Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Eep!

I know I know I know. I said this was going to be a daily blog, and now I'm starting to get lazy about the skipping of the days. I know. And I'm sorry.

I have been busy, my friends. Due to the courses I'm taking, I have a huge amount of reading to do for homework. UTO has been holding auditions, and tonight's the first night of BORG with the newbies, and, like, there's still the massive looming monster that is the play I'm supposed to be directing. Which is terrifying. All of this would be a handful on its own, but I'm also watching Doctor Who with Marlena, and as most of you know... once you start daydreaming about the TARDIS, it's incredibly hard to stop.

Anyway. I have a little two-hour window here to blog and get shit done before I run off to club administration stuff for the rest of the evening. So I guess I'll tell you an anecdote.

The other day, Kosta told us the story of how he met Rudolf Peierls, also known as one of the Manhattan Project physicists, and the guy who discovered that plutonium is even more susceptible to splitting than uranium. "It was in the 1970s, when I was just a Little Tsipis" Kosta said (which I love, because it reminded me of how Maureen Johnson refers to her past self as "a little mj") "and there was a conference about nuclear energy in the Balkans. Everyone who was anyone was there. Everybody important, and also Little Tsipis. I was freshly married, and so of course I brought my wife. Oh, she was a sexy thing! One of the nights of the conference, there was a dinner party. And my wife, well, she always wants to be noticed. So she came outside wearing this little skirt, probably as big as a, uh, like a napkin. And we hear a grouchy old man voice shout 'Go put something else on-- you're going to catch your death!' ... and that's the one time I met award-winning scientist Rudy Peierls."

I love Kosta.

And, oh. Because this is Sounds Passing Through Sudden Rightnesses, after all, I'll leave you with this excerpt from my Film textbook:

"The experience that art offers us can be intensely involving. We say that movies drew us in or immerse us. We get absorbed in a book or lost in a song. When we can't finish a novel, we say, "I couldn't get into it," and we say that music we don't like "doesn't speak to me," as if it were a sluggish conversational partner.

All these ways of talking suggest that artworks involve us by engaging our senses, feelings, and mind in a process. That process sharpens our interest, tightens our involvement, urges us forward. How does this happen? Because the artist has created a pattern. Artworks arouse and gratify our human craving for form. Artists design their works-- they give them form-- so that we can have a structured experience.

For this reason, form is of central importance in any artwork, regardless of its medium. The idea of artistic form has occupied the thinking of philosophers, artists and critics for centuries. We can't do justice to it here."
Take that, indie snobs who slather ideas to film like that makes it a movie. Yeah, I'm looking at you, Jim Jarmusch. Stop hiding behind that tree, Richard Linklater. I see you. THREE-ACT STRUCTURE RULES.

... I'm sorry. That went to a place. It won't happen again.

Bye kids!

2 comments:

  1. Your Film textbook sounds lovely. And I continue to burn with jealousy because of Bapi. Now get home so we can watch Christmas Invasion!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Totally agree about DW being a time consuming necessity. Procrastination, meet The Doctor and his spaceship, the TARDIS.

    ReplyDelete