Just So
I’ve always been sensitive to my environment. Strong sounds, sights and smells affect me more than your average bear. This can be a burden, as well as a gift — while it’s harder for me to tune out the smell of garbage or cigarette smoke in our apartment building’s hallway, the greenery of the park across the street fills me with joy, even though I see it every day.
Given this heightened sensitivity, you might think I like to keep my environment “just so.” In a sense, that’s true, but for me, “just so” means changing things with some frequency. (more…)
Creativity and Pig Entrails
The post below is by my friend and fellow blogger Katie Jett Walls, who writes over at One Per Week. We’re both participating in the 2010 Wordcount Blogathon, and today’s assignment was to swap blogs with someone; we chose each other. Awww….
Angling for Guest Blogger of the Year, Katie made rice pudding today in honor of Tastee Pudding
My name is Katie, I’m a Fire Dragon, and I’ve been friends with Amanda since sometime along the way in our mutual flirtation with improvisation. We were briefly neighbors, and we’ve been drunk together on many nights. She gave me marvelous champagne flutes as a wedding gift. She writes, about her blog Tastee Pudding: “In the search for the creative life, the proof is in the pudding.”
I got to wondering how exactly how we came to say this phrase, “the proof is in the pudding” (maybe I only wondered because of fellow blogathon writer Joann Mason, who writes about the origins of English idioms). I sort of know what it means - it means you know a thing is good if it holds up to it’s promise, or if the experience lives up to the expectation.
I thought there might be more than that. (more…)
What’s in a Name?
Today an article titled “Nail Polish Names Gone Wrong” caught my eye (see also: Stupid Nail Polish Names). It reminded me of my high school creative writing teacher, Mrs. Wilchek, who told us her dream job was to be a Namer. You’d call her up and say “I have this new street I need to name,” or a new nail polish color, or what have you, and she’d generate a name on the spot. (Other things about Mrs. Wilchek: She wore rose water perfume and took a sabbatical from teaching to tend bar. She had me over to dinner once and served homemade peach cobbler. She collected buttons.)
I remember when my improv group formed back in 2005. Our director had tentatively named us “Revolution #9.” It took us over a month, and several weighted spreadsheets, to finally choose a permanent name for ourselves. We eschewed names like “Ghostrunner” and “Rochambeau” for “JINX.” We meant “jinx” as in, “Jinx! Buy me a Coke” – the experience of saying something at the same time, which evoked the improv holy grail of group mind, as well as playfulness. It wasn’t until we announced our new name to the community at large that we realized the other meaning for “jinx,” as in…curse. Whoops. (So much for being an English major.)
Today, I wonder why we spent so much time naming ourselves. I’ve never been more or less interested in seeing an improv group perform based on their name. And what about band names? What did it mean that the Beatles were called the Beatles? Does a band name like “Super Furry Animals” make you more or less interested in hearing the band’s music?
As someone who changed her name when she got married (maiden name: Amanda Karsten), the question of names is a personal one. When I dropped the “Karsten,” did “Amanda” take on more significance? Or is it just a combination of symbols that don’t really mean anything more than if I were called “Lady Human #100,000,009″?
What do you think? What’s really in a name?
Photo above by Giant Ginkgo on Flickr
Silence is Golden
I live in a NOISY apartment building. If Maybelline the chihuahua isn’t barking down the hall, the frat boys upstairs are moving furniture at 3am (that’s what it sounds like, at least), or the guy next door is blaring blues music at 8am on a Sunday. I recently shelled out $100 for noise-reducing headphones, which, thankfully, mute the cacophony to a distant roar.
For some people, though, headphones aren’t enough (more…)
The Mythology of Place
Since moving to New York, I’ve been struck by how much energy the people of this city invest in maintaining the image and allure of NYC. It seems like every other issue of New York magazine and Time Out New York feature the best this-or-that of NY, reasons to love NY, etc etc. In December, the city hung charming strings of lights over East Village side streets — this felt like choreography, a way of accentuating how charming NY can be in winter…a way of telling the story of the city back to itself.
He loves NY.
The old mythology of New York as a place to reinvent yourself, a place where anything is possible, is alive and well. (more…)
