit on that.

 If you come again, I can promise you some words (not necessarily wise ones) and maybe a laugh or two.  If you're extra lucky, you might get a poem. And if I ever  get some time to bake, maybe a cookie.

Thank you for stopping by! There was probably something that I forgot to show you, but you can find out what it is when you come again.
 

I don't want to impose, but for now, the door is ajar.