You.

You are beautiful. And talented. And incredible. Very, very incredible.

I am so proud of you.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to work with you, be surrounded by your energy, read your words, hear you story.

You are all amazing.
with gratitude,
your TA,
indigo

Yay

Yay for the last group meeting on Tuesday...I wonder what everyone's project is going to be like? I'm still stumped, but I'm brainstorming...I only have one more weekend to pull it all together.

Hope everyone had a happy holiday!

Cristina

Warning: Grumpiness ahead (Or: a desperate cry for cheering-up help!)

Note to self: warn all Mills friends and acquaintances not to take Video I in the same semester they are writing their theses!!! Ridiculous classes that take hours and hours and hours of precious time getting frustrated with ridiculously complicated computer software are not good things to involve oneself in when one needs that precious time to WRITE. Especially when one has no plans whatsoever to do anything remotely related to that stupid video technology later in life. Stupid minor requirements...grrrr....

Okay...cool your jets, Kelsey...

I'm starting to get worried. I haven't worked on my thesis at all this week, and I still only have 20 pages. I did have reasoning behind that, to a certain extent, other than the fact that this stupid video class is owning my life... (1) I'm stalling a little bit until I get everyone's feedback on Tuesday (IF we even get to me on Tuesday, seeing as how I'm dead last, my own stupid fault), (2) I have every intention to do some hardcore writing while at home for thanksgiving, where I'll able to focus, and won't have access to that stupid video software and therefore won't have to worry about that. I don't doubt that the thesis will get done on time....I know it will, although I wish I still had a lot more time to work on it. But I'm really excited about what the next few weeks hold for us as a group...especially that party at Elmaz's!

And I can't wait to meet Brewster!!!!

So I guess at this point, since I'm too tired and frustrated to have anything very enlightening to say, I will throw out this question to you... What keeps you going when you get worn out, frustrated, fried, and totally unmotivated? How do you push through the fatigue and the stress and the just wanting to quit? When it just gets you down, how do you get back up?

Really....I want to know! Maybe I'll go make some cookies to cheer myself up...or watch an episode of NCIS before I do my econ homework (which is the other thing I'm hating right about now). Bleh...

Sorry guys...didn't mean for this to be such a gloom and doom blog post. I didn't know what I was going to write about this week, so I decided to just go at it blindly and see what would happen. And now we can all tell what a fantastic mood I'm in right now!

However, I'll be better by Tuesday, I promise! I love reading y'alls writing...that's what gets me going!

Reading

The reading was interesting. There were certainly a lot of different styles and different people with those different styles, and it was my first time doing anything like that, really, so it was an experience, to say the least.

On another note...

Don't you hate it when you're drinking hot tea, but it's not really hot at all and in fact it's so cooled down that it's actually quite cold, but you don't realize that before you drink it, and then you do drink it and it's disgusting so you spit it out and accidentally get it all over yourself?

Yeah, just happened to me.

CAN YOU GUYS BELIEVE OUR THESES ARE ALMOST OVER?!

Unbelievable.

Cristina

Soundtrack

-Not sure what our official assignment is for this week. There might have been one, but I can't remember. Well, I'm behind one so I thought I'd steal another group's blog idea for last week.

Now, I don't really listen to music while I work. I can't usually listen to music without dancing. I also am spacey enough without distraction. However, I am a huge music fan and it inspires me a lot. So here are some song that inspire me with ideas. At least for now.

"Green Onions" by Booker T. and the M.G.'s (This song inspired an entire story!)

"Reverie" and "Pagodes" by Claude Debussy

"Gnossienne No. 5" by Erik Satie

Talking Heads' album "Remain in Light" and also their album "True Stories"

R.E.M.'s album "Automatic for the People"

"Get up offa that thing" by James Brown

"Respect" by Otis Redding

"Jump in the Line" by Harry Belafonte

Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker

"Crying" Roy Orbidson

"Wouldn't it be nice" by The Beach Boys

"Everyday" by Buddy Holly

I've recently been obsessing over musicals like Oklahoma!, Top Hat, Singing in the Rain, and Wizard of Oz. Also over Bollywood musicals like Pakeezah, Om Shanti Om, Dilwale Duljania Le Jayenge, etc. I like songs that come with dances.

Everything by The Beatles

Pretty much everything composed by Arvo Pärt and everything by Radiohead

and Björk who was my first love!

Here's something else that inspires me:

my soundtrack...the UN narrowed down version. sorry El

the songs listed are songs that will be in the soundtracks. LOL. I plan on breaking my story into at least two books if not three. These songs would be the songs played in the film of these said books if I adapt them into movies. Some of the songs are ones I listened to while I wrote, but most of them remind me of scenes in my story (some of which I have submitted or am going to submit to the class this semester) or of characters in my story. If/when I narrow down the list it will be to have less/no repetition of musical artists.


Tom's Diner by Suzanna Vega & Art of Noise

Saga by Basement Jaxx feat. Santigold

Come Back When You Can by Barcelona

This Is Not The End by The Bravery

True Believer by Dragonette

I Just Died In Your Arms by Amerie

Stupid Grin by Dragonette

Runnin by The Pharcyde

I Get Crazy by Nikki Minaji

I Can Transform Ya by Chris Brown feat Swizz Beats and Lil WAyne

Creator by Santigold

Baddest Bitch by Nikki Minaji

Passing Me By by The Pharcyde

Morenamia by Miguel Bose feat Julieta Venegas

All The World by Fauxliage

Enjoy The Silence by Anberlin

Pony/ Love Save The Empty by Erin McCarley

That Girl/ I Drive Alone/ Fastlane by Esthero

Sunday Morning by No Doubt

Never Again by Kelly Clarkson

Cosmic Getaway by Electrasy

Com As You Were by The Bird and The Bee

My Own Worst Enemy by Lit

Aways Strapped by Birdman

No Hay Nadie Como Tu by Calle 13

Dont Look Back by Telepopmusik

Fantasy by Timbaland feat Money

Tell It To The Sky by Tracy Bonham

You Wouldn't Like Me/ I Wont Be Left by Tegan and Sara

Whether You Fall by Tracy Bonham

Naked by TRacy Bonham

Instantly Gratified by People In Planes

Copasetic by Local H

Ashes to Ashes by David Bowie

The Fear by Lily Allen

Burning by Whitest Boy Alive

In The Dark by Dj Tiesto

Hawaii by Meiko

Now I'm That Bitch by Livvi Franc

Girl And The Sea by The Presets

Ignorance by Paramore

When You're Gone by The Cranberries

Beauty In The Dark by Mads Langer

Fight Song by The Republic Tigers

Most Beautiful Plague by Say Anything

I Belong To You by Lenny Kravitz

Brightest Hour by The Submarines

Mouthwash by Kate Nash

Plastic Jungle by Mike Snow

Makeup Blog -What I see in a book...

Here's the blog I was supposed to write for last week, but didn't because I am a forgetful loser.

I like writing that teaches me how to write and also something I can relate to:

"In July my father went to take the waters and left me, with my mother and elder brother, a prey to the blinding white heat of the summer days. Dizzy with light, we dipped into the enormous book of holidays, its pages blazing with sunshine and scented with the sweet melting pulp of golden pears" (The Street of the Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz, 25.)

When I first read this it changed my life. It changed my writing. Nothing was ever the same again. That's Schulz's first paragraph of that story. Sucks you right in. He writes about color and smell like I could only dream of. I also like his writing because I feel like I can relate to him, both culturally and personally. He was a pale, bookish guy who kept to himself and he was a Polish Jew. I'm Jewish and my family is from that part of the world, so I feel like I really understand his cultural perspective. He unfortunately didn't get a chance to write much. While in a ghetto he was shot by a S.S. officer. Supposedly he was working on a manuscript called The Messiah, but it was lost.

Something that blows my mind, opens my doors:

e.e. cummings' "pity this busy monster manunkind" poem (look it up, it's great!)

When I first read this poem I was blown away. Both by the content and the writing, but especially the latter. e.e. cumming's taught me that it's okay to break the rules. He breaks the rules and does it WELL.

Something that shows truth:

Colors magazine, issue #20 Beijing you can see some of it here:

http://www.colorsmagazine.com/issues/70/index.php

This was another life-changing experience for me. All it is is photos of various people and things from Beijing and little monologues of the people in them. Reading it was like walking down the streets of Beijing and talking to whoever you ran into. The photography, the writing has influenced me so much! The first time I read it was two summers ago or so and I still pick it up and flip through it. Every time is like a new time. I strive for the same kind of realism in my writing.

Underground by Haruki Murakami

Murakami was interested in individual accounts of what happened during the Sarin Gas Attacks on the Tokyo subways in 1995. After an agonizing search, Murakami triumphed and was able to transcribe the first hand accounts of victims and even members Aum Shinrikyo cult. How Murakami writes the accounts is amazing. It is like true voice but in writing. I really admire this. I also admire how Murakami turns the sterile statistics of a newspaper into a tangible reality for the reader. I WANT to do that so badly. Also, it was a real challenge to get this done in the first place. Japan, as a whole, has a very unique behavior towards victims of disasters, etc. they usually keep to themselves and do not want to talk about it, sometimes they are even ostracized. So, yet again another complex cultural perspective that you don't see done so well that often.

Tokyo a certain style by Tsuzuki

I've already gone on and on about this one in class, but now you can actually look at it for yourselves:

http://books.google.com/books?id=wB8UKJuGw_gC&dq=tokyo+a+certain+style&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=-ecAS4WIPIHesgP5jvC9DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false

It's not just the pictures for me (even though those are a huge part of it for me) I also love the brief yet extremely evocative little tidbits the photographer gives you about the person who lives in the apartment and about what's in the photograph. It's usually barely a sentence yet it is just so PERFECT! Gah!