BoureeMusique's Xanga

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 03:30:28 GMT

This song is so much better than The Beatles' "Hey Jude." For the record, The Beatles are my favorite band.

Many thanks to my friend Nick for sharing this one with me.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:14:44 GMT

I went to a great poetry event on campus last night after class. And I'll be librarying and amazoning the headliners as soon as I'm done writing this post.

Wow, except the photo editor is not working, so I can't upload the flyer to tonight's event that will feature mystic vocal performer Sunni Patterson and spoken word guru John Goode.

So today it's Xanga's fault that I link you to my more detailed post over at blogspot.

Review of Pygmy

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:25:12 GMT

Chuck Palahniuk's Pygmy was dark, disgusting, and absolutely hilarious. It's the story of a young would-be terrorist from foreign country [redacted]. He narrates the tale of his arrival in a Midwestern U.S. town where he is taken in by a Christian host family with two teenage kids. Pygmy, as Agent 67 is called by his new community, has a nickname for everyone. He exposes the hangups of everyone he meets as Palahniuk attacks Christianity, Captialism, Consumerism, and everything else American, in true Chuckie fashion. Through his eyes, we watch him and his fellow "exchange student" operatives prepare for Operation Havoc. He goes to school, he gets in fights, he falls in love. It's a riff on your typical YA high school story, but it's twisted.

The satire is scathing and brilliant. Chuckie doesn't pull any punches, but he doesn't unilaterally beat up on American culture. He exposes some of our weaknesses but shows how dictatorial, freedomless fascist training is also flawed and damaging. I don't know if he goes so far as to promote a happy medium, but he certainly doesn't say that one side or the other is blameless. The ending is a bit "neat" and "easy" as he wraps things up at the end. I don't want to give anything away, but it is the process and commentary in the book that shine rather than the story arc and final product.

The writing style is postmodern, and I like it. I'm lucky that I picked up the audiobook version, because the reader did a wonderful job and I don't think I could sit through reading-by-sight the choppy, jumbled (though hilarious) "sentences" of Chuckie's prose.

I liked this book a lot. It is NOT for the faint of heart, and if you strongly dislike gratuitous and graphic violence, don't bother. The social and political commentary are not novel enough to make this required reading for anyone, but it's great escapism if you're into that sort of thing.

[This blog can also be found at http://boureemusique.blogspot.com/]

On Writing

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:32:35 GMT

Anyone here like Barbara Kingsolver? *raises hand* She did an interview with Goodreads recently, in part to promote her new book, and the interview transcript is fabulous! She has some great gems and insights about writing and culture, how trends in writing have changed over the past thirty years, and much more. I quote one nugget as my gchat status message, but it's cumbersome. A nice nugget for a blog post is the quotation below:

"The essential ingredient of authorship is authority."
It sounds easy, obvious, but it's so true. In order to write, you have to own your material and your subject. That's not to say that if you feel unknowledgeable you shouldn't try to write. Write. Always write. But don't be afraid of research. Don't be afraid of reading everything you can get your hands on. Read from a diversity of sources. Learn how to discern which sources are good and which are not. Weave them into your story. Be entrenched in your ideas, and you'll find that your words can mystically write themselves. To push that idea, build a foundation of information ideas and then empty your mind to let the words flow through you and onto the page.

Authorship as authority is true not only of fiction-writing, as I know many people are attempting with National Novel Writing Month. It is also true of academic writing. In freshman composition courses, students are learning about discourse communities, which is just a big scary word for specific conversation among people with similar goals. John Swales can give you more details at the wiki site. Basically, students need to enter the discourse community by learning about it and then practicing. Dive in, or at least wade. That's how children learn language, and that's how most of us learn anything. It's ad hoc and intensive and beautiful.

P.S. I'm thinking about going over here. Still being indecisive and weighing things. Being able to display my RSS feed favorites there is tempting.

Friday, November 06, 2009

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:50:04 GMT

Thanks for the whole Youth comment, ER! I don't always look like I'm 12, but I guess green brings out the blueness of my eyes, and that angle made them look uber-anime-y, as another friend let me know.

Yesterday at 3:30 I spilled coffee/hot chocolate all over my khaki pants. I was tired and I laughed at myself for a few minutes before I decided to go home and change. While home, I decided to do a little front yardwork - mowing and stripping a fallen branch for easier cleanup later. Then I showered, neglected to read anything for class tonight, and showed up thirty minutes early. Before class started, I came up with some great ideas for poetry that talks about the differences between apophatic theology and its counterpart, cataphatic theology through the metaphor of the eastern, forest-filled U.S. (cataphatic) and the U.S. West, a gorgeous, ineffable void (apophatic). We'll see what comes of that.

During class, we spent a decent amount of time on my work again. Becky, you're right. The class always energizes me. I should go home between work and class more often, but it seems silly to spent the extra gas driving. The professor read a chapter from a book that one of his colleagues has been passing around, so I assumed he wanted to talk fiction instead of poesy... but when nobody else volunteered to read their stuff, I decided what the hell. I like hearing people's comments about my work, obviously, but I don't want to be *that girl* who hogs the classroom. As class was winding down and we talked about a poem I wrote about the autumn season, I told him I was worried my portfolio would be newer, unedited stuff, because I write more in the cooler autumn months than in hot summer. The prof actually expressed the same thing - he said the dark cold helped him churn out his best work. I like that we are kindred spirits. I'll have to tell him about how Dominique Lowell is now my facebook friend!!! She wrote a really neat poem about Jim Morrison that my prof shared in class a couple of weeks ago in response to my own poem on the same subject. I tracked Lowell down and she eventually got and *liked* a copy of my work. My already larger-than-life ego feels even huger. And today's unspilled caffeine helps

Busy-ness as Usual

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:33:02 GMT

Saturday was a Halloween party.
Sunday was a welcome home party. I held a sleeping baby for two hours and he drooled on me
Monday I had a meeting with my PIC from about 5:45-7:45.
Tuesday I had class until 7:10.
Last night was my night of reprieve - I cooked for my dad and we had dinner together; then I went to book club and enjoyed time with my lovely ladies. I went home, folded some laundry, and promptly stayed up doing nothing productive until way too late/early.
Tonight I have class again. Don't really want to go.
Tomorrow I drive northeast to visit friends. Back Sunday, maybe in time for the comedy club.

But probably not.

Sunday, November 01, 2009

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:39:31 GMT

Here's my abstract for the CEA conference in March in San Antonio:

"The Birth of the Word in the Soul: The Power of Voice in Meister Eckhart's 14th Century Mysticism"

The concept of Logos or Word is prevalent in both Christianity and the faiths of other mysticisms. The idea that the spoken or written Word, made possible through an individual's Voice, has power, is prevalent not only in religious contexts but in a lot of literature today. One's Voice has the power of creation - to create objects, ideas, incantations, and realities.

My paper will explore how fourteenth century Dominican mystic Meister Eckhart pushed the boundaries of his Catholic faith to show that we are all Creators when we let the spirit of the divine speak through our individual Voices. Later in the paper I will show examples of how this tradition of Voice has manifested itself throughout more contemporary literature as a source of agency in works such as 20th century African American poetry, popular science fiction films, and contemporary Young Adult fantasy and general fiction.

I don't think it's a tight enough concept yet to be actually chosen for the conference, but I am hopeful. And, really, what have I got to lose?

1,841 NaNo words so far. (I'm boureemusique for anybody who wants to add me as a writing buddy.) I hope to get to 2,500 before bed tonight. Now, though, I need to go to a welcome home party for a friend of mine who just finished boot camp for the Army Reserve.

Happy November!

Friday, October 30, 2009

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:49:08 GMT

Wow - today has been a lovely day. My hair isn't nearly as cute, but I'm wearing cheap plastic dangly pumpkin earrings that light up if I press a button on the back. But since I'm alone in this office all afternoon, they're safely in the off position.

I came to work to find that my bestest friends and the head of the graduate program in English have been writing fiends. I'm receiving great correspondence and just read two calls for papers that, even though my grad days are almost over, I really want to submit papers to. One of them is this. Meister Eckhart, the 14th century Dominican mystic, is Medieval, right? And tenuously linking him to John Keats would be his link to the "new world," right? Any ideas on me actually pulling this off? It would require a lot of research, and I might have to harass a couple of the professors here about sources and reading for me to ensure that I'm not crazy... but sanity is not a prerequisite for presenting at a conference, now, is it? The other conference is in San Antonio about... *looks it up* ... ah, yes, Voices. I'm not sure if I've actually written a paper on voices in the past few years, honestly, but I have long been interested in the power of the written and spoken word, the name, and LOGOS, as, well, powerful. I also did a cheesy paper in undergrad about how the common mantra "OM" is linguistically balanced and perfect. So... I could go either way with that.

Okay, back to work. The boss is keeping up with my pile of files, so I have to send off some more solicitations for academics to review papers for the boringest (but increasingly more esteemed) journals of economics and finance. Delicious.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:41:32 GMT

So busy - work, editing, book club, cleaning, and when I've given those all I can for the day, I think about the upcoming NCTE conference and my own upcoming novel. Yay, NaNoWriMo! I also want to do some reading on my own, but by the time I get that far, I fall asleep.

Today's leisure time will be spent at Red Robin with my dad. Then I'll do some more pages of editing before maybe starting Connie Willis's The Doomsday Book. I finished two books yesterday - one physical and one audio - and wrote goodreads reviews.

This morning I started my first Laurel K. Hamilton on audiobook (my first of hers either way) but doubt I'll get very far before turning it back in to the library. Waiting on a Nieffenegger on audio, but after reading the book jacket of her newest on the way out I noticed a writing error and was distracted.

Sarah Dunant and Anita Diamant both have new hardbacks out. (I don't like Anita as a person so much - I e-mailed her once to ask a research question about midwives and she told me to go buy her book - but I really enjoyed The Red Tent.) After I graduate, it's gonna be a fun time for girly fiction excess!

That's all I've got for now.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:09:12 GMT

Hi, Folks!

I wasn't particularly active this weekend, but I got a lot of reading and editing done, I made some good barbecue pulled pork, I discovered a wicked typing game c/o my husband, and I continued with my newly active dream life. Well, it's not so new, but it's new that I remember at least one dream per night for more than two nights in a row. Daydreams yesterday, a dream last night, and a weird bit of paranoia at work this morning have all fueled plot points for my upcoming NaNoWriMo idea, which will blend lightly veiled autobiography, narrative discursions and excursions, and my first attempts at writing erotica. It is highly UNLIKELY that parts of this novel will ever see the light of day, but it's worth an attempt, right?

Today's been a remarkably productive day despite my first mistake. I decided to sleep in an extra 30 minutes and thus had to dash madly to work. (My boss was late, though, so it was all for naught.) This means I did not stop to gas up the Fit or procure a cup of fat- and sugar-added "coffee" that is so delicious and potent on days such as these. Oh well. This morning, I reimbursed a student for a recent conference he attended, and I attended a long but strangely productive meeting. I also did some non-work-related productive things - you know, saving the world and all that. This afternoon I organized my desk, actually talked to my boss, and went through a few files.

Now I get to go to my BFF's house. Her mom's making chili, and there ain't no way I'm turning *that* down. I'll call her to see if she wants me to get her one of those coffee things from the gas station

Maybe I'll make time to be nice and visit y'all tonight or on the morrow.

Peace!

~ Emily